Food trucks are on the rise. They’re popping up in cities across the country and around the world, bringing culinary creations to those who crave them. But food trucks face a lot of obstacles—everything from zoning laws to regulations on how their flame-cooked foods can be prepared. Ultra food lansing il is working on the list of regulations to help lift some of these barriers. We found many common reasons why food truck owners face challenges.
10 Top Reasons Why You Face Obstacles In Learning Food Trucks :
1. Food trucks are small businesses.
They’re not big corporations with their own fleets of trucks and massive operations. Most of these trucks aren’t even owned by individuals, but limited liability companies (LLC) or sole proprietorships. This means that it’s hard to make the same profits that a typical restaurant can, but you can also lose a lot more. If your truck gets a parking ticket, it’s your ticket—not the company’s. If you quit or get fired because of personal problems, the business itself will have to go through training a new employee or servicing customers on its own.
2. Food truck businesses are understaffed.
Because of their small size and limited resources, food trucks are often dependent on one or two people for most of their work and usually not much more than that. This means you have to be.
3. Multitasking.
People who get into the food truck business have to be able to navigate and use a lot of different technologies, as well as serve customers and make sales. If you don’t multitask well and are clumsy, this job probably isn’t for you. You should also be able to work quickly. Customers usually want their meals within 10 or 20 minutes at the most—and they want them hot, fresh, and fast! If that’s not something you can do, then you may find yourself in a lot of trouble during a busy lunch rush or other busy time at your truck.
4. Legal issues.
Food truck owners have to deal with all sorts of legal issues related to their businesses. Food Trucks are not allowed to operate from a permanent site, in urban areas have been restricted because of the safety and parking problems they cause.Here are some other common regulations: You can’t park within 200 feet of another vendor selling similar food. You can’t sell liquor or beer on your truck, so you might have to find a shady location and park without a permit or you need to set up your own bar. You can’t have any alcohol substance outside of the food on your truck, so if you want a BYO-bottle of wine with your bruschetta, you may not be able to do it. You can also have motorized equipment just because it could theoretically start a fire or make noise or be used as cooking equipment.
5. No name change options.
All food trucks are required by law to display their current business name (and phone number) prominently on the side of the truck. This means that if you have a partnership or a business mindset and want to change your name (or find an even better one), you’ll probably have to sell the business. And if your business isn’t doing well, it might be hard to convince someone else to sell it.
6. Getting employees.
If you do decide to get a new employee, you’ll likely have trouble getting more than one at a time because there aren’t many other food truck vendors available in your area, and finding one is difficult at best. Finding someone who is experienced and qualified to get the job done is even harder.
7. Marketing/sales issues.
Because food trucks are mostly mobile vending machines (and unlike other food vending machines, they don’t really have calorie labels for their menu items), people who go out for a meal from a food truck will likely choose a place that has the same kind of crowd as everyone else—and if you’re not in a place with the same crowd, you’ll have trouble convincing customers to come to your place instead.
8. Food safety issues.
Because of the way they are cooked, food trucks often use flame broilers and high temps to cook their food. This means that you have to be very careful about what you’re serving and how hot your equipment gets. If something should happen before or during a meal, you could be held responsible for any health code violations, even if your food wasn’t at fault for the problem. And if something happens after a meal, you’ll still have to deal with customers who aren’t happy because they paid for something that didn’t agree with their stomachs.
9. Pricing issues.
If you’re not a large corporation or franchise, you probably won’t make a lot of money on your food. And even if you are a large corporation, it is likely only an affiliate of the company that makes really big bucks. So when it comes to pricing and profits, there’s not as much room for error as there would be for someone whose food was going to be sold at a regular grocery store within the same mall or chain restaurant.
10. Social issues.
Because food trucks aren’t like restaurants and don’t follow traditional conventions of how they’re supposed to look and operate, people may have some sort of feel-good response about eating from one that doesn’t fit into the norm.
