The Dos And Don'ts Of Scaling Up Your Mobile Food Truck Business
If you have an active food truck business but you're ready to expand, you've probably spent some time pondering the best way to do that. You could add another truck, expand your service hours, or drive to new markets. The thing is, there's no one correct approach. Every food truck operation is a bit different, and there are many good ways to scale things up. However, there are some general dos and don'ts to keep in mind as you go about scaling up your mobile food truck business.
Gather data, and use it to inform you.
Instead of just guessing where you get the most business or what neighborhoods would be best to spend more time in, you should collect data to inform on these questions. Keep track of how much of each dish you sell in each location. Also, keep track of what hours you sell the most. If the numbers tell you that you're always selling out in a certain location, this indicates you could expand your hours in that location. If the numbers tell you that you sell most of your product during certain hours, then you might want to open a second truck during those hours.
Get feedback from your team.
Before you make any sort of scale-up move, run it by your team. The employees who are out there preparing and serving food every day may have some insights that will save you time and headaches as you expand. For instance, they may tell you that even though the data suggest you could sell more at location X, many people in that spot are loyal to a competitor and won't buy from you. Or, they may tell you that they don't have space for the extra food you want to serve, in which case you'll need to make some equipment changes.
See how changes perform before making them permanent.
Aside from big changes like buying a second truck, most scale-up approaches are easy to roll back in if they don't work well. So, evaluate your performance once you make a change. Give it two or three weeks, and see if it's having the intended effect before making it permanent. This way, if you're not getting the desired effect, you can introduce a different change.
Scaling up a food truck business — such as Shanghai Mobile Kitchen Solutions — should bring you more customers and sales. Just make sure you're going about it in a smart way.