Get Your Best Food Truck Employees To Stick Around

Few food truck owners are able to succeed without great talent supporting them. So retaining your best food truck employees is not only good for your mobile food business, but for you as owner. Training a new employee to the break-even point can take over 6 months.That means that if an employee leaves, you’ll need half a year just to get his or her replacement up to a base level.

But what if one of your top producers leaves? The best of the best in your food truck? These people are simply not replaceable. Today we’ll discuss several ways to keep your best food truck employees around.

How to Keep Your Best Food Truck Employees

Pay above-standard rates. To hire and keep the best, you need to pay them the best. We aren’t talking about a ridiculously high pay rate for these people, but pay that’s at or below the market rate for the position tells employees that their work is not truly valued.
Trust the team. Give your food truck staff the opportunity to use their unique strengths every day. Allow them to do what they are best at.
Make connections. Spend time every day checking in with each of your staff members to see how they’re doing — personally and professionally. Avoid private or sensitive topics unless the employee brings them up.
Respect individuality. Recognize your people’s individual needs, and customize assignments, perks, and recognition accordingly.
Clean out the dead weight. Great people need to work with other great people. Do the hard work of removing those who slow everyone else down through their lack of a good work ethic, negativity, sub-par production, and gossip.

The Bottom Line

No one likes to see their best food truck employees leave for a competitor. And, in many cases, this is preventable. As a food truck owner, you have the responsibility to do what it takes to keep your best food truck employees engaged in your mobile food business’ mission.

If you make these suggested changes, you have a good chance of increasing engagement among and retention of your best food truck employees. Keeping them happy will help your bottom line.

How do you keep your best food truck employees? Share your thoughts on this topic in the comment section or social media. Facebook | Twitter

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].