NEW YORK – Putting the cart before the store was the right recipe for ice cream maker Buck Buchanan.

Back in 2001, Buchanan was a stay-at-home dad using his training as a chef to give cooking lessons to supplement his wife’s income. Boredom set in, and he decided to start a gourmet ice cream cart. Later, he added a truck – and drove to concerts and sporting events to sell his cold, tasty treats.

In March, he opened his first Lumpy’s Ice Cream shop in downtown Wake Forest, N.C.

“My thought was to build a clientele, build a customer base, so when I actually opened the store, people would flock to it,” Buchanan says. After about five years, “people started hollering and screaming on Facebook: ‘I love your ice cream, but I can’t get it anywhere.’ ”

Buchanan waited until he was sure he had enough customers to support a store. His found a spot in the city’s downtown, which is being revitalized. The location has parking. That’s great for customers who have to travel to the store from far away.

Lumpy’s is part of a small but growing trend spawned by the proliferation of food trucks and carts in cities and suburbs across the country.

Entrepreneurs who thought it would be cool and lucrative to sell gourmet tacos, barbecue, ice cream and other food from trucks are opening stores and restaurants to build on their success. They’re proving that taking an idea and trying it out on a small scale – and in this case, putting on training wheels – is a prudent way to start a company.

The experience of running the cart and truck also taught him a lot about how to run a business, Buchanan says.

“We grew what I called smart. ... We’d get a new contract, and we’d figure out how we’d work the contract. We wouldn’t grow any further until we figured it out. You never want to promise something and not be able to deliver.”

Food trucks and carts have been around for generations. Most are sellers of hot dogs, popsicles and ice cream bars or are canteens on wheels that bring staple breakfast and lunch items to factories, auto repair shops and other businesses.

What’s different about the mobile food vehicles that have cropped up in cities and suburbs the last few years is that these serve trendy fare like Korean barbecue, Jamaican jerk chicken and cupcakes.

They travel from one spot to another, often congregating in high-traffic areas like downtowns and state government complexes. Some have websites or Facebook pages so that hungry fans can find out what day and time they’ll show up.

Street food has flourished in the weak economy as people seek inexpensive meals. Some want treats like cupcakes and ice cream that are different from what they’d find in a supermarket.

For entrepreneurs who dream of opening a restaurant, it’s a cheaper and less risky way to get into business. If a cart or truck is at a location where it’s not doing well, it’s easily driven elsewhere.

But an owner with a store in a bad location is stuck – usually with a lease. Restaurant failure rates are high – studies generally put it around 30 percent in the first year.

Most of this new generation of street food purveyors want to open a restaurant someday, says Jim Ellison, with the Economic Community Development Institute of Columbus, Ohio.