Hot Trend: Food Truck Operators Add New Services

By Rieva Lesonsky

If you’re in the food service or restaurant industry (or even if you aren’t), you know that food trucks are hot. These restaurants-on-wheels are a far cry from the “roach coaches” of the past. Selling everything from Korean tacos to cupcakes to schnitzel, food trucks roam the streets attracting crowds of customers in busy urban areas like downtown Los Angeles and New York City.

And apparently, food trucks aren’t a flash in the pan. The Wall Street Journal recently took a look at how New York City-area food trucks are expanding into new business models. Here’s how the trucks are expanding their offerings (and incomes):

Catering: Gourmet food trucks are now catering everything from movie and television film crews to private parties such as bar mitzvahs. Some trendy customers are even renting food trucks to cater their weddings!

Corporate clients: Some food trucks cater corporate events, of course, but companies are also using food trucks to attract clients. For instance, Yahoo! recently rented a truck to give out free whoopie pies at an event. Another truck cited in the article spends half an hour each week at one corporate office providing coffee for the company’s employees.

Advertising and promotions: Food truck owners can bring in even more money by “wrapping” the truck in the logo of a corporation so it’s a mobile promotional tool. Many corporate clients request this during events, for instance, but the trucks can also do it while they’re driving around.

Companies mentioned in the article are making from 20 to 50 percent of their income from these additional events. While some food truck owners look down at these type of events as disturbing the “purity” of their businesses, others are simply happy to have an additional source of revenue for their trucks. Trucks can typically charge more for catering and corporate events than they would make just serving food to customers on the street, so the profit margins are tempting.

If you own a food truck, or have been thinking about adding one to your restaurant, consider getting involved with catering, corporate clients or advertising options. These additional sources of income might be just what you need to make a food truck highly profitable.

Image by Flickr user Ricardo Diaz (Creative Commons)

This entry was posted on Monday, July 25th, 2011 at 6:00 am and is filed under Innovation, Marketing, Small Business, small business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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