Photo by Polina Kovaleva from Pexels

By the end of the year, roughly 92% of people will not have achieved their New Year’s resolutions. But, if you haven’t made immense progress in just over one month, that doesn’t mean you should scrap your resolutions altogether!

If you had some goals set for your food truck business, this is a great time to reassess them and get back on track. Grab a pen and some paper because you’re about to learn how to stick to your food truck plan and make some achievements this year. 

Break Down Goals

Setting huge goals often means you won’t cross the finish line for a while. The longer it takes to see results, the more unattainable the goal will start to feel, and the more likely you are to give up on it. 

Taking these high aspirations and breaking them down into manageable tasks is more useful. Say your goal was to take your business online this year. Break that down even further and decide where on the internet you want people to find you.

Do you want to build a website, or do you want to make a social media account? What form of social media would you use? 

Once you can answer these questions, decide who is best suited to take the steps required to launch your online platform. You can then establish a timeline, mapping out when you would like to get each action on the plan ticked off. 

Make an Outline

Sometimes a whole year is too long of a time frame for you to stay motivated about your food truck business plan. For instance, if you want to expand your food truck to include online ordering you’ll need to come up with a logistical plan to keep things running smoothly—including setting yourself up on an online platform, tracking order fulfillment, etc. If you give yourself an entire twelve months to do so, you might not get around to the task for a while. 

Setting monthly or quarterly goals can be more beneficial. Since you have already broken down your resolutions into small tasks, you can set deadlines for them. Making this outline will motivate you to get them done and keep you moving toward what you ultimately want to achieve. 

Track Your Progress 

When you complete a task, you should write it down somewhere. Every time you achieve a goal, the dopamine levels in your brain spike. Psychologically, your brain is more willing to repeat that action.

You can build off these progress trackers the following year too. Perhaps one of your intentions this year is to increase your food truck revenue. Tracking the percent increase from this year will give you an idea of what realistic expectations you should have going into the next one. 

Keep on Going with Your Food Truck Plan

Remember that failure is normal, and it doesn’t mean you can’t get back on track. Write down a purpose as to why you want to achieve the list of goals on your food truck plan to remind you why you are striving for them in the first place. 

Last but not least, if one of your New Year’s resolutions is to upgrade your food truck, don’t hesitate to reach out today for a free quote. 

Want more food truck advice? Check out more blog posts here!

Thinking about starting a food truck? Request a free custom quote and one of our food truck specialists will help you design the truck of your dreams.

Stay up to date on everything Custom Concessions has to offer! Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

The post Your New Year’s Resolutions and Food Truck Plan: A Follow-Up Guide appeared first on Custom Concessions.

We’ve come to the end of another year, and with it, the end of a decade. Looking back over the past year—or maybe even the past ten—you probably find yourself reflecting on some of the goals you’ve conquered for your mobile restaurant business, or perhaps some that have passed you by. 

The beginning of a new year is a great time to look back: on why you weren’t able to achieve some of the goals you set for yourself or on all the goals you have managed to achieve. And then, set new ones that you can strive toward in 2020!

Here are some important things to take into account when determining your food truck goals for the coming year.

1. Take Those Baby Steps

Give yourself concrete actions to go along with your lofty ambitions. There’s no point in setting goals so intimidating that you are afraid to step out and do anything about them. When thinking about your goals for the upcoming year, set out individual actions you can take toward meeting those goals. 

2. Make Your Goals Manageable

Set mini goals for yourself along the way to meeting your year-end goal. Want to get more sales at your food truck? Making a goal for yourself to sell $30,000 more than you did last year might seem overwhelming, so break it down into smaller increments. Give yourself a per-month or per-quarter sales growth target instead. That way, if you don’t meet your goal in a single month, you have the rest of the year to keep trying to achieve those goals.

3. Tell Someone About It!

The surest way to give yourself more accountability for meeting your 2020 mobile restaurant business goals is to tell someone. Or even several people! Telling someone about your goals makes them real and more concrete than when they are just ideas floating around in your head. Just make sure the person you tell is someone who will be supportive and cheer you on. That way, you’ll be more motivated to work toward making those goals come to life.

4. Get a Quote

Dreaming of owning a food truck someday, but not sure how to make it happen? Get a quote! And don’t let the numbers scare you. You can’t work towards a goal if you don’t know what the goal is. Once you have all the facts, you can start making a plan to put your dreams into action.

5. Don’t Be Afraid

Don’t let fear hold you back from achieving your goals! And don’t be afraid to fail. If you set 10 ambitious goals for yourself, but you only achieve 5, then you’ve achieved way more than you would have if you didn’t set any goals at all. 

6. Track Your Progress

Write your goals down somewhere and keep track of how you’re doing. Maybe get yourself a notebook, make a Google doc, or find a goal tracking app for your phone. Then, every time you achieve a step toward your goals, write it down. 

Want to visit 10 food truck festivals this year? Start by brainstorming which ones you could register for. As you book them, record each one tentatively as a mini goal you’ve reached. Then, once you actually attend an event, mark it permanently as one more achievement toward your total goal for the year.

7. Celebrate Your Successes

Many of us tend to beat ourselves up over failure, and we often forget to cheer ourselves on when we accomplish something special. Be sure to celebrate when you accomplish steps toward your year-end goal. Buy yourself a fancy coffee, let yourself take an afternoon or evening off, or just post about it on your social media to let the world know about your achievement. Chances are, your online food truck community will want to celebrate with you! 

Ready to Jump in to 2020?

Get out there and make your mobile restaurant business the best it can be this year. Make your resolutions, set your mini goals, write it all down, and track your progress. And don’t forget to celebrate!

Want more food truck advice? Check out more blog posts here!

Thinking about starting a food truck? Request a free custom quote and one of our food truck specialists will help you design the truck of your dreams.

Stay up to date on everything Custom Concessions has to offer! Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Photo: Rawpixel

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Photo: Freepik

The food truck industry is not for the faint of heart. It takes a lot of hard work to get where you want to go with your truck and your business. You can expect to work a whole lot of hours, expend lots of creative energy, and learn a whole lot about how to run a small business. You have to have a drive to succeed.

If you think you have the necessary determination, awesome! However, there are also other important ingredients you will want to have if you plan on running a food truck business.

4. Your Food Truck—Of Course!

Let’s get the most obvious ingredient out of the way right at the top—the food truck. Of course, you have to have a food truck to run a food truck business.

Our advice? Don’t purchase the cheapest food truck you can find, because that mistake will be costly in the long run. Going with a customized truck is your best option.

A truck made just for you will look the way you want it, with custom graphics that match your branding. You can even add a shadow box TV on the outside to showcase your menu, or custom rooftop sign boards for that extra touch of glam.

Your custom truck will also have all the right equipment for your particular food enterprise. Need specialty equipment like a pizza oven, espresso machine, or ice cream dipping cabinet? Done. Have a specific way you want your kitchen laid out? No problem! That’s exactly why having a custom truck is the way to go: you can make sure everything is designed to your desired specifications.

3. Recipes Your Customers Will Love

This is one of the most important ingredients on this list, because it’s your actual product. Don’t try to be the next McDonald’s or Subway. Try to be the next you. You can achieve this by serving up your own unique recipes.

Your food has to stand out from the crowd. You want your food to be so good and so unique that customers can’t get it anywhere else. Do you have dishes that you are known for among your family and friends? Try those out on your food truck customers and see how they go over.

2. Your Business Plan 

If you are trying to break into the food truck industry, then you’ve probably already heard that a business plan is essential.

In order to be as accurate as possible, your business plan has to map out everything, including one time and recurring expenses: 

• Initial inventory, and restocking costs
• Employee pay
• Your salary
• Your food truck build
• Insurance (for your physical truck and for your business as well)
• Licensing and Permits
• Storage (if you don’t have somewhere to park your truck when it’s not in use)
• Gas for Transportation

This is not an exhaustive list by any means, so be sure to add any other foreseeable costs to your business plan. These costs may vary, depending on the type of food you plan to serve.

The more detailed your business plan, the better prepared you will be to face the day to day running of your food truck operation. An impressive business plan can even help you secure your food truck financing.

1. A Vision for Your Food Truck Business

Successful business owners need a vision, food truck owners included. A little imagination never hurt anyone, right?

Part of having a vision is being able to picture yourself succeeding, and making a plan to get there. It takes a whole lot of creativity to be a food truck chef and a business owner at the same time.

In order to make your vision a reality, you need to create concrete goals that will help you get there. Set aside time for planning and strategizing. Have a set period after which you will review your goals, and see if you have put in the work you planned to. If you have, congratulations! Now set your next goal and keep on trucking. If you haven’t, examine what you can do differently to meet those goals by your next self-review.

Don’t Let Your Food Truck Dream Flop

Some of these ingredients are going to take a lot of work, creativity, and trial and error. Don’t let that scare you away from pursuing your goals. Every successful business has to start somewhere, and food trucks are no exception.

Want more food truck advice? Check out more blog posts here!

Thinking about starting a food truck? Request a free custom quote and one of our food truck specialists will help you design the truck of your dreams.

Stay up to date on everything Custom Concessions has to offer! Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

The post 4 Key Ingredients for Your Food Truck Business appeared first on Custom Concessions.