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Food Truck Chronicles: How to survive COVID-19 and stay in business

Laura Ann Hart, a food truck operator and restaurant owner, as well as marketing specialist, maps out how her business is overcoming the pandemic and is back in business. Hart is the winner of Best Food Truck in Cobb for 2020 and also the recipient of a Top 25 Small Business Award for 2019.

Photo by istock.com

April 13, 2020 by Laura Ann Hart — owner, Gaston Street Eats Co.

Now what? I like so many of my fellow food truck friends are in a state of shock. Within six days I lost about $150,000 in future revenue from private events and festivals due to COVID-19. I am still picking my jaw up off the ground trying to get a handle on what is going on. Does this sound familiar?

With the new "stay and shelter" mandates coming in from all over the country what is a little old food trucker to do? Cry, scream, yell or worse, post a listing on Facebook that your truck is now for sale and start looking for a job.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, let me tell you there is hope. I have seen it, I am experiencing it and we are starting to be able to pay our bills with it.

The first step is to get your systems in place. Make sure your truck and staff are adhering to all the mandatory guidelines for food and public health safety. Lots of face masks, hand sanitizer and gloves. Educate your teams on proper procedures for hand washing, order taking, credit card processing and executing the final transaction of handing out the food.  

Take your "ninja" health safety skills and get ready to line up the food truck events!

In the last four days I have booked our entire month of April with neighborhood food truck events. My team will be serving local neighborhoods and bringing in sales anywhere from $800 to $2,500 a day.

How did we do this?

One awesome post on social media and the emails and calls came rolling in. In 48 hours we had over 12,000 views without any money spent on boosting or paying for ad.

Start with the basics. Go to your Facebook page and change your header to something like this:

One of the best resources to use to create your Facebook headers and posts is www.canva.com. Super easy program and is free. (If you want more options you can pay the $80 a year and get all kinds of extras.)

Second, create a post that tells everyone you are available to serve your local neighborhoods.

Here is an example:

The Tom + Chee Food Truck is officially taking reservations to bring the "Cheesy Truck" to your neighborhood. We follow all the CDC guidelines for safety, social distancing and have "cash less" payment options through Apple Pay and Samsung Pay! Call 678-498-8321! Put some grilled cheese awesomeness into your "spring break stay-cation" with the Tom + Chee Food Truck!

Make the wording personal to your business. The objective is to let people know you are here to give them the night off and feed their families a terrific meal! (It's also a great morale booster!)

Now it's time to create your post. You can say anything you like but remember the most important pieces of information are: Who you are, what you offer, your email address and your phone number.

Make sure to mentioning your respect for "social distancing" and the health of the public.

With all your creative materials and information completed now it's time to post.

You will post all your details and picture on your personal page, your business page, all the garage sales sites and any other community pages your allowed to post on.

Make sure your contact information is clear and concise. No reason to do this if the public can't get in touch with you.

If you decide you want to put some money towards boosting, make sure you limit the text content in your Facebook picture. Otherwise Facebook will send it back and not publish due to their 20% text rule or they will publish your post and you won't get any traction.  For reference, I didn't put any money in our post. By posting on all the “free” groups, our business & personal pages, it was plenty of traction to get us noticed.

You also have the option of putting this out on Instagram. I would highly recommend you post a pick of your truck (no people) and your text about being available for neighborhood bookings. This will also help to get your phone ringing.

Before I sign off, let me stress that "time is of the essence" here.

Get all your "ducks in a row" before you put your availability out into the social media world. (What I am talking about is your: ordering process, how you will handing pick-ups, how you will maintain social distancing, how you process credit cards and cash payments.)

I wish you the greatest success. We are stronger together and will make it through this.

About Laura Ann Hart

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Laura Ann has been an entrepreneur specializing in marketing and advertising for almost twenty years and has helped 100’s of small business owners build their brands and increase their sales.

The love of food and the love of people is what “drove” Laura Ann Hart into The food truck and restaurant industries.

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