Boosting Your Food Truck's Menu Profitability
By Richard Myrick for Mobile Cuisine 

Your menu's pricing is the most important factor in determining profitability. It's what generates 100% of the revenue for most food vendors. So, it's critical that you invest time in developing a definitive strategy to build menu profitability.

image: Valerie Elash

Gather data

The first step is to know your current menu offerings: how many of which items you're selling, at what time and what location. Use point-of-sale data to understand demand for items and how the product's volume compares to its overall profitability.

Know your costs

Not all of the items on your menu are created equal... in profitability. Unless you know exactly what you're paying for each dish, you won't really know your money-makers, which items you should suggest more often, the items on which you should raise prices, or which items you might consider dropping altogether. A good first step in figuring out your real costs is to update your inventory list with accurate, current prices.

6 Steps to Selling Art Without Ever Selling Out
Jessica Serran for Empty Easel

The trap comes when we get caught up thinking: “I’m not ready,” (because hello, we’re never actually ready) or “I don’t have a shopping cart set up” (hello perfectionism!) or, “No one is going to buy my art.”

The truth is that you don’t need to have or to know these things, yet. What you do need is this: exactly what you already have, right now, at your disposal. That, and a burning desire to sell some art.

From 150 To 500,000 Monthly Spotify Listeners Without Playlists
Ari Herstand for Ari's Take

Three years ago the northern Virginia conscious hip hop artist, Lucidious, was struggling to get listeners to his music. He had about 150 monthly listeners on Spotify (no I didn’t forget a zero) with merely 45 followers, about 1,500 followers on Instagram and Facebook. And was making less than $100 a month from his music.

Today, he has 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify (no my finger didn’t get stuck on the zero key), over 50,000 followers on Spotify, 245,000 Likes on Facebook, 100,000 followers on Instagram, he’s getting around 5 million streams a month, has over 100 million total streams across all platforms and is making around $20,000 a month just from his recorded music. 

So how did he do this?

He utilized direct marketing strategies on Facebook and Instagram to find his audience and get them into his world. Specifically, he mastered the Facebook Business and Ads Manager and ran all different kinds of video ads targeting fans of similar artists.

They came pouring into his world and eventually he was getting fans to click his ads at around $.02 per click - putting every marketing expert to shame. Spending about $10 a day, he was pulling in around 500 new fans per day. And because his music is great and his Instagram is engaging, these people who started off as passive observers turned into die hard fans.

Successful Art Sales Conversations
Carolyn Edlund for Artsy Shark

The sales cycle in this business can be fairly long; collectors need to see your work, become interested, and understand the value before they will commit.

As the seller, you can't reasonably expect to put your art out there and make sales consistently right away. Initial conversations rarely result in a transaction. They are often the beginning of a relationship where the prospect comes to know, like and trust you over time and eventually becomes a collector.

Three Tips to Get Better Gigs!
Special Video by FN member Tim Charron
TimCharron.com | AntiBullyTour.com

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How To Keep Your Cool When Food Truck Lines Stack Ups
By Richard Myrick for Mobile Cuisine 

Here are a few simple steps to take to make sure you and your food truck staff can stay cool when the pressure heats up:

Mise en place

This French phrase means to put things in place, to prepare. Whether you are a classically trained chef or learned your cooking technique in your home kitchen, every successful food vendor understands the importance of having everything in its proper place.

image by Cheryl Wee

Without attention to mis en place, things can get chaotic very quickly; and chaos in your kitchen results in long lines of grumpy customers.

Measure twice

You know the old woodworking adage "measure twice, cut once"? That applies to food prep as well, so be sure to double check the conversion rates of your ingredients.

Be Business-Efficient
Sandy Hammer for Catersource

The key to freeing up more time is simply to get through your to-do list faster. Easier said than done, right? Stay with me, though, and we’ll look at some of the biggest efficiency hindrances, as well as best practices for overcoming them and finding more time in your day.

image via William Iven

Emails

Ah, the dreaded inbox. While necessary for communication with colleagues, clients, and prospects, it can easily become a black hole that sucks up hours of time. Soon enough, it’s time to go home and you’re wondering where the day went. Sound familiar? Well, it’s time to take your inbox back!

I like to look over all of my emails that I received overnight, first thing in the morning. At this time, I respond to emails to the best of my abilities and work to tackle the emails which have pending answers. I make it a point to answer my emails daily, but I also allow specific time periods for it. This allows me to fully focus on the task at hand throughout the workday.

11 Essential Online Music Marketing Tools
 Lisa Occhino for bandzoogle

If you’re just starting to dip your toes into the world of online music marketing, the number of platforms at your disposal can be overwhelming. Fortunately, many of them are free (or very affordable), so there’s little risk with trying them out.

Mailing list

For the average artist, the mailing list is that thing you put in the back of the room on your semi-professional-looking merch table. You don’t encourage people to sign up, and your average fan doesn’t even know you have one. What’s worse is that you rarely use it, and you probably send out one newsletter update every four months or so.

That’s a big mistake, because your mailing list is the single most important marketing tool you have. Social media is great and all, but no one can keep track of everything in their feeds. And certain platforms (like Facebook) have made it increasingly difficult to get your content seen unless you pay for advertising.

Art Fair Show Tips: How to Make More Sales
Carolyn Edlund for Artsy Shark

Make a personal appearance and be accessible.

It’s amazing how many times exhibitors are simply not in their booths during festival hours. At times this may be unavoidable, but often artists have a level of discomfort and stress that finds them socializing elsewhere, or they subconsciously avoid dealing with the public.

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.

5 Mandatory Tips for Emerging Artists
Eric Armusik for Fine Art Views

I really didn't have any support early on in my career and because of that, I promised myself that when I achieved some level of success I'd never refuse anyone who asked for help. The question I get asked the most is: what advice would you give to an artist just starting out?

Why Artists Must Say No
Carolyn Edlund of Artsy-Sharky

As a business owner, you need to keep the big picture in mind. What is the vision you have for your business? Have you created a road map to get there? Break down the steps to reach your goals into manageable bite-sized pieces and prioritize them in a logical fashion. Then, execute. Keep your eye on the prize and refuse to get derailed by distractions!

image gemma evans

Tools and Gigs
Special Video by FN member Tim Charron
TimCharron.com | AntiBullyTour.com

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3 Website Updates Artists Need for the New Year
Sandi Dettman of Artsy-Sharky

As an artist, you wear many hats. Trying to carve out time to deal with technical issues is not nearly as enjoyable as creating. However, your online presence goes a long way in getting your name and portfolio out there. With many artists moving toward selling art online, it’s important to put your best foot forward.

image @rawpixel

How To Return From Vacation The Right Way
Richard Myrick for mobile-cuisine.com

There will be many things awaiting you on your first day back:

• A full inbox
• A long list of to-dos
• Staff and customers needing your attention

image courtesy of mobile-cuisine.com

If you dive right in to your work, you’re likely to wipe out all the benefits of taking time off! Instead, get back into the swing of things while maintaining some of the calm and restoration of your time away.

Block off your morning.

Make sure you don’t have any meetings scheduled or big projects due. Then before you open your inbox, pause and think about your work priorities. As you make your way through emails and voicemails, focus on returning the messages that are connected to what matters most. Defer or delegate things that aren’t top priorities. And, remember it will probably take more than one day to get caught up, so be easy on yourself!

Hate Marketing Your Art? Try Aromatherapy!
by Dr. Thea Fiore-Bloom of The Charmed Studio courtesy of for Artsy-Sharky

image @kellysikkema

How to Choose Your Best Artwork to Display at an Art Fair or Festival
Niki Hilsabeck for emptyeasel.com

Cleanup Your Accounting With These 4 Bookkeeping Tips
Richard Myrick for mobile-cuisine.com

Getting a better handle on your money can help you to make and keep long-term goals, smooth out the seasonal ups and downs of your cash flow and maybe improve your food truck profits. It can also help you stay out of trouble with the IRS.

image via Gades Photography

Plan for major expenses

The first of our bookkeeping tips is to put events like a major POS upgrade on the calendar. Mark it a year in advance or, ideally, three to five years ahead. Be sure to take seasonal ups and downs into account.

By following this tip, you’ll avoid taking money out of your food truck business during the flush periods only to find yourself short in the slower months, when costly projects like upgrading kitchen equipment usually happen

How to Find Companies Interested in Sponsoring Events
Stephen Kim for bizzabo.com

Sell to those who want what you’re selling! Sounds obvious, but organizers often overlook this fact when the need for buyers becomes urgent and overbearing. These 10 tips can help you find the right sponsor partnerships:

image via olivia hutcherson

1) Define The Fundamentals of Your Event

• What is the overall vision of the event?
• What overarching goals are you trying to achieve through the event?
• What are the values of the event brand?

Even interested companies will only only buy-in if they understand your event’s goals and vision. Being able to clearly communicate these values will be crucial in helping you find companies interested in sponsorship.