Autumn is waiting just around the corner… bringing colorful leaves, crisper temperatures, and fall-favorites for your food truck.

The fall season often gets used as an effective marketing tactic for businesses. Seasonal changes offer innovative ways for food truck owners to grow their customer base. They can even get an edge up on the competition with unique marketing ideas.  

Read on for a few key ways you can use the fall season to boost sales.  

Rethink Your Menu

Creating an inventive menu is one of the most exciting parts of owning a food truck. Autumn brings about new ingredients, like seasonal fruits and vegetables. This makes it easy to change up your menu to feature new fall offerings.  

Feature specials that use fresh ingredients from the local farmer’s market. These new recipes can include seasonal favorites like pumpkin, squash, apple, and fig.  

People also love local products and favor businesses that offer them. This is a great way to reach younger demographics, like millennials. Supporting farmers and other small businesses can help boost your sales with customers, and it can also help spread your food truck’s name in the community.

Certain flavors also appeal to customers during the fall season. Focus your sweets menu on maple, salted caramel, and spices, like cinnamon.  

People search for comfort foods during the autumn season. You can feature melty paninis, oven-roasted pizzas, and gourmet mac and cheese. The warm goodness of shepherd’s pie and chicken pot pie will appeal to your customers as autumn chill creeps into the air.

Serve Up Something Healthy 

Customers also appreciate a healthier option now and then, and these menu items can work well with fall flavors. More and more, people are beginning to have a preference for whole foods with organic ingredients.

Serve pizzas made with organic tomato sauce and fresh all-natural toppings. Sell salads with seasonal ingredients and homemade dressings. These could include apple slices, toasted pumpkin seeds, and a fall-inspired vinaigrette, like sweet maple balsamic.    

Be sure to use an attractive and easy-to-read menu design to appeal to customers. This will help alert them of your menu changes and your new featured offerings. 

Offer Up Some Autumn Warmth

Colder temperatures cause people to change their food preferences. This means you’ll want your food truck business to adapt to these changes.  

Offering warm beverages is a comforting way to appeal to customer needs. These are inexpensive to make, so profit margin is usually high on these types of items. 

Expand your beverage selection to include espresso, hot cider, or caramel hot cocoa. Seasonal coffees, with hints of pumpkin and spices, will also sell well. You could even add hot chai tea or mulled wine to the menu.  

Offering a daily soup special will help draw in customers. Rotate between homemade hearty soups, chilis, and stews.

Popular choices include chicken and wild rice soup or sausage and tortellini soup. Broccoli cheese and french onion are other favorites. Serve these soups with freshly baked bread from your truck or a local bakery.  

Soups also make it easy to appeal to different dietary needs. Try a vegan sweet potato chili or butternut squash bisque. 

When Fall Weather Stays Warm

Flavored ice creams may be more ideal for those operating in southern states. However, you can still use these same fall-inspired ingredients. Feature a pumpkin spice sundae or caramel apple frozen yogurt to boost sales.

If it’s not cold enough to make hot drinks, try iced versions of some fall favorites. You could make a frozen apple cider slush, or iced maple cinnamon lattes.

When hot soups and pot pies won’t work in your climate, try going for salads or sandwiches with fall-favorite flavors. You could experiment with adding fall ingredients like stuffing or cranberry vinaigrette to a turkey sandwich. Or make a fall-inspired chicken salad, with apples, cranberries and pecans.

Feature Seasonal Decorations 

Operating a food truck allows you to get creative with your truck’s branding and design. For fall, you can go with some cost-effective decorating options. This includes fall florals, pumpkins, and bales of hay.

You can also spruce up your menu design to feature fun fall graphics. This is as easy as using a chalkboard for your menu with drawings of fall leaves and pumpkins. 

Try switching up your paper products and cups to be more fall-focused. Serve food on fall-patterned or orange-hued napkins and plates. You could even create a custom design to advertise your brand further. 

If your fall decorations catch customers’ eyes, this can generate more business by word of mouth or online sharing. Customers will tell friends about your memorable presentation, and they may even share photos on their social media profiles.

Make a Smart Parking Plan 

Deciding where to park your truck is an essential part of any food truck business plan, but changing up your usual locations during the fall can be a good way to drum up new customers. 

Try new spots near popular fall activities. Park near festivals, hayrides, breweries, and wineries to attract new crowds. 

Other popular fall places are orchards that offer apple picking or farms that have a pumpkin patch. Fall-themed food truck festivals can also bring in new customers. Be sure, however, to get the right parking permits if trying out a new location.  

Amp Up Your Marketing Tactics 

Running a successful food truck takes an innovative and strategic marketing plan. A fall marketing push can help increase awareness of your new offerings. 

Use social media channels, like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to attract business. You can post timely updates and engage with customers. Be sure to post about your fall specials, and even include some photos of particularly attractive dishes.

It’s also helpful to get people to interact with your brand. Entice them to share pictures of your food and geotag your location. A website will help more customers find you and learn about your business year round—not just during the fall season.

It could be helpful to hire a professional photographer for fresh and unique image content for your website or social media platforms. They can capture some great images of your fall food truck display and menu items.   

Taking advantage of popular holidays like Halloween can be another good fall strategy. Offer a free meal from your food truck for the customer with the best costume. Advertise the contest on your social media channels and also use food truck signage to spread the word. 

Boosting Food Truck Sales All Season Long 

Making small yet smart seasonal changes can help your food truck business thrive this fall. Don’t miss out on this great opportunity for inventive menu changes and new marketing tactics.

Promote these menu changes and use local ingredients that change with the seasons. Have fun with festive decor that ties in with your branding. These ideas will help to attract new business and boost sales.

Who knows, you may even have customers who “fall” in love with your truck and continue to visit throughout the rest of the year!

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 Fall into More Sales: A Food Truck Owner’s Guide to Selling in Autumn appeared first on Custom Concessions.

You’ve been waiting for this: your food truck is finally ready to go! You can’t wait to get out and start wowing your local food scene with all the delicious dishes you’ve created. You can just see yourself, cooking up a storm, leaving customers stuffed and satisfied, parked right by… what?

Where are you actually going to park your truck, now that you think of it? Where can you go to drum up the business you need to make your food truck successful?

Read on for some ideas on how to find the right places to get your business booming.

Find Other Food Trucks

One of the best ways to get an idea of where you can park your truck is by finding other food trucks in the area. See if your city, county, or state has a food truck association where you can get advice from other owners.

You could even look up to see where existing food trucks are parking to get ideas. Just be sure that you don’t encroach too much on their territory, or steal their business. That’s one sure way to earn the resentment of veteran food truck owners in your area.

Consider parking in popular spots on alternating days when other food trucks are at different locations. This will keep both fellow food truck owners and potential customers happy: you won’t be competing with another food truck for business, and you’ll be offering something new on days when customers might not have many choices.

Consider Community Events

The most popular places for food trucks are often at community events, like carnivals, fairs, festivals, bazaars, and markets. These typically draw larger crowds than you would find organically, and setting up at one can broaden your customer base. If people really like the food you’re serving, they will try to find you at places you park in the future.

Contact your city or county’s chamber of commerce to find out what upcoming events could be a fit for your truck. Search on Facebook for events coming up near you, and check out the official tourism website for your city. You might even consider signing up for current events newsletters serving your area.

Be sure to find out what requirements there might be for you to show up at these events: you may have to register or pay a vendor fee to be included, rather than just showing up and setting up.

Book Private Parties

Another stream of revenue you can pursue for your food truck business is catering for private events. Catering like this can often get you returning customers who will keep coming back when they need another event catered.

See what businesses in your area would be interested in booking your truck for corporate events. Attend networking events or business expos to get an idea of what businesses present in your area might be interested in your services. You could also contact nonprofits in your area to pitch your food truck, as many fundraisers are food-based.

Another type of event where food trucks are gaining traction is at weddings. Having a food truck is a fun and unique way for guests to celebrate and lots of couples are embracing the trend!

Try taking out an advertisement in your local wedding magazine. Talk to wedding venues about how to become one of their preferred catering vendors.

Once you feel out the local wedding scene, you might decide it’s worth diving deeper; you might even want to see about attending wedding expos, alongside other caterers. That way you can let your food speak for itself by offering samples. People will be much more likely to book your truck for a large event if they’ve experienced how delicious your food is.

Get Your Name Out There

If you want to start building a customer base, you need to make it easy for customers to find you. Make yourself a Facebook page and post your daily locations and specials. Share your spot of the day on your Instagram story each morning when you move somewhere different.

Another important part of getting and retaining customers is building brand recognition. This means that when people see your truck it is instantly recognizable to them, and they associate your food with it.

Make sure you have a logo that clearly identifies you, and get it wrapped on your truck. Use it on all your social media accounts and your website if you have one. That way, customers will be able to recognize you in person when they find you online, and vice versa.

Break Into Your Local Food Truck Scene

So get out there! Start doing your research, and don’t be afraid to ask lots of questions. Talk to other local food truck or business owners, research events in your area, get your catering game in gear, and market your truck like nobody’s business.

If you haven’t got a food truck yet, or are looking to upgrade that old clunker you’ve been operating from, contact us. We can help you design the perfect truck, whatever your food truck business looks like.

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 Park Your Truck Here: How to Break Into Your Local Food Truck Scene appeared first on Custom Concessions.

Starting a food truck business can be intimidating, but when it’s your dream, you shouldn’t let the scary stuff stop you. Being afraid of the unknown can make you stall out before you even begin, so it’s important to start by taking manageable steps toward your goals.

In this post, we’re going to share a few ideas of easy things you can do to get going on your food truck business.

Brainstorm Ideas

Everyone has different ways of doing this. For you, maybe it consists of writing down all your scattered dreams in a notebook. Maybe it means sitting down with a friend or partner for coffee and bouncing thoughts off each other. Sometimes just talking about a dream out loud or getting it down on paper will make it feel more real.

Here are some things to think about at this stage:

• Your menu. Do you know what kind of food do you want to serve at your food truck? What are some of your personal favorites? What kinds of things do you enjoy cooking? Are there recipes that friends or family have complimented you on?
• Your brand. Most successful businesses have a recognizable style, whether it’s thematic or simply aesthetic. You could have a themed food truck based on the type of cuisine you will be serving, a place you love, or even an era in time that speaks to you. Or your look could be aesthetic only, defined by a certain color palette or design style. Whatever you choose, having a consistent brand will help customers pick your food truck out of the crowd.
• Your quirks. Is there something unique you could add to your food truck to make it especially memorable? Is there anything you could do to make the customer experience stand out?

There are no wrong answers during the brainstorming stage, so you have nothing to be afraid of in writing your ideas down. Who knows? Something that might have sounded crazy in your head might just turn out to be your best idea yet.

Do Some Research

Simply learning more about the food truck industry will help you get a better hold on how you might go about starting your own truck. Find out what other food trucks are in your area and eat at them so you can see how they do what they do. Read blogs and listen to podcasts not only about food, but about the business side of the restaurant world.

Another thing you can do is talk to local small business owners and ask how they got their start. Find out how they got the funding to start their venture. Ask what mistakes they made along the way and what advice they would give to other small business owners who are just starting out.

Surrounding yourself with people who are like-minded (food or business wise) will help fuel your inspiration.

Find Out About Laws & Resources

Do you have any idea what kind of licensing and permits are needed to open a food business in your city? Contact your local health department to find out what specific food-related permits you will need to think about obtaining.

Visit the U.S. Small Business Administration website and find out about all the legal things you need to get your business off the ground. You’ll eventually need to register your business name, get a business permit, open a business bank account, and get insurance to protect your food truck business.

Does your city, county or state have any resources for helping small businesses? Find out about any small business development centers available to you and take advantage of them. Schedule a meeting with an advisor who will be able to help you navigate all the mysteries of your local business world.

Set Aside Time for Planning

If you are so busy running around in your day-to-day life that you can barely think, you will never get your food truck dream off the ground.

Set aside a few hours every week when you will spend some concentrated time planning for your food truck. Whether that means sitting at a local coffee shop writing down ideas or hitting the pavement and walking around your town to find potential locations for your truck, setting aside time will help you make your business goals a priority.

If you really want to make your food truck a reality, this time should be sacred. Don’t let other plans push it out of the way. If something really important does come up, don’t just skip your planning time for the week altogether. Reschedule it for later in the day or for another day that week.

Get a Quote

How will you ever get your food truck business off the ground if you don’t have a specific goal that you are working towards?

Knowing how much your future food truck could potentially cost will give you a number to start saving for. Or it might give you the motivation to apply for a small business loan and see what the possibilities are.

Requesting a quote will help you hammer out details you may not have thought about before, because the food truck expert helping you will know all the ins and outs of different trucks and equipment.

Getting a quote will also help make your nebulous ideas more concrete. There’s no harm in just getting an idea of the cost! It doesn’t attach any strings, but it will nudge you that much closer to making your food truck dream a reality.

Ready? Go!

So what are you waiting for? Start moving on some of these ideas this week. You might be surprised at how much taking some small steps will help you put your food truck dream within reach.

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 Before You Begin: Steps You Can Take Toward Making Your Food Truck Dream a Reality appeared first on Custom Concessions.