Employee Growth Ideas: Ask For Food Truck Business Help

Growth of a mobile food business can be difficult in any type of economy, but it is absolutely essential to survival. Seek growth ideas from an often overlooked source of innovation — ask your the employees of your food truck. Ask for help from your staff and get employee growth ideas.

These ideas may tell you a lot about your food truck business you may not know. What do customers really think about your menu or service? Are there more complaints than usual? What could be done to improve food quality, sales, marketing and customer service?

Employees rely upon you for their livelihood, so they are less likely to speak truthfully. Non-candid feedback is meaningless, and will not help you run your company more effectively. So how do you get your food truck staff to open up?

Today well discuss four tips to get employee growth ideas for building your food truck business.

4 Tips To Get Employee Growth Ideas From Your Food Truck Staff

Share the big picture. Start by laying out a vision of where you want your food truck to go. Then list the company’s assets, map its capabilities, and identify new trends in the food truck industry. Not only will you tap an easily accessible source of ideas, you will ensure your staff is engaged in your food truck’s future. They will have their fingerprints all over it and they will appreciate you for the opportunity.
Actively encourage participation. Have an “open door policy”, and hold occasional brainstorming sessions outside of the workplace. Forcing employees to participate usually doesn’t work well because you can’t force someone to be creative. Encourage employee participation by communicating the benefits of employee growth ideas to your truck, your customers, as well as employees themselves.
Make it clear there’s no such thing as a bad idea. Some employee growth ideas may be game-changers. Some will result in only marginal improvement. Others will simply fall flat. You must make it clear that, regardless of the outcome, there’s no penalty for sincerely offered ideas that fail to create growth.
Reward your employees’ creativity. Always start with a public “thank you” to everyone who offers employee growth ideas. Other low-cost rewards might include an extra day off, a coffee shop or movie gift card, or a free car wash.

The Bottom Line

In the race to success in the food truck industry, innovation reigns. The best way to increase your food truck’s innovation is to get all hands on board and get employee growth ideas. Not only will many of these ideas help your business, but they will free you up to work on areas of the business that need more of your time.

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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].