The 2015 season of 5 Across is off and running with Follow that Food Truck! taking home the prize from this year’s kickoff competition. The night brought back a popular audience contest from last year, Freshest Tweet. The crowd also made some noise for the pitch teams with their brand-new thunder sticks.

Competition was hot on this frigid February weeknight. The night kicked off with a pair of app pitches. The first pitch was from Josh Boldt and Erik Rust of Follow that Food Truck!, who pitched an app that allows food truck owners to broadcast their location to diners and then gave out some swag to audience members. The second pitch was an app called The Bar Hop by Maged Saeed and Alexander Hamilton, which aims to combat college student FOMO (“fear of missing out”) by telling them which bars their friends are going to each night.

Next, Charles Buddeke pitched his donor engagement software, DonorCentric, a full solution for nonprofit organizations to manage and market to donors on their website and social media. He was followed by Sheila Stidham and Angela Malone who pitched Dr. Scribbles, a fresh take on the usually plain paper sitting on exam tables in pediatrician’s rooms. The paper delivers engaging content for kids and scan codes for hospital information to help parents, among other things.

The final pitch was from brothers Aaron Scales and Jared Scales, who unveiled their plan for a new mural in downtown Lexington, inspired by their years of experience designing international embassies for the government and street art projects with their company, BroCoLoco.

The first award presented was the audience text vote sponsored by Score, which went to BroCoLoco. They received a fresh Ulysses (that’s a $50 bill to the rest of us), and went home as the crowd favorite. After much deliberation between judges, the first place prize of $500 was awarded to Follow That Food Truck!. Want to see how it goes down next time? Come to our next 5 Across! 5 Across is hosted bimonthly at Awesome Inc.