Commentary
Food truck marketing 101: how to find and attract customers
To successfully market your business, you must consider the product, the price, the "place" and the promotion. A great food truck marketing plan will include these four elements, allowing them to work together seamlessly.
January 7, 2019 by Will Hodgskiss — CEO, Venture Food Trucks
Whether you have recently started your business or have been running it for a while, food truck marketing may well be the most important aspect of your business. It does not matter how good of a product you offer if you have no customers to sell it to. At its very core marketing is about conveying the value of your product to your (potential) customers. In a traditional marketing approach, marketing is composed of four aspects. To successfully market your business, you must consider the product, the price, the "place" and the promotion. A great food truck marketing plan will include these four elements, allowing them to work together seamlessly.
In order to market effectively, you need to think holistically. While the discussion below follows a linear progression from the product through promotion, in reality, you cannot make these decisions in isolation. Your promotion will depend on your product, and your product will depend on your place. Choosing a place needs to correspond to your pricing, or perhaps pricing to correspond to place. What separates a business that is well marketed from one that is not is the cohesiveness of the strategy.
The first 'p': product
Marketing starts with the product. What is it that you are providing to your customer? If you are an established food business, you may have a good idea on the items that you will be selling to customers. If you are starting out, you must begin by determining what is on your menu. This process should be customer focused.
What is it that your (potential) customers want? This is much easier than determining your menu and attempting to find customers that will enjoy that food. Luckily, in the foodservice market, there is a wide range of customers.
It is important to never think of your menu as fixed. Test out which items people like the best, and listen to criticism on what can be improved. At the end of the day, the customer is your boss; your job is to keep them happy. They can help you a lot in this process.
The second 'p': price
With your menu in hand, the marketing focus turns to the price. Many decisions that customers make are price driven. The price must be right for them and you. In general, you are looking to find a price that maximizes profit — not volume. In some cases, however, setting the price too low will create a sense of inferior quality.
There are some practical considerations in determining your pricing. The first is the cost of producing the product. Consider the cost of everything, labor included, that goes into making the product. Also include your overhead costs required to simply run the business. This serves as the lowest price that you can charge for your products on average. It is possible to sell some items at a loss if you are confident that you will make this up elsewhere.
The third 'p': place
Next in the four "p"s, which is particularly interesting in the context of mobile food businesses, is the place. Place refers to, in part, the physical location of your business. More broadly, it is about how your product gets from you to your customers.
The location of your food truck will have a major impact on how well your business does. This starts by finding a great spot to operate. It should have a lot of pedestrian traffic and high visibility. You can settle on a permanent location, but the best part of a mobile food business is that if a spot is not working, you can move. Many popular locations for food trucks include:
- The parking lot of large retail store or mall.
- Factories.
- Industrial park or commercial complex.
- Park, beach, pier, zoo or golf course.
- Sports fields.
- Downtown street corner or parking lot.
- University, college, high school.
- Courthouse, military base, government complex.
- Office building, hospital, call center.
- Transportation center (bus, train, subway, airport) Marina, truck stop.
- Service station, car washes
In addition to your daily locations, you can look at temporary locations for special events. These may not be available every day, but they can provide a high volume of extra customers in short bursts. Some examples of special events include:
- Sporting events such as soccer, baseball, football.
- Car shows and rallies, farm shows, boat shows, air shows, industrial or home shows.
- County fairs, cultural events, carnivals, fishing derbies, auctions, parades.
- Flea markets, music festivals, antique, and craft shows, tourist attractions.
- Grand openings, open houses, large sales events, car dealers.
- Business anniversaries, company picnics and banquets, conventions.
- Charity events, church, club, school functions.
- Music festivals.
- Catering parties and anniversaries
Extend the place with an experience
Among the current generation, there has been a lot of talk about "buying experiences." Everything, from shopping for clothes to watching a movie, has to have an experience associated with it. In order to be competitive, it is no longer enough to simply sell a good product — you have to sell an experience, built on a great product.
One of the ways to accomplish this is in clever execution of "place." If you have a set location, there is still plenty to decide about how the food gets from you to your customers. The standard convention is simply to take orders at a window and hand the food back to the customer. This works, but it will not be a differentiator.
Think about every step of the process, from taking an order (maybe customers can place orders through an app?), to waiting for their order (is it possible to have seating or entertainment while they wait?) to receive their orders. Is it possible for them to customize, and if so, is there a good process for that? Pita Pit and Mucho Burrito let you see the ingredients you are choosing. Every little detail matters, and it is worth investigating every assumption that you are making.
Fourth 'p': promotion
The final piece of marketing comes with advertising and promotion of your business. The options are endless, but we can give some great options to get you started.
First off, your mobile business is a portable billboard. Having an eye-catching design on your truck is a great way to get the customers’ attention. A great option is pairing with local businesses that can be complementary to your food truck. This could include sports complexes, car dealerships or shopping centers. You can also utilize traditional advertisements with road sign billboards or even radio and TV commercials.
These methods are good, but in the age of the internet, there are many ways to reach customers at little to no cost at all. Social media is an amazing and cost effective tool. An effective social media presence can draw in new customers and keep loyalty with your existing ones. An active presence on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram will allow people to know where your truck is each day, what food you serve, and increase the size of your audience.
Starting a blog is also a great and inexpensive way to keep your customers engaged and post content about upcoming events, specials you are having or new things you are offering. Setting up your business with Google Places is also a very quick way that can gain a lot of customer traffic as it allows customers to find your food truck when searching restaurants in your area.
Food truck marketing is essential to take your business from operational to successful. Just remember that there is more to marketing than advertising. It requires a focus on the product and what makes yours unique. You must consider what value your customers derive, and price accordingly. In addition, you must consider where and how you reach your customer. Finally, you can decide on the promotion you use to attract customers. If you keep these in mind and focus on them from the start, you will be pleased with how quickly you can find success with your mobile food business.
About Will Hodgskiss
More From CommentaryMore
Related Media
Subscribe
Get the latest news and resources from Food Truck Operator.
Recent Posts
