The concept of the mobile food truck is something that has really caught on in recent years and its popularity isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. All over America, there are new food trucks popping up all the time in all sorts of locations. Whether it be at a local industrial park or an area packed with a lot of different office buildings, there are numerous locations where a well ran food truck with a creative concept can park and take advantage of the lunch crowd. It is truly amazing the many different types of cuisine that you can find at the different types of food trucks that you can find all over the place. You will see everything from the quintessential hot dog stand to trucks offering amazing Thai or Mexican food and everything else in between. The fact is that opening a food truck can be one of the lowest cost startup businesses to get into for motivated and ambitious entrepreneurs. If you have decided to take your shot and open your own food truck vending business there are some key points you should consider for helping to market your new business venture to ensure that you quickly pick up a loyal, devoted fan base. You can also read more about this topic by checking out these great articles (Forbes and Business News Daily).
1- Find A Regular Parking Space (Or Better Yet A Few)
There are numerous locations that can be lucrative sites to park up your new food truck in order to take advantage of the lunch crowd. One of the best ways you can market your new food truck is to get a loyal base of customers in a particular area. Areas such as industrial parks and office parks can be ideal because there are going to be lots of hungry workers coming out for their break and the site of something different in the area can be very appealing to them. It is always good as a food vendor to have those essential spots that you know you can go to on certain days of the week and turn a tidy profit. This is also a great way to spread word of mouth about your food truck. Don’t be afraid to go into some of the local businesses and see if you can leave some take-out menus in a spot where employees will be likely to come across them. It is often the little things that you do that help to quickly get the word out that you are offering a tasty alternative to what a particular clientele might be used to having access to on their break.
2- Have A Take-Out Menu
To go along with the previous suggestion, it is a great idea to have actual take-out menus for your food truck. They can be great marketing tools as people will take them home and their family and friends will see them. Make sure that your menus include your social media locations as well as your website.
3- Make Sure You Can Stand Out From The Crowd
As has been previously mentioned, the food truck business is really taking off and becoming a very popular new industry within the foodservice sector. Due to this, you might find that you have located a great place to set up operations for some nice profits, but you might also find yourself competing with other food vendors at this location. The fact is that if it is an ideal location for food vending then there is probably a pretty good chance that someone else has caught onto this fact as well. It might even be that multiple vendors have caught onto that location. That doesn’t mean that you can’t do well at this location. In fact, it might be an ideal type of site. You want to make sure that your food trucks stand out from the crowd though. This can take on the form of creative design, interesting type of truck and creative menu placement.
4- It’s All About Events
Whether it is a county fair or a music festival or any other type of event that you can think of, these are one of the best ways to market your new food truck and get the word out. You want to plan well in advance for these sorts of engagements so that you can make sure and get a spot in what can be a competitive field. Don’t shy away from events such as weddings and parties as well. These are also great ways to get your name out there.
5- Social Media Presence
It goes without saying that social media is a powerful marketing tool in today’s world. It would be a case of leaving a lot out there on the table to fail to have your food trucks business represented on outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. Facebook polls can be an amazing way to market your business as well as giving your customers a chance to participate in a fun way. It can be fun to offer to serve a particular fan-voted menu item or do giveaways through your social media. Social media is the ideal way to let people know what location you will be parked at for the day as well.
6- Mobile App Ordering
Mobile ordering and mobile payment is only going to continue to become more popular. A great way to market your food trucks is to offer this sort of feature. Whether you are taking advantage of an existing app for mobile ordering and payment or you want to have one created specifically for you, this can be an amazing way to get people excited about your product.
