Becoming a city-certified festival food vendor is enough to turn anyone off the idea of eating giant turkey legs.

"Has anyone ever eaten something and shortly after you feel a gurgling in your stomach?" Daria Kulczycky asks her Summer Festival Food Vendor Sanitation Seminar one afternoon last week at Harold Washington College. The stern, middle-aged woman in a blue turtleneck is attempting to stir some gastrointestinal empathy in her students-myself included.

We will soon join the ranks of 2,200 vendors certified annually by the city to serve fried dough and meats on a stick to the masses at music festivals, neighborhood street fetes, farmers' markets and church fund-raisers. The workshop quickly feels like an episode of MTV's Scared Straight for summer food vendors.

Depending on your local health regulations, certain pieces of equipment must be NSF certified for your food truck to pass health inspection. As an example, the countertop in your home kitchen would not typically pass NSF as it can’t be sanitized as effectively as stainless steel.

If you think you want to operate your food truck kitchen without NSF rated equipment and you are caught, you could face huge fines and in some case may even have to remodel and replace the pieces found inadequate. If you need to replace your interior workspaces or appliances this will typically require downtime, and thus you’ll lose revenue and potentially customers if the non-compliance gets publicized.

Using non-NSF certified equipment will also affect your insurance coverage. If you add a piece of restaurant equipment that doesn’t meet commercial guidelines, any accidents, fires, or loss resulting from that item, and in some cases even the presence of that item in your kitchen, can void your insurance policy.

Finding success as a food vendor at festivals involves much more than having the best food the grounds have to offer. A lot of what influences a festival-goer’s decision on which food to eat includes things like recognizing booths from prior years, being drawn in by ambiance and experience they’ve created, and finding something that piques their interest.

That’s where branding comes into play.

Branding is a powerful sales and marketing tool that any food business, especially one that wants to be profitable at a festival, should incorporate. If you need to boost productivity at your business and generate more revenue, branding should be at the top of your list, and here is why.

At some point we all find ourselves standing in line. Never fun, but it feels better if it moves at a nice clip. The thing is, you can get the same effect by making the line appear to move quickly. Managing appearances means managing your customer’s perceptions. Here’s how:

Queue Management

• Be sure to have a line, not a crowd, standing in front of your service window. An orderly progression towards the service window gives customers a sense of calm.

Branding doesn't create, build or strengthen your brand. You read that correctly. First and foremost, your food business brand marketing must always be a reflection of the quality of your menu and service. There are really no exceptions to this rule.

This past year has been a year of transition for me. As it turns out, the older I get the harder it is to operate a high capacity tent operation at large events! So, last spring I made the decision to ground my tent/deep fry operation and instead spend the season doing small local events with a new custom built trailer and a new menu. Unlike the tent/deep fry operation that took many hours to set-up, this little trailer is easy to tow and can be ready to serve in less than an hour. The question was: would it make enough money?

8 No Cost Marketing Tools For Your Food Truck
by Richard Myrick for Mobile-Cuisine

Savvy marketing tools and techniques can attract more customers to your food truck or food business and more viewers to your website. By building your presence without paying for advertising, you’ll have extra cash to invest in other areas.   

Put your URL on all documents and packaging

There's no added cost to include your URL on every single piece of collateral that leaves your food truck or food business. For example:

* Truck wrap
* Business cards
* Letterhead
* Invoices
* Receipts
* Catering presentation folders
* Take-away menus
* Press releases

Be sure your URL appears in all of your advertising and social media. And of course, include it on all forms of packaging: cartons, labels, bags, and any other containers you use.

by Richard Myrick for Mobile-Cuisine

If your books tell you that you need to lower your food costs, reducing your protein serving portions can be a great cost cutting measure. The key is remembering to cut portion sizes strategically so as not to look like you’re "being stingy" with your customers.

3 Trends To Consider When Developing Your Spring 2019 Menu
By Richard Myrick for Mobile Cuisine

Open Up Your Options

Your customers are looking for ways to personalize their meals. What this means for food concession owners is that you need to provide options to your existing menus that appeal to everyone from gluten-free eaters to vegetarians and vegans to paleo-diets and healthy eaters.

image by Nick Hillier

Menu items should be swapped out as dining trends come and go because this will help your menu to stay fresh and exciting for your regular customers. This is a great way for you to appeal to a larger portion of your local community. This doesn’t mean that you need to create a menu with 10 to 15 entrees, but you can still offer 4 to 6 items with various options for each. The key is that any option changes work with your food business brand.

Don’t Get Caught in a Lawsuit! Implement These Food Safety Tips Before Your Next Catering Event
Food Liability Insurance Program 

Imagine you're serving food at a wedding reception and the guests fall ill after consuming your food! How would you respond? Food poisoning can happen to any caterer and it is important to make sure your business is covered.

image by @neonbrand

THE CONARTON-ABBOTT WEDDING

Melissa Conarton and Jesse Abbott contracted a catering company to serve food at their wedding reception. There were over 100 people that got sick and 22 that were hospitalized overnight. According to court papers, the caterer's macaroni and cheese was statistically significant for staphylococcus aureus, a gastrointestinal illness. The couple sued for damages in order to pay their guest's medical bills and the caterer countersued for lack of payment for their services.

Food Concession Menus - Know Your Market
Barb Fitzgerald of FoodBooth.net

image via shari sirotnak

Robert Berman for Mobile Catering Business

Read more!

It's often hard for someone starting a food concession to know WHERE to start. I believe they should start with EVENTS. Before they plan and design any other part of their concession business they should research and become familiar with the type of events they plan to do business at. This is important because, operation-wise, different concessions are more practical and successful at different types of events.

I'll explain, but first let me start by clarifying some lingo:

Food cart - does business from a fixed location such as at a food pod or parking lot. On a day to day basis a food cart serves a steady clientele and operates much the same as a regular storefront food business. A food cart starts by pursuing the ideal permanent location for its business. With a good location found, that job is done.

Food concession - does business at various short-term, albeit sometimes multi-day, events and venues such as special events and county fairs. Concessionaires must pursue multiple locations (events) every event season.

That's all simple enough. But for concessionaires; here's the hard part:

Read more here!




Source: http://www.foodbooth.net/

Your marketing plan gives you enough information to give an enthusiastic investor a fair amount of confidence that you won't be so buried in operating costs that your bottom line never sees the light of day, yet not enough to actually execute. It's not intended to be your "how to" manual, after all. So, what do you do?

In a perfect world, execution of a mobile foods marketing strategy should begin six weeks to three months prior to launch, in order to have your truck rolling smoothly on the streets right out of the gate. But, in too many cases, execution often begins long after, despite the fancy long-range planning in the marketing plan. Or worse, marketing isn't really a consideration at all.

In fact, a vast number of new mobile foods entrepreneurs believe that Social Media Marketing means setting up a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account - they're done, and it's free. Social Media Marketing is the free alternative to the expensive, not-so-effective, yet far-more-expensive traditional marketing, so the cost of marketing is drastically reduced. Not so.

It usually happens when you're reviewing your operating expenses for the month - you realize there's more month left than budget, and the epiphany strikes. There's more to marketing a food truck or stand than meets the eye.

After countless hours frantically searching for easy, cheap, or free solutions, and an empty bottle of Jack Daniels, the tightness in your chest and sinking feeling in your gut tells you that you've either drank too much, or you're going to need to do something serious about that marketing plan.

The six most basic questions to ask to kick start a marketing strategy are:

1. Who do I need to reach?

2. How many of them are there?

3. Where are they?

If you've done a thorough market study, your marketing plan will identify your primary customers, the size of the population, and the locations where they would be likely to stop by your truck or stand for a meal. The next three questions deal with execution.

4. How do I reach them?

An effective execution of your plan should include a combination of blog advertising, Facebook ad campaigns, print advertising, writing on other blogs and influential social network pages, as well as Public Relations campaigns.

Read more here!

Recently, as I drove through Portland Oregon, I passed several food carts that were closed for winter. It got me wondering what the operators of these carts do for income while they wait for better weather to re-open in the spring. It also makes me wonder why these people chose to open a food cart rather than sell seasonally at special events with a food concession. I assume the need for a full-time income is the main reason. But, if a food cart is forced to close for lack of sales, what is the advantage of having a food cart? Do they prefer to sell from a stationary location, regardless, rather than set-up at temporary events? Or, are there other reasons?

I suspect that many food cart operators want a full-time income but didn't know in advance of opening how well they would do month-by-month. It is no small thing to design a food cart and menu, become licensed, and commit to a location. And, it is not until the cart has been open through the seasons that they learn if their location and menu will produce a steady income. At that point, if their location doesn't sustain adequate sales, it is difficult and expensive to move a food cart to a better location.

Food carts depend on foot traffic for business. When the weather is cold and wet too many customers remain indoors or rush past clutching their umbrellas. Depending on their location, some food carts can provide their customers a warm, dry place to eat with an awning, propane heater and picnic tables set in front of their cart. Other carts are restricted from doing this.

Read more here!

A food truck is like restaurant on wheels. It has several distinct advantages over a traditional eat-in restaurant. A food truck can go to where the customers are. It has pretty low overhead, compared to a restaurant, and requires far less staff. However a food truck is still a business that requires a lot of work and attention- especially in the first couple of years. Food truck owners put in long days and have similar problems as restaurant owners, such as slow seasons, bad weather, and sluggish economy. Read on to find out how you can start your own food truck business.

Here's How:

1. Find out if a Food Truck Business is Legal in Your Neighborhood. This may sound like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many places don’t allow food trucks or put a cap on the number of food truck permits allowed at any given time. Case in point – both Los Angeles and New York City are two of the busiest areas for food truck businesses and both have caps on the number of permits allowed.

1. Find out Where You Can do Business. Assuming your city or town allows food truck businesses, next you need to find out where you can do business. Depending on local ordinances you may not be able to park in the busy downtown area. Before you set up shop in a busy tourist area or business park, make sure its legit.

1. Choose a business name. Okay, you now have a solid plan for where you are going to sell your food. Now you can do fun part- decide on a fantastic food truck name. Much like choosing a restaurant name, the name of your food truck business should reflect your food, theme, or concept. Check out these tips for choosing the perfect restaurant (on wheels) name.

Read more here!