Running a Food Truck For Dummies®, 2nd Edition
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016952684
ISBN 978-1-119-28613-4 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-28614-1 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-28882-4 (ebk)
Introduction
Years ago, eating out was an event reserved for special occasions or weekends. In today’s flourishing food service industry, however, you can find a lot of options for any time of the day or week, and because of a number of factors, the food truck has surfaced as a new and exciting way to bring food to the customer.
A lot of people dream of success in the mobile food industry, but due to the relative freshness of the industry and a lack of experienced mentors, many have entered it with misconceptions. Keep in mind that a food truck business is just that – a business. You must crunch numbers, make sales projections, and watch labor costs just like every business. Ultimately, your success will be judged on your profitability, like any other business.
Whether you’re a long-time restaurant operator or a fresh, new culinary school grad, reading this book is a wonderful step in launching your own mobile food business. After reading it, you should know whether you have what you need to be successful.
About This Book
No food truck industry trade organization will test you to determine whether you have what it takes to successfully enter the mobile food industry. But after you read this book, you’ll have a good idea whether this business is right for you – and you’ll have the knowledge to get started on the right foot. You can devour this book from start to finish (no pun intended), or you can check out only the sections you need – either option works. No matter what your level of experience is, you’ll find this task-oriented reference book your step-by-step guide to entering and staying in the food truck industry.
To help you navigate this book, I use the following conventions:
❯❯ I use italics for emphasis and to highlight new words or terms followed by a definition.
❯❯ I boldfaced text to indicate keywords in bulleted lists or the action part of numbered steps.
❯❯ I use monofont for web addresses.
When this book was printed, some web addresses may have needed to break across two lines of text. If that happened, rest assured that I haven’t put in any extra characters (such as hyphens) to indicate the break. So when using one of these web addresses, just type in exactly what you see in this book, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist.
You don't have to read every word in this book if you don't want to. I know your time is valuable and you don’t have much time to spare. Therefore, to help you speed things up a little, feel free to skip over anything with a Tech Stuff icon next to it. The information in those paragraphs isn’t really necessary for understanding the topic. Also, the sidebars (those shaded gray boxes) are fun and interesting, but they’re a bonus for people who have the time to read them. Feel free to skip them if you must.
Foolish Assumptions
Food truck owners have to make assumptions about the customers who will be approaching their service windows, and authors have to do the same thing – we have to make assumptions about our readers. I’ve come up with the following list of assumptions about why you picked up this book:
❯❯ You’re thinking about opening your own food truck, and you want practical, how-to advice to accomplish your goals.
❯❯ You’ve worked in the food truck industry, and now you’re thinking about spreading your wings and getting behind the wheel as an owner.
❯❯ You’ve never worked in a restaurant, let alone a food truck, but you’ve been a success in other professional endeavors and possess skills that you can apply to this business.
❯❯ You’re fresh out of culinary school and thinking about putting those skills to work in your own truck.
❯❯ You currently own or operate a food truck and seek advice to keep it running smoothly and successfully.
❯❯ You buy every book that sports a yellow and black cover.
Icons Used in This Book
In this book, I use small pictures, called icons, to highlight important information. Here’s a guide to what the icons mean and what they look like.
Beyond