So you have a great concept for a food truck that you’re stoked to start up. It can be an exciting and thrilling opportunity to get your own food truck on the road, but it’s also filled with anxiety. Business plans are the blueprint for for a mobile food business. It sets direction, facilitates communication and establishes performance metrics. Great business plans force vendors to constantly weigh the strengths and weaknesses of their business.
Today we’ll share a list of the top 3 components to help you craft the right business plan for your food truck.
3 Components Of Great Business Plans For Your Food Truck
Stick with the 3 elements of our BTU system and your food truck will be miles ahead of where you started.
Brief
Business plans don’t need to be filled with everything you’ve ever wanted in a food truck business; they just need to be honest. Your food truck business plan does not need to be a novel. What you need to have is a document that details the primary things that will keep your mobile food business on course.
Writing down the basics about your food truck is enough to get started looking at how you and your food truck will move forward. Excessive details in a business plan, including 5 years of month to month projections, can burden you at the start or set unrealistic expectations for prospective investors.
Thorough
Brief doesn’t mean incomplete. The great business plans must outline the characteristics of your food truck that are most important. Your business plan has to include the basics of your mobile food business.
- Describe your food truck business.
- Describe your menu and additional services.
- Explain the competitive environment of your market.
- Describe how you’ll make money through the use of a business model.
- Describe how you plan to market your food truck.
- Explain the process of making your product from store shelf to customer purchase.
- Describe your food truck team, even if it’s just you.
- Describe your financial projections, including how much money you need to start up.
Business plans are not just plotting out Step 1 to Step 2 to Step 3. Once you start detailing your plans, you will find questions and determine answers you may have missed.
Unique
No two food trucks are the same, even if they serve the same cuisine, thus business plans should not be the same. Although it may be tempting to use a boilerplate food truck business plan off the internet, this will deny you the ability to address the unique challenges of your food truck and the area you serve. Using a food truck business plan template is an easy way to set yourself up for food truck failure.
Your food truck is unique and deserves a unique plan when developing for success. Making a fair assessment of your needs and local regulatory issues will ensure that your plan is stable enough to get you on the road.
RELATED: 6 Questions Every Food Truck Business Plan Should Answer
The Bottom Line
The longest and fanciest business plans don’t make them the best, these documents are designed to enlighten and reassure their readers. The best business plans anticipate and answer every question an investor could ask. If you think you only need a business plan to find capital, you are mistaken.
Do you have any additional tips for vendors working on their business plans? We’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Share your ideas on social media. Facebook | Twitter
