New Lafayette food truck park activates once empty downtown lot, in time for spring events

There’s a new outdoor dining option in downtown Lafayette. Uncle Bob’s Roundup offers the stuff of plein air picnic dreams — covered tables, fans, bathrooms and a rotating cast of food trucks offering everything from sweet treats to ‘Casian’ specialties. 

On Saturday, April 5, the food truck park’s grand opening event featured food from Shakebacks, Ragin Casians Crossroads Cuisine, Maple Street Milkshake Bar, Ki Yodi’s Snowballs and more local food trucks. Yard games and live music by The Nouveau String Band entertained customers, and it was a beautiful day of activity for a section of downtown that was just an empty lot, only a few months ago. 

Lafayette architect Dillon Van Way owns Uncle Bob’s Roundup food truck park at 144 E. Cypress St., Lafayette — and the DMS Mail Management building next door, which he purchased in 2021 and converted to apartments. That development project paved the way for the Roundup, which sits on a formerly adjudicated lot that Van Way started taking care of in the process of turning DMS Mail Management into the Cypress Flats. 

The city granted DVW Properties the lot at 144 E. Cypress St. in 2023, as Van Way had been maintaining it in his capacity as an adjoining property owner. He saw it as a “blank slate” — and knew that he wanted to develop something there that would benefit the downtown community as a whole. 

“I didn’t want to get the lot from the city and let it just stay vacant,” he said. “But with inflation and rising interest rates, it became difficult to develop anything. The park started as an idea of a less costly development to activate that corner of downtown.” 

Uncle Bob’s Roundup has five spots for food trucks, corralled around a central seating area that allows customers to bring large groups during events like Downtown Alive! or Festival International, with everyone able to order from the truck that strikes their fancy. 

Van Way built in features like waste dumps, grease traps and 30, 50 and 110 amp electrical breaker capacity that allows the trucks to draw power for all their cooking and refrigeration needs. By eliminating some key food truck infrastructure challenges, and making the park an inviting place for customers, he hopes that Uncle Bob’s finds its place in the downtown food ecosystem as a “nice place people want to be.” 

“It’s a casual, quick option. You don’t have to dress a certain way to eat. We should have everything a truck should need to stay there, but the goal was to go above and beyond what the trucks needed. Because if people want to be there, the trucks want to come,” he says. 

The park’s hours will be flexible as diners and the food truck community find a good rhythm for sales. Vendors can apply to be at the park on the Uncle Bob’s Roundup website, and they can essentially choose their own hours of operation — although spots are already full for major upcoming events like Festival International, according to Van Way. 

He says, “Trucks set their own hours, that’s the idea. Our piece of the puzzle is not to run the trucks. They’re their own business and we just want to give them a place to run their business well. Our hours are until 11 p.m. — if we have a breakfast truck, they can be open whenever.” 

“We want to become the place people know they can sit down, have a bite to eat and a rest,” said Van Way. “A simpler experience with a ton of variety downtown.”