What's Cookin'
Insurance can be complicated. It may be one of your least favorite things to deal with as a food truck owner. One of the reasons it can be painful is because some insurance carriers and brokers make it difficult for you. There are cheap insurance program out there that offer basic liaiblity insurance that is self-service. That's fine, but what about your auto insurance, how about your equipment breakdown coverage and most of all what about your loss of business income insurance...?
So you want to start a food truck... Great! Food trucks can provide amazing opportunities for expansion, restaurant ownership and a way to get your name and signature dishes in front the public. They still remain one of the fastest and least expensive ways to start a food service business. However, before you drop thousands of your hard earned dollars or take out a loan to start your food truck, consider taking a temporary job or volunteering to shadow a current food truck operator before you make the jump.
One of our preferred carriers has come up with a great video that goes over seven tips for buying insurance. Hanover Insurance is a program partner carrier for our food truck clients and these tips are excellent for food truck operators as well as most business insurance consumers. Please spend a couple minutes to watch the video here https://www.hanover.com/marketing/video/seven-tips-to-buying-insurance.html. The tips are also below if video is not your thing.
If your a food truck owner you probably don't have much spare time. It's difficult to squeeze in everything you have to do during the course of any given day. However, food truck maintenance is not something that you should neglect. It will end up costing you much more in damages and time lost by not regularly performing maintenance of your truck.
If you are a food truck owner and have been grinding away for a few years, chances are good that you are considering opening a restaurant. This could be in addition to or in replace of your food truck operations. Many of our clients start a food truck to test the market for their concept, to develop a following and to raise funds for their ultimate dream of owning their own restaurant. However, dreaming and doing are two very distinct and different things. How do you go about saving for your new restaurant?
We happen to insure hundreds of gourmet food trucks across the country. Food truck owners often find themselves wearing many hats during the course of a given day. You answer phones, prep food, serve, solve problems, handle HR issues and sometime or regularly wash the truck down at the end of the day! This leaves little time to read a 150 page insurance policy or 3 or 4 policies of you're like most businesses. Food truck owners rely on their agent or broker to help them understand the insurance jargon and most importantly the coverage and exclusions of their policies.
Last weekend we had unbelievably good weather for April. My son and daughter were given a bunch of lemons by a neighbor so they approached me with the idea of opening a lemonade stand. Naturally I encouraged the idea because there are so many valuable business and money lessons they can learn from operating a lemonade stand. Here are some of the lessons they learned which reminded me of some of the lessons we all can learn from selling lemonade:
S-A-L-E-S. You're in the food truck business, but first and foremost you're in the sales business. It seems that many food truck operators underestimate the importance of sales. I've eaten at trucks with average food, but amazing branding and sales staff. I've also eaten at many trucks with terrible branding and customer service, but some of the best food I've ever tasted. You can be successful somewhere in the middle, but why not be great at both food and sales? I can't help with your food, but here are some tips to be better than average in sales:
I don't really like the word proactive. It tends to be a corporate cliche for businesses that fail to meet their promises. However, I'm going to use the term in this post because I can't think of a better way to get the point across. I try to occasionally provide some business tips for you food truckers. No, I don't run a food truck, never have, but I talk with owners all day long, eat with them and see many succeed and fail, so I think you may be able to gain a nugget of information from these tips. Here are some thoughts on being proactive rather than reactive when running your food truck business.
