Colombian food truck opens permanent restaurant in Huntingburg
Jen and Franklin Quimbaya turned a year of food-truck demand into a permanent Colombian restaurant at 304 East 4th Street, and the opening night crowd filled downtown Huntingburg.
A year of food-truck demand pushed Jen and Franklin Quimbaya into a permanent downtown Huntingburg storefront, where La Tricolor Colombian Delicacies opened at 304 East 4th Street after customers kept asking for empanadas, arepas and other traditional Colombian foods. The couple took over the former Old School Cafe space, signed the lease in February, renovated the building with help from family members and held a soft opening in May.
The move widened the business beyond the original truck model. La Tricolor now serves stuffed arepas, breakfast items and larger Colombian street-food plates, giving the Quimbayas room to offer the kind of menu many customers had been requesting as the truck built its following around the area.
Social media helped turn the opening into a local event. Word spread quickly on Facebook and TikTok, and what had been expected to be a small start became a packed night. That kind of response matters in a downtown like Huntingburg’s, where steady foot traffic can determine whether a restaurant becomes a destination or fades into the background.
Historic 4th Street gives the restaurant a ready-made setting for that kind of traffic. The City of Huntingburg says the district is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has more than two dozen locally owned antique and specialty shops and unique eateries, along with brick-paved sidewalks and restored 1800s-era architecture. La Tricolor adds a different culinary identity to a corridor already built around dining, browsing and special outings.
The opening also fits the city and county’s changing demographics. Huntingburg’s population was 6,362 in the 2020 census and is estimated at 6,522 in 2025, and 32.6% of residents identify as Hispanic or Latino. Dubois County had 43,637 residents in the 2020 census and an estimated 44,016 in 2025, with 10.7% identifying as Hispanic or Latino and 5.8% foreign-born in the 2020-2024 period.
A 2024 Southern Indiana Business Report story said Dubois County’s Latino community had been steadily growing, and described the ALASI Resource Center in Huntingburg as helping bridge a cultural divide and connect Latino residents to services. La Tricolor now joins that broader pattern: a family-run business moving from a truck to a storefront, adding another permanent draw to downtown Huntingburg’s small-business mix.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
