Every food truck owner wants to be innovative, but there are things you may be unintentionally doing that could be stifling innovation. Poor planning, budgeting, scheduling and staff management are among the obstacles that could be holding your mobile food business back.

While you need to ensure that essential operations are covered, there are a number of things you can do beyond that to make sure your food truck empire has the capacity to grow.

How Not To Stand In The Way Of Innovation

  • Numbers aren’t everything. In the rush toward data driven management, don’t leave out qualitative analysis.
  • Don’t fear the unknown. Innovation thrives on the unforeseen, not the predictable. But that doesn’t mean you should avoid good planning and guidance.
  • Don’t be too lean and mean. Make sure your food truck business isn’t so lean that there’s no personnel or budget for innovation. And reward your staff’s innovation with financial incentives.

Customers today measure your food truck by a bar that is raised extremely high. They expect you to deliver the same degree of high-quality that they get from the best restaurants around the world. They expect rapid service, and constant innovation. If you don’t provide this, they’ll simply move on to an alternative food option.

Innovation involves taking some risk. That is the goal that vendors need to keep in mind. It’s all about disrupting the market, and not being controlled by what your competition is doing. So by its nature, innovation is risky and disruptive. The expectation and desire to innovate needs to come from ownership. So if you are hesitant, if you don’t believe that it can be done, or you are adverse to risk and disruption, it will kill innovation in your food truck.

Most importantly, remember that being innovative needs to become a habit. The more you practice it, the easier this way of thinking becomes.

RELATED: Creating A Successful, Innovative System For Your Food Truck

The Bottom Line

Food trucks like Kogi BBQ, The Peached Tortilla and Mexicue don’t get enough credit for continuing their meteoric growth since day one of their businesses, all the way into becoming food truck empires.  They are not exceptions to the rule in the food truck industry.  They. along with many others, have stayed kept innovation as the core driver behind their decision making.  In addition, the one common thread to these companies was the fact the owners who founded these food truck businesses, all stayed involved during their growth.

Do you have any additional tips on how food truck operators can avoid getting out of the way to innovate in their business? Share your thoughts on this topic social media. Facebook | Twitter