5 Lessons Every Food Truck Owner Must Learn

As food truck vendors, you all follow your own path. For some, the rise to success is a long, slow, painful process. For others, success seems to magically fall into place. The latter isn’t a result of some hidden formula, but it sure is a sign of a vendor who understands the importance of learning from, adapting to and growing with their food truck business. Today well discuss 5 lessons every food truck owner must learn.

5 lessons every food truck owner must learn in order to build a long-term, healthy and sustainable mobile food business:

The customer is not always right

The first of our lessons every food truck owner must learn is one that pushes back against everything you’ve ever been taught about business.

From day one of every business school, we’re told that “the customer is always right.” Business owners are expected to bend over backwards to please every customer, even when they’re clearly wrong. Certainly give your customers the benefit of the doubt, but not at the expense of your employees’ dignity.

Time is money

Unfortunately, time is the one thing in your life you’ll always have a finite amount of. One way to ensure you make the most of your time is to assign a dollar amount to the tasks you complete on the job.

Now ask yourself, “What would be a fair wage for the tasks I perform?” If someone else can accomplish these tasks for less money, let them do it so you can focus on high revenue generating tasks.

Don’t take marketing shortcuts

There are no cheap shortcuts in marketing. I often speak to food truck owners who want marketing advice, but end up claiming that my suggestions are “too expensive.” The truth is, cheap marketing can make your food truck brand look cheap.

Best practices may not be best

This comes into play specifically when you’re just starting your food truck business, it’s easy to get caught up in doing what others tell you is the “best way” to do something. Problem with this approach is, “they” don’t know your market or customers. Food truck industry best practices are a great starting point, but you must adapt them to meet the unique needs of your market and customers.

Just do it

The last of our lessons every food truck owner must learn is to execute. Planning and weighing options are important, but there comes a point in time when you just have to follow through. It’s always better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing perfectly.

The inability to execute a plan will stifle your food truck’s growth, innovation and progress. Successful food truck vendors do the needed work even though the reward won’t come until much later because they know how to delay satisfaction.

The Bottom Line

There you have it, 5 lessons every food truck owner must learn. While these may not be easy lessons to learn, they are those that will give you the best possible chance of long-term success in the mobile food industry.

What would you add to our list of lessons every food truck owner must learn? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your thoughts on this topic in the comment section, our food truck forum or social media. Twitter | Facebook