Moving on Up | What Every Food Truck Owner Needs to Know Before Expanding to a Second Truck

Moving on Up | What Every Food Truck Owner Needs to Know Before Expanding to a Second Truck

Congratulations! You have a profitable and popular food truck. You have an amazing opportunity right in front of you. Why not cover more ground and purchase a second food truck? This empire will expand you brand name as well. If you’re thinking about doing this, here are some thing to consider before embarking on the expansion. Doubling in size is not for the faint hearted.

Funds

Make sure you have enough funding. The money can come from anywhere. Maybe you’ve been saving your profits for several years. Or your investors like your vision and want to put in more capital. Or perhaps you won a food truck competition and want to pour the prize money back into the business. Regardless of your sources, be sure you have enough.

Come up with excel spreadsheet of all your costs. If you can consult a business mentor, that would be great. Plenty of food truck entrepreneurs have been in a similar situation to the one you are right now.

The truck itself will cost at least $100,000 (but this number can easily run into hundreds of thousands). But don’t forget costs like point-of-sales systems, uniforms plus perhaps an expanded commissary kitchen. You’ll need to be paying twice as much as in reoccurring costs for things like labor, gasoline and permits.

The exact number depends on how risk tolerant you are. Very risk adverse people will want their backup funds sitting in bank account. More aggressive entrepreneurs can take out a loan or have credit cards as backup.

Route

Make sure you have identified possible areas for the route for your second route. The unfortunate fact is that many of the best areas in many cities need permits. These permits are hard to get and take a while to acquire. So if you’ve been wishing to see your food truck brand next to the aquarium with all the tourists, make sure your brand new truck can actually go there.

Marketing

Since you are expanding to a new area, you will want to invest in new marketing. You can send out coupons, advertise on the radio or hand out coupons.

Labor

This is big. Your enterprise is going to double in size. Your time (as the founder and CEO), is going to be split in half. You’re going to need to really trust your managers and perhaps even have a designated second in command.

You’re going to go through a big hiring spree. Come up with a strategy for training. You might want to split your veterans between the two trucks (instead of having all the new staff in one truck.)

Things like paperwork might start piling up (especially human resource items) so you might need to hire an administrator.

You are in an exciting time for your business. Buying a second food truck can be an excellent business opportunity. However, there are many pitfalls. Funding and labor are the big concern. But don’t neglect your marketing and route setup.