Article

Digital interface tools allow Off the Grid to manage expanding food truck services

Digital interface tools have helped Off the Grid to expand from a food truck marketplace operator to a corporate catering and private events services provider.

Photo courtesy of Off the Grid.

May 15, 2019 by Elliot Maras — Editor, Kiosk Marketplace & Vending Times

To a large extent, the growth of food trucks has been driven by technology. The rise of social media has allowed food trucks to keep customers informed about their whereabouts, their offerings and their daily specials.

Hence, it's no surprise that technology hubs like Silicon Valley have fostered some of the most dynamic food truck markets in the world. Technology companies, many of which operate around the clock, recognize food trucks can deliver a variety of high-quality food to their employees at all times of day. 

Off the Grid, one of the nation's most established food truck marketplace operators, is well aware of the synergy between food trucks and technology.

Launched 10 years ago, the San Francisco-based company has evolved from a food truck marketplace operator to a corporate catering and private events services provider. As the company expanded into different market segments and grew to 250 employees, OTG recognized the need to use technology to streamline its operations.

From paper to digital management

In the beginning, OTG relied on paper since a lot of its food truck partners, called "creators," used paper contracts and kept hard copies of the licenses and health permits that different counties required, Stephanie Faro-Kuo, director of culinary innovation, told Food Truck Operator in a recent phone interview.

"The paper trail and all of the back and forth was really time consuming on our end to receive and aggregate, but also for creators," said Faro-Kuo, who has worked in all OTG divisions. "We really try to leverage utilizing digital interface, having things be shared on the cloud. That is really a lot more seamless on both ends." 

OTG now uses digital interface technology in all three of its divisions, including food truck marketplaces (Markets), corporate catering (At Work) and private events (Culinary).

Proprietary software

"We began building our own proprietary software tool, called 'Infrastruckture,' in 2012 after we realized there was a need to make the booking, scheduling and document compliance component of working with mobile food vendors more streamlined and efficient," Faro-Kuo said.

She described Infrastruckture as a fully integrated software tool that uses data to support guest satisfaction, safety and continuous program improvement in all three of OTG's business segments. The company's IT team started with one engineer in 2012 and has since grown to five full-time (contract) engineers, two user-experience designers and three product managers.

"As a mobile food provider, we get the chance to push the boundaries of what traditional catering looks like, which requires a lot of cross-functional expertise and collaboration," Faro-Kuo said. "Timelines (are) critical to the success of our clients' events, so by integrating third-party apps for contracts, project management and communication, we're able to keep our process moving smoothly, and clients can keep checking things off their lists."

For private events, Infrastruckture manages OTG user experience from beginning to end, including event scheduling, document validation, menu management, reporting and payments.

"For our corporate dining clients, the customized Infrastruckture dashboard they receive allows them to make decisions based on real-time analytics, while a customized public-facing schedule interface lets employee populations follow their favorite mobile food vendors on campus," Faro-Kuo said. "Most importantly, Infrastruckture gives us the ability to provide transparency around safety and financial accountability in a way that few corporate dining providers can."

Slack further changes the game

Three years ago, the company introduced Slack, a collaborative messaging hub for work teams used by companies in a variety of industries. Faro-Kuo called Slack a "game-changer" for OTG, delivering an 89% increase in productivity among daily active users. In addition, nearly 63% of the company's workforce uses Slack on a daily basis. 

"It allows us to streamline our communications," she said of Slack.

In addition to supporting conversations about projects, Slack allows OTG to have "eyes on the ground" to do visual quality checks at customer locations. 

"With our operations spanning a large geographic footprint, we also use Slack to maintain constant communication across the operation," Faro-Kuo said. "This allows us to keep eyes on the ground across the program without having to be physically onsite. It allows us to stay in touch with the team without having to bog your phone down with text messages."

If a vendor has a last-minute cancellation, the markets team can spring into action to find solutions to ensure a favorable guest experience.

In the catering space, "Slack allows us to communicate and innovate in real time across teams to put our clients' goals at the center of everything we do," Faro-Kuo said.

The company's outlook remains positive as customer demand for food trucks continues to grow.

"They're constantly looking for different ways to engage their employees' guest experience and they've really been leaning on mobile food solutions," she said with regard to food truck customers.
 

About Elliot Maras

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Elliot Maras is the editor of Kiosk Marketplace and Vending Times. He brings three decades covering unattended retail and commercial foodservice.