Although failure rates for food trucks aren’t nearly as high as their brick and mortar counter parts they’re still high. Why are they so high? For a list of the 10 biggest reasons, see Why Do Food Truck Businesses Fail. A simple food truck concept may seem like a given, in many vendors its not. Today I’m going to discuss the key fundamental in food truck concept design, Keep It Simple!

Menus with too many items and multi-ingredient dishes are symptoms of the same problem, over complicating your concept. As a food truck owner, you may find yourself getting bored with traditional menu items. For you, eating at a food tuck should be an adventure. You may have to see or try something you’ve never seen before to be impressed.

This may be the underlying factor why some food truck owners routinely go overboard with their concepts. They push their own sensibilities on the general public, not realizing that their tastes are the exception to the rule.

If you have a larger selection, you’ll appeal to more people, right? Wrong!

Trying to please everyone leaves you unable to be defined. When you have menu items that represent too many styles of cuisine, your customers find it harder to describe and recommend you. You find it harder to manage your mobile food business effectively and market your brand. Cut out all the extras and build a simple food truck concept.

How-To Build A Simple Food Truck Concept

Keep your menu small

The first step to a simple food truck concept is a small menu. This serves many purposes, a small menu is easier to control costs, easier to prepare, and easier to provide consistency with. By having a small menu, your service will be faster, your food quality will be better, and you’ll make more money.

Keep your market simple

Don’t convince yourself that you want all people of all demographics to like your food truck. It’s not going to happen. By going after everyone, you’ll end up with no one. Even if your style of cooking has mass appeal, your parking locations will determine who is most likely to come to your food truck.

Identify those person’s age, income level, sex, and marital status. They are your target market whether you like it or not. If your concept doesn’t appeal to the people in your area, then you don’t have a feasible concept and you aren’t likely to succeed. Keep your demographic simple and focused.

Keep your menu items simple

When you have too many ingredients, and/or too many touches that need to be made to the dish after it’s ordered, you slow down the production of your food. A ticket will only go out as fast as it’s slowest dish. Keep your food simple and easy to produce. Let the ingredients be the stars and don’t lose them in a mish-mash of flavors.

RELATED: 5 Reasons For A Small Number Of Menu Items

The Bottom Line

While this is the end of this list, it’s not the end of the application of the philosophy of a simple food truck concept. Any time you have the opportunity to simplify your concept, take it. You’ll end up with something that is simpler to manage, simpler to market, and simpler to turn a profit with.

Do you have any additional tips to create a simple food truck concept? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Share them in the comment section our food truck forum or social media. Facebook | Twitter