I love cooking and I love people loving my cooking. However, I don’t like getting told what to do for long term, so working in a kitchen or restaurant is probably a bad position for me. I’ve given years of thinking about working or running a food truck with a rotating menu. It’d be cool to travel around and see different people a day enjoying my different dishes, but I’ve never actually heard the everyday ins-and-outs of working in a food truck. What are some experiences (good or bad) working in a food truck that you could share?
I don’t know about food trucks in particular, but I recall reading that restauranteering is a very competitive business, that the average lifetime of a restaurant is something like four years.
kagis
This says five years:
https://www.perrygroup.com/foodservice-expert-overview-on-how-long-restaurants-last/
Of those restaurants and foodservice businesses that made it beyond a year, 70% failed within the next 3 to 5 years. Of those that made it beyond then, 90% remained successful and stayed in business longer than 10 years. There is a more recent article this week in The News Press that reports similar results that our foodservice expert report concluded more than a dozen years ago. This excerpt, along with the full story, shows times have not really changed that much as a restaurant management consultant and what you can learn from these Florida restaurateurs: “According to therestaurantbrokers.com, the average restaurant’s life span is five years with up to 90 percent of independently owned restaurants closing in year one.
Food trucks are wildly different businesses then actual brick and mortar restaurants
It’s hot as balls.
I’m nowhere near the business of foodtrucks so obviously take this with an extremely tiny grain of salt, but I think you’ll have better chances sticking to one area and a standard (non rotating) menu. Sticking in one area - because it’s easier to get regulars and free word-of-mouth marketing if they know you’ll still be there next week. Standard menu - because it might be a turn-off for people to love their first time only to come back and not have what they liked available. You can probably rotate specials, but having a standard base menu will help keep your regulars.
Alternatively, if you really prefer the rotating menu thing you could forget the food truck and do a supper club. Typically a reservation-only, once a week or once a month thing, or whenever you have time. If you could find a small local farm to partner with, they may be able to offer you dining or cooking space in return for showing off their veggies or something.
90% of your time will be spent dealing with the business, 10% of it will be cooking.
I’ve listened to professional chefs, owners, and Chef Owners, and a bunch have said that’s why everyone WANTS to get bought out. It’s not just the cheque, it’s the fact that now they can do what they love and someone else does the bullshit.
I don’t personally know any of these people, but I have eaten about a quarter to half of this food, and the people are genuinely nice. Maybe hit one of them up for a forum or FBG hint.
OP, please take this succinct statement to heart.
I’ve owned or adjacently owned or been involved with multiple businesses. It always starts out as excitement, it always turns in to paperwork and lawyers and permits and licenses.
I loved the people, the customers (some), the employees, etc. but I always spent more time doing business shit than the things I loved doing. And it erodes your soul over time.
Now, if you end up with an award-winning thing and can afford to pay for some help with some of that stuff? Hell yeah. That’s the dream. But it can be tough to get there.
Also, if you hire someone else to do the business stuff, you’ll add managerial tasks to your workload.
Make sure you know what it costs to get your truck inspected by the health inspector and what it takes to get yourself licensed to serve out of it - it can add to your startup costs quite a bit. Research your local laws as well, some cities have some pretty hostile laws/regs for food trucks. If you want you go a county over, you’ll likely need new licensing and more $$$.
Also, no offense meant but if you don’t have at least a few years of experience in a legit commercial / restaurant kitchen, you need that first IMHO. Cooking consistently at the scale that restaurants require is legitimately hard and is a skill that needs honing. Best to do that on a business’s dime.
