Mobile vendors such as food trucks have become viable players in the food service market as a relatively new business model based on high mobility and flexibility. To remain competitive against typical brick and mortar establishments, it is important for mobile food vendors to operate at sites that will generate sufficient revenue, which may mean navigating to locations of high demand and low competition. This study addresses the optimal locations and routing of mobile vendors along different objectives that could contribute to higher revenue. We develop a multi-objective spatiotemporal optimization of food trucks by explicitly considering the dynamics of urban population distribution and thus potential customer demand. For an empirical application, we focus on the location and routing problems of food trucks in Seoul, Korea. The results show that several noninferior solution sets are possible for simultaneously maximizing demand capture while reducing market competition. A routing between optimal locations for food trucks is also suggested. This research could provide useful insights and practical solutions that are directly applicable to various mobile vendors.

中文翻译：

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使用事实人口需求对竞争性移动供应商的位置和路由进行时空多目标优化

作为一种基于高流动性和灵活性的相对较新的商业模式，食品卡车等移动供应商已成为食品服务市场的可行参与者。为了与典型的实体店保持竞争力，移动食品供应商必须在能够产生足够收入的地点运营，这可能意味着导航到需求高、竞争低的地点。本研究针对有助于提高收入的不同目标的移动供应商的最佳位置和路线。我们通过明确考虑城市人口分布的动态以及潜在的客户需求来开发食品卡车的多目标时空优化。对于实证应用，我们关注韩国首尔食品卡车的位置和路线问题。结果表明，几个非劣质解决方案集可以同时最大化需求捕获，同时减少市场竞争。还建议了食品卡车的最佳位置之间的路线。这项研究可以提供有用的见解和实用的解决方案，直接适用于各种移动供应商。