Are you a good cook? Does a week rarely pass where someone’s telling you, “You should open a restaurant”? Are cooking channels on your “favorites” list on every television in your house? Have you ever thought about it? If the answer to those questions were yes, chances are you’ve thought about getting into the restaurant game. But, then you remember statistics that warn you to proceed with caution because most new restaurants close in their first year. Or, you check into culinary school and find them cost-prohibitive. Have you considered a food truck?
First, it’s not as simple as buying or converting a truck and selling food. As the food truck craze rages and trucks are becoming more prevalent on city streets, guidelines are being devised more and more for sanitation and other aspects that were not in effect when it was just a taco truck and hotdog carts in a few cities. They are essentially mobile restaurants. You wouldn’t eat at a restaurant that didn’t make the Grade, so people are beginning to hold food trucks to just as high a standard. And, accordingly, regulations have followed.
Do your research and ask yourself the tough questions. Let’s assume you have the culinary acumen, but can you be successful on a larger scale? Can you secure the funding, heck, what is the funding to get up and running? You also have to know what licenses and permits are required for your city/state and even neighborhood in which you plan to primarily base your truck. Make health and safety a high priority. No matter how good your food is, or what you’re offering, if you’re serving your dishes with a side of salmonella…it’s all for naught. If you’re not a trained chef, learning and implementing safe cooking techniques will be as pivotal to your success as actually buying the truck.
Location, location, location is not just important for home buying. Having an established location, though you are mobile, is important. Many trucks use social media to update the public their nomadic locations but others rely on one or two locations, because contrary to belief, social media does not run everyone’s life. The restaurant business can be cutthroat. You have to remember that other restaurants, especially those not part of a chain, may not take kindly to you parking in the area and taking away their business. They may prohibit people parking in their lots to patronize your truck or reserve parking on the street near them, to prevent you from doing so.
Most successful food trucks are those that do one or a couple things really well. They don’t have the headache or overhead that goes along with trying to establish and maintain a full restaurant menu. They do one thing, they do it well and build a clientele of people who often consider that one thing the best around. Others, often experience great success by offering what others don’t. You see it in business all of the time. Identifying what’s missing in a market and then addressing that need has been many a millionaire’s secret to success.
For many the key to getting out of the rat race and getting out of corporate America, is capitalizing on their talents and building a business around it. When job loss from layoffs and downsizing was widespread across the country, one of the top employment ideas being advised by experts, was start a consulting businesses. Food trucks are the consulting business of the day. Whether you are the head chef or the investor who owns a fleet of trucks, a food truck just might be your key to financial freedom! Happy investing!!
