Are you going to this year’s food truck festival? here are 20 tips to make your food van stand out and increase sales at van festivals.
Food van festivals are great news for van owners. Although these festivals come with a lot of stress and business demands, these events are huge opportunities to generate huge income. Not only will generate income, but a food truck festival can help increase the popularity of your food truck business.
If you want to increase your festival cart sales, you need to think of creative strategies to attract people. to your mobile kitchen. You can do this by creating a friendly and upbeat atmosphere, playing some trendy music, or putting on an eye-catching show that can provide additional entertainment.
As a food truck company getting ready for their first food truck festival and not knowing how to make money with their customers, or as a former food truck company doing well at festivals, we will give you some tips for promoting your food truck business to ensure its success at truck festivals.
Prepare the Food Truck Festival
- Check your menu
At a food truck festival, many trucks tend to converge for an event that requires people to have a lot of choices that they wouldn’t have on a normal day. Your menu should be memorable enough to attract visitors. If you have trouble creating menus, you risk losing customers to competitors. To make sure you look qualified and professional, and to maximize your efficiency and income, take a close look at your menu and ask yourself these questions;
- Is it easy to compose my menu ? In the food truck festival, speed is key. You don’t want your customers to wait too long in line to prepare food for you, which can put off those in the line and force them to leave your truck.
- Are the prices of my products outrageous ? Food truck festivals delight foodies in part because there is so much to taste. With a few inexpensive items, you lower the entry barrier for people jumping from truck to truck. Yes, you might not be making a lot of profit per unit, but the key point here is sales.
- Can I offer an exclusive menu without losing efficiency ? Exclusivity is for sale, but if you sacrifice efficiency for a few special items, you will lose the perks you got when customers leave your long line. Finding a balance between price, variety, and simplicity isn’t easy, but it’s not something you can easily afford to accept. Give yourself a few hours to type in numbers, gauge the speed of certain items, and create a strategic menu.
2. Throw known
It is very important to know which popular dishes are eaten in the trucks that are usually served at festivals. When you understand that, move away from that particular food. Here’s an example where fighting grain will help your truck make more money and get more customers. To make more money as a catering van, you need to find a specific niche for a catering van that no other catering truck occupies.
To take advantage of this offer, first research the market. Dig deep into the menus and offerings of other local kitchen carts. Once you figure out what is missing, you can easily fix it and create a memorable menu for yourself.
People love certain types of food in summer and winter, and accepting these seasonal concepts can help you attract more customers, and it can also keep you cooler in your van as you add more recipes to the store. recipe.
3. Create a memorable concept
Perhaps the most important aspect of making more money as a food truck is to create a memorable concept. Not only will a strong concept encourage news coverage, it will also increase word of mouth about your business which will have a huge impact on your sales.
Having 1,000 customers talking about your brand could potentially generate 500,000 conversations. Therefore, making your customers talk with confidence is a solid strategy to help you make more money. Your food truck therefore needs a consistent design, a smart name, an established brand and a unique offering.
4. Promote your grocery van on social media
Once you have chosen your menu, you should start thinking about promoting your grocery van. At the start of the festival you will be surrounded by other trucks trying to attract customers, so even a small number of weeks of active marketing before the event can make a big difference. You need to draw people’s attention to the food so that they can recognize you in the crowd. You can offer promotions for that big day to encourage them to look for you.
Social media is an obvious way to show your name to potential festival foodies. Every business will take this path – and so will you. Here are some of the ways you can stand out on social media when it comes to promoting a festival:
- To participate in the festival, you must use the appropriate hashtags
- Endavor to participate with ordinary people delighted with the event
- Post photos of your menu in advance
- Promote exclusive event elements
- Tell people the location of your trucks during the festival
5. Use flyers and posters
Flyers and posters are probably the most popular means of advertising for events. They are very inexpensive and especially effective when displayed on local bulletin boards at college campuses, gas stations, and other retail outlets to encourage people to attend the event and visit your booth. You can print the package for your food truck and share it at the event location.
6. Plan partnerships with food trucks that complement your offers
This is how the ice cream and waffle business began. In the food truck business, the ice cream truck ran out of cones and had to turn to an additional company that, among other things, makes waffles and makes them work together to sell the leftover ice cream. fruitful therefore began. You can also use this strategy.
The Free Food Truck Fest partnership gives you an easy and inexpensive way to reach new customers. To understand what types of businesses are best to partner with, you need to know your target market. Once you know who your audience is, what they like, what they’re buying, and where they’re going, you can start thinking about other businesses that might attract the same guy.
For example, cross-advertising your burrito truck with an exotic churro truck in multiple locations can create a meal-dessert combination that resonates with customers and spurs growth for both businesses. Again, you can partner with another local business or organization. It will increase your marketing opportunities and expand your audience. Consider co-sponsoring the event with a local charity, business, or even a local bar.
7. make your truck visually striking
When your food truck is lined up on the street next to other trucks, if people don’t know your brand and the incredible price you are offering, how are you going to do it differently? make them stop and you check? Amazing truck movie with funny graphics and vivid colors really makes you stand out. You can paint it in bright colors such as yellow, red or orange, you can decorate the truck with unusual patterns such as stripes or dots, or make it unusual, like a cow or a pig.
Think about how you can brighten up the order entry. You can add a chalkboard to the daily menu, or add benches or tables and chairs with an umbrella with your brand on it for people to eat. Pay attention to what your competition is doing to get an idea of what to do and what not to do.
Even simple things like a license plate or a fancy number with your name on it and custom colored rims, your brand will be noticed by your customers.
8. Organize your kitchen and staff
Kitchen chaos is the fastest way to kill productivity, widen lines, and lose customers. Before the event itself, you need to consider every detail, what food ingredients to take with you, who will be in charge of frying, cooking, serving, cleaning, etc. deal with the consequences of the event.
9. Build a smooth control system
One of the issues food trucks face during festivals is when orders are inappropriate, when orders are not taken correctly, and when illegible handwriting interferes with the interpretation of the order. You may need to arrange for a digital display that allows for smooth transfer of orders. This keeps everything tidy, eliminates the risk of bad writing and ensures that no controls are lost under the stove.
10. Key to the latest trends
Trends are dominating the world and people always want to stay on top of the latest market trends. It’s the same with the food industry. Don’t be afraid to reprint yourself a bit if there’s a particular trend that you think your customers will like.
One of the main trends in the food industry in 2021 is the emphasis on organic food. local cuisine. Many food trucks focus on sourcing from local organic farms. With fresher ingredients, you can add extra flavor to your dishes that your customers will love.
And more and more people will focus on reducing their carbon footprint and paying more attention to where their food comes from, which will help you gain more customers if you can tell them the name of the farm. where you got the ingredients. People will have more confidence in your food if they know exactly where it comes from.
11. Make the most of bundle discounts
When you buy food ingredients for your truck in preparation for the festival, you usually buy in bulk, and buying in bulk entitles you to discounts. You must rely on these discounts. Don’t buy more. Buy a lot more than you think you need, as a lack of ingredients or supplies can mean thousands of dollars in lost revenue and hundreds of leads that haven’t been reached. If possible, find someone who might be available that day to do a last minute errand at the store – just in case.
12. Take care of the logistics before the big day
Minor logistical issues can turn into big headaches when you spot them on festival days. Here are some things to check before your big day:
- Insurance in force and additional certificates for event organizers
- Proof of food service training and food safety compliance
- Full gas tank and extra gas for your equipment
The verification won’t take too long and will prevent you from only creating a store to know that you are not approved for the service.
How to maximize sales during the festival
# 13 Don’t make customers wait too long
At the festival itself, people can see your menu and decide to order something from you, but a big letdown is if they wait forever for their food to arrive. Give your customers the ability to know when they can expect their food to be ready. This often means providing a quick verbal estimate of time, but the best way to keep customers patient, especially at large events, is to use an automated numbering system.
14. Only promise what you can give
Many food truck owners tend to list things on their menus that they cannot handle in order to appear versatile. If you ever do this you will be considered fraudulent, so stay away. It can also happen if you are serving food, but over time you run out of ingredients.
This usually happens at the very end of the event. You need to find a way to remove the items that are no longer available in your menu. A point of sale system that tracks inventory prevents you from accidentally promising that you can’t deliver.
15. Provide additional internet service
Large events tend to make Wi-Fi and cell phone incompatible, and losing the ability to accept credit cards can alienate dozens of customers. This can be a major inconvenience for your business. You have to find another way to get acceptance online so that you don’t get stuck. You may need to find an “offline” point of sale system for these stressful circumstances. You can also use your own broadband reception so you don’t get stuck.
The most effective way to avoid falling into one of these traps is to use a food point of sale system. trucks with all these solutions are already included.
16. Make your menu stand out
The old adage “do it and they will come” is not entirely false in this scenario. At truck food festivals, customers come to you. However, when there are dozens of options to choose from, you still need to make your business stand out. You need to make sure people notice your suggestions. You need someone to hand out menus to people online or to walk by your food truck. Make sure your signs and prices are legible from a distance.
17. Talk to your menu
There are many competitions during the gastronomy festival. There are plenty of food trucks lined up and they’ll likely deliver the same. To get more customers, you have to start thinking outside the box. Feel free to call up your menu, proudly announce your promotions, and chat with passers-by. The more attention you get (without being boring), the more people will see your truck.
18. Don’t settle for the usual
Regular trucks can serve up delicious food, but they usually don’t grab the attention like wilder, weirder, and more colorful trucks do. To stand out and sell more, you need to give up what is considered normal in this scenario. You can play prominent music, dress in cute costumes, give all of your customers bracelets – whatever it takes to grab attention. Now is your time to shine (and make big bucks). So enjoy it.
20. Create new nutritional concepts
Whether you’re putting your sandwiches in ice cream cones to make them more portable or inventing a new flavor of ice cream, give your customers something they can’t find anywhere else. If you like to play with spices, create your own special sauce that will delight the taste buds. If you can get a unique concept, promote it as much as possible. Once you convince people to buy them and showcase them, others will be curious and will come too.
20. Train your employees and put them to work
Anyone working on your food truck should be trained in personal selling action so that they can drive customers to your truck. Train your service desk staff as well as all of your on-board truck employees to do personal off-truck sales. The more people come to support your food gathering at food festivals, the better for you.
