No matter what part of the country your food truck operates, most food truck owners face the challenges of the slow season. After your busy food truck season ends, a stretch of slow business begins, and your service window line and sales see dramatic drops. On top of that, who’s to say your current customers will remember you when the next season rolls around?

Don’t let your slow season get you down. Instead of sitting around, waiting for next season, use this time for marketing your food truck business. Today we’ll discuss what vendors should be thinking about to keep your mobile food business on people’s minds year round.

How To Market Your Food Truck During Your Slow Season

Gather Customer Reviews

Throughout the year, but particularly as your season comes to an end, you should be asking your customers to review your menu and services. By gathering customer stories and testimonials when they’re still fresh, you’ll have reviews that’ll resonate with slow season readers. Use these reviews and stories in your off-season email marketing, blog posts, website pages, and social media updates.

Related: Have your customers share their reviews at Food Truck Reviewz.

Stay Social All Year

Your customers don’t stop eating during your food truck’s slow season. Because of this, it’s important to stay in contact with customers throughout the entire year. Maintain your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest accounts to stay top of mind year-round. Using these platforms to gather (and publish) reviews and testimonials, share the new content you’re publishing, run contests and polls, and generate hype for the next season.

Grow Your Customer Database

During your busy season, your service window and website remain busy. Now is the time to build a customer list to give you the ability to stay top of mind during your slow season. Make sure your website has plenty of calls-to-action for subscribing to an email list or your blog. Growing this list is easier when you have plenty of traffic, so your slow season success hinges on your productivity during your busy time.

Maintain Your Newsletter

Your email newsletter works as a reminder for consumers to check in with your website content, and to connect with them socially. While you may not choose to send out email communications as frequent as you do during your busy season, but that’s ok. Sending out your newsletter throughout your slow season is a fantastic way to establish loyalty with your current customers, and help grow your audience during the off-season.

RELATED: Creating An Effective Food Truck Newsletter

The Bottom Line

Just because people won’t stand in line for 20 to 30 minutes to grab one of your tasty food truck dishes during your slow season doesn’t mean you can’t get people excited about your food truck business. Provide content that plays on the excitement of upcoming season. Start promoting changes to your staff, and to your menu. Provide early bird offers, or even off-season discounts if you stay open during your slow season. These types of hype will get your market planning ahead for the time they can take advantage of your menu and catering services again.

What other tips do you have for vendors during their slow season? Share your advice in the comment section or social media. Facebook | Twitter