Food Truck Menu Item Naming Tips

What’s in a food truck menu item name? Everything! What your new food truck menu item is called will have a huge effect on how well it will sell. In fact, menu item naming can be the difference between success and failure. And countless psychologists have tested and studied the effect of how people act around and think about food.

No matter which type of food truck you own, your business can benefit from creative menu names. Giving menu items creative, descriptive names is one of the most efficient ways to increase sales.

Food Truck Menu Item Naming Tips:

Use these tips to help you through one of the challenges faced by food truck businesses today. How to come up with menu item naming that resonates with customers.

Use easy to say and easy to read words that describe the menu item clearly.
Avoid clumsy language that may be hard to say or pronounce. You don’t want to embarrass any of your customers when they step up to order. If you have to use hard to pronounce names, give each menu item a number so some not confident in their pronunciation can just give you its number.
Borrow, but don’t steal. Its fine to borrow a part of another name and build off of it but don’t blatantly steal it. It’s not flattery; it’s theft. In some cases, the name might be trademarked.
Use groups. Allow a friends, family and staff to offer suggestions and then select the name.
Get a thesaurus. Take your first idea and use words similar but place the feel a menu item should have if it comes from your food truck concept.
Surf the Web, both to get ideas and to search the name you’ve just come up with.
“KISS,” Keep it Simple Stupid.
Let your customers help. Let them take the lead via social media (or your website). The beauty in this approach is that once your customers are engaged enough to take ownership of your product, you know you’ve hit one out of the park.

The Bottom Line

Being creative with naming can help set your menu apart from your competition. What you call your menu items is an important tie in to your food truck’s concept. This is why we wanted to share these tips for menu item naming. Don’t go overboard or insulting if that isn’t how you want your truck remembered. On the other hand, if your food truck concept is funny, absolutely go out on a limb and take a chance with using punny names.

Do you have some food truck menu item naming tips not mentioned here? We’d love to hear them. Share your thoughts on this topic in the comment section, our food truck forum or social media. Twitter | Facebook

By Richard Myrick|2020-01-16T08:58:41-05:00Jan 16, 2020|Menu Design|

About the Author: Richard Myrick

Richard Myrick is an architect by degree (Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, Michigan) who began his career in real estate development and architectural planning. In September of 2010 he created Mobile Cuisine Magazine to fill an information void he found when he began researching how to start a mobile hotdog cart in Chicago. Richard found that there was no central repository of mobile street food information anywhere on the internet, and with that, the idea for MCM was born. Richard also wrote the "Running a Food Truck for Dummies" available in bookstores everywhere and Amazon. You can reach out to Richard by email at: [email protected].