Food On The Move: How To Start Your Own Street Food Truck

If you’ve been thinking about starting your own street food truck business, you’re in good company.

For the past decade, the food truck industry has grown consistently. In 2015 alone, the industry generated $1.2 billion in revenue.

As this industry continues to grow, there are plenty of opportunities to make a splash. This is especially true if you have a new, innovative food truck idea.

A food truck business is perfect for individuals wanting to start a food business of their own. It requires less money because you don’t need as big of a staff or buy a restaurant.

Keep reading to learn how to start your own food truck business.

Buy the Truck

The first thing you’ll need for your street food truck is the truck itself.

Sometimes you can find close to what you need for the type of the food you want. Other times, you’ll need to buy a blank truck and customize it for your menu.

If you want to run a truck that requires you keep a lot of food in cold storage like an ice cream truck, you’d be better off shopping refrigerated trucks.

Pick a Name

Now that you have the truck, you need to pick a name.

The name should be catchy, easy to remember and give customers an idea of what kind of food you serve. For example, the Patty Wagon in LA is a catchy name and tells customers they make food with patties, i.e. burgers.

Develop a Menu

Before you can hit the streets to sell you food, you need to have a menu. You’ll find a lot of food truck owners who started their business around one signature dish and expanded from there.

Let’s say you’re the master of grilled cheeses. Knowing that you should have a stellar signature grilled cheese and two to three others that have a variety of flavors.

Something to keep in mind is you want all your dishes to have fairly similar ingredients. You also don’t want to have many dishes with specialty items.

With our grilled cheese truck example, you’ll need bread, cheese, and butter for all your sandwiches. Your variety grilled cheeses should have simple items that you can prepare in advance to add later like bacon or tomato.

Get Social

The next challenge you’ll face is to get tons of people to try your fresh food. An easy way to spread the word about your food truck is through social media.

When you come up with a name for your truck, create accounts for it on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Encourage your customers to share pictures of your truck and tag your page or use a custom hashtag.

Find Partners and Parking

Now that you have everything, you need to find a place to park.

Oftentimes, you can find businesses or office complexes you can partner with so you get a place to park and tons of customers to buy your food. The company you partner with will have plenty of happy employees in exchange.

You should also look for local events in your city like food truck festivals and farmers markets where you can attend and set up shop.

Start the Street Food Truck of Your Dreams

There are many benefits to starting a street food truck. It gives you financial independence, the ability to call your own shots, and a way to connect with your community.

For more tips on food trends that you can use for your food truck, check out our food and beverage section.