Buying a food truck and becoming a peddler, as a new business, or buying a food truck to promote your products/services in a more dynamic and efficient way, is an attractive option that many are considering.
Among the various reasons that justify this choice, as peddlers or companies, we listed here 9 that we are sure will help you make a decision.
1. TAKE AWAY VS STREET FOOD
Contrary to shopkeepers that wait for clients, a kind of passively, food truckers go out on the streets, expose themselves, do not receive, but meet their clients and this is acknowledged and appreciated by customers and passersby. Buying their product, the client creates the relationship. Food truckers establish an empathy with their clients, one step further the simple cordiality, and for those who love interacting with people, exchange a few words and make new friends, opening a food truck business can be the perfect choice. Here lies a conceptual difference between take away food and street food. In this last kind, there is a more solid relationship between clients and food trucker, there is a true human relationship. What’s better than that?
2. QUALITY AND SPECIALIZATION
As on one side, the food truck has become more sophisticated, in the same way also street food products are now more sophisticated. On one hand, clients are always harder to please due to the cultural recover of the genuineness of food, so they stimulate higher quality standards. On the other hand, there has been an equally important comeback of valorization of local specialties and that pushed the research and recover of the different cooking traditions. If you sell hamburger with biological meat or vegan food, puccia of Salento or arrosticini from Abruzzo, Sicilian cannoli or bigoli of Vicenza, but also fish & chips or Mexican tacos, when you use quality products typical of your region (or country), you get a sense of proudness, because in a way you represent the tradition of your region, with the related feeling.
3. IMMEDIACY AND SIMPLICITY
A food truck is a mobile kitchen with the peculiarity that the chef is at direct contact with his clients and therefore can immediately intercept their tastes and preferences. A food truck allows you to adapt the offer to the request in a fast and profitable way. In the same way, as we mentioned in the previous paragraph, specialization is the key to make your activity easily and immediately recognizable. Your specialized food truck will be the reference for those who love your product.
4. A RELATIVELY MODEST INVESTMENT
Costs to buy a good food truck can vary from 25.000€ to 80.000€ according to the vehicle, the equipment and the complexity/creativity of the outfitting. The other costs are less than 1.000€ for the license and paper work, including the SAB (ex REC) course and the personal license to sell food and beverage. There is no doubt that these costs are lower than those needed to open a restaurant, bar and other traditional activities, which are “static businesses” passively subjected to changes and have only a long term return on the investment, with the added risk of seeing the building losing its real estate value due to unpredictable speculations.
5. AESTHETICS, DESIGN, COMMUNICATION
Modern food trucks are not comparable with old trucks and vans poorly outfitted to transport and show food. The classic peddlers’ trucks still exist but nowadays they can be found mostly in local markets, since they are declining. New generation food trucks are designed with great taste and extreme attention to details.
In this sense, buying a food truck and starting a street food business gives you the opportunity to express your aesthetic taste. The creation of the brand, the name, the vehicle design, the graphic and communication, all becomes fundamental to convey your own commercial identity and to develop your own business capacity. The modern food trucker is a businessperson and it is recognized as such.
6. DYNAMISM
A food truck allows you to move from one place to another, change district or town, take part at festivals and events, offer catering services, meet new people every day, start friendships with other food truckers. If you don’t like monotony, a food truck business is the job solution for you!
7. A BUSINESS THAT GIVES GUARANTEES FOR THE FUTURE
This concept can be summarized in one sentence: until we will be forced to spend the day always in a rush and we will need to optimize the timing of our day, street food will remain a necessary business. Can anyone imagine something different in the close future?
8. IF YOU STILL HAVE DOUBTS, THINK ABOUT…
Even Michelin star chefs are buying food trucks to sell dishes of high gastronomy. Many popular or emerging chefs are choosing to conquer the streets to give even more visibility and popularity to their dishes and their name/brand.
9. NOT ONLY STREET FOOD
We tend to identify street trade with street food, therefore we use the word “food” trucks. This is justified by the fact that mobile kitchen/restaurants are the most part of the vehicles in the street vending industry. The reality is wider and more structured: there are a lot of shops and companies, in different sectors from food industry, that are buying a commercial vehicle, a trailer or a Piaggio Apecar designed to promote and sell their products or services. Some examples?
Hugo Reitzel
Reitzel promote their pickles with free tastings offered from a Renault Master 35q designed specifically to advertise their products.
Douglas “Street Make Up”
The famous make up company offers a free make up section on the street. It’s a promo truck on a cute Ape Piaggio.
Pentole Agnelli
Advertising vehicle dedicated to the exposure and promotion of the famous Agnelli pots, the best allied of professionals and cooking lovers.
For more examples, take a look here:
http://www.vsveicolispeciali.com/en/buy-street-food-truck/promotional-commercial-and-advertising-vehicles/
This to prove that, with some creativity, any one and any company can invent a new way to promote their products and services with a customised promo truck.
In conclusion, for anyone that have a plan to open a food truck or even just the slightest idea of starting a mobile vending business it’s advisable to request from the beginning an opinion to a reliable builder, which can give essential advices for the outfitting of what will be the instrument together with the place of work: the food truck.
