The 4 Best Roads to Food Truck Profitably

Congrats! You have a food truck or trailer. You have a killer menu and some amazing food that you're eager to amaze the public with. You're a self-contained mobile restaurant! You're totally stocked-up and ready-to-go! But, go where?

In theory, you could set up for business anywhere you can drive to and park the rig. Right?

<sigh> If that were only true. Sorry but, this is the real world and not the movie "Chef". There are a lot of rules to follow if you want to keep food truckin’ and do it successfully.

"So, where DO I go to sell my food?"

Here are the basics. There are four main directions you can take with a food truck/trailer to find work…

1. Lunch Truck: Find a good place to park, fire up your grill/griddle/fryer, open your service window and sell to whoever comes to buy. There is great freedom and flexibility in this type of work, but also much risk until you cultivate a tried-and-true route or latch onto a few primo locations.
2. Food Truck Courts: These are dedicated sites where customers can find a number and variety of food trucks parked for meal service. They can be pop-ups or fixed locations and may have a constant rotation of different trucks vending or they may be more relatively fixed, like a food court at a mall.
3. Catering: Contract-based arrangements between hosts and food truckers for the trucks to provide specified food to a set number of guests for an agreed-upon price.
4. Festivals: Special events like fairs, rodeos, car shows, food truck rallies, etc. Organized by the staff of the organization holding the event or a third-party promoter these are limited-engagement events which may a few hours to several weeks long. Food truckers pay for a spot to set-up (or a percentage of sales, or both) in exchange for the opportunity to offer their foods to the attendees of the event.

Some Truckers find one revenue stream they like and stick with it. Some go after several, or even all, of these types of jobs. What works best, and is most profitable for you will depend on your location, the food truck culture in your area, your tolerance for travel, your menu, your staffing situation, and your own working style.

There are hybrid-type jobs too. For example, a company may want a food truck to come to their business and be available for lunch service with their regular menu to employees (Like a lunch truck) but are also willing to guarantee that the truck will do $XX in sales (so like catering as well). These can be sweet gigs to hook up with!

Regardless of the type of food truck you have or the style of food trucking you want to do, your success will largely come down to LOCATION. The beauty of mobile food businesses is that they are… MOBILE! You can go to where the customers are. If you can consistently find the right places to set up and sell, you are well on your way to success!

I'll be weighing in with more specifics and the pros and cons of each of these four work-type scenarios in future posts.