Gary Vaynerchuck's Business and Marketing Advice for Food Truck Owners
Gary Vaynerchuck is arguably the most well-known entrepreneur and social media thought-leader on the planet. Throughout the year you can watch daily tidbits of him running his business his YouTube Channel that's rapidly approaching a million subscribers or Instagram. Vaynerchuck's company, VaynerMedia, provides marketing consulting from Fortune 500 companies to the biggest athletes in the world. But while attending a recent marketing conference, Vaynerchuck took some time out of his speaking schedule to offer some specific advice to a small business owner... specifically a food truck owner. If you're someone that's never heard of Gary Vaynerchuck don't worry! As background [...]
What Do Specialty Vehicles and Trailers Mean?
What is a specialty vehicle or trailer? Specialty vehicles are mobile units that solve a variety of specific problems for a wide-range of businesses from dentists that want to bring their services to patients anywhere to government organizations like the fire department that requires a mobile preparation and recovery center that can be positioned anywhere there's a fire. In today's post, we wanted to walk you through some of the different examples of specialty units and trailers that are available. As you'll see, whether you're a non-profit, a business, or a member of law enforcement there's a specialty unit that [...]
How to Start Vending Outside Home Improvement Stores like Home Depot
Depending on where you live, you may have noticed a concession trailer or hot dog cart serving outside of a big-box home improvement store like Home Depot and wondered... How can I get my concession business to vend there? Home Depot's can be desirable areas to vend because there can be foot traffic in-and-out of the store all day, seven days a week. Home improvement stores attract a wide-range of professionals including contractors, laborers, and even the weekend do-it-yourselfer. In this post, we explore how to get your business approved to vend in these locations, what the process is like, [...]
How To Factor For Seasonality in a Concession Business
Winter is indeed coming. For vendors operating in cooler temperature states or even Canada this inevitably means lower monthly revenue figures for the rest of the year as we move deeper into the fall and winter months. Most food vendors anticipate this lower demand due to seasonality. In places like New York, Boston and the entire country of Canada you'll need to be prepared for substantial revenue impacts. If you're located in Southern California or Florida, the winter-time revenue impacts will be less pronounced. When you're starting your business or still in the business plan development stage, it's important to [...]
How Much Food Storage Space is Needed on Your Concession Trailer?
How much storage space is needed on your concession trailer? This is a question frequently overlooked by first time vendors. It's easy to get wrapped up in the type of kitchen equipment that will be installed and the wrap of the vehicle. These are important parts of the build process. But at M&R Specialty Trailers and Trucks, we also understand you need to have enough available space on the concession trailer to store your raw materials like hamburgers, tacos, or BBQ after your equipment is installed. Within the food industry, the amount of storage space inside your food trailer is [...]
Food Trucks often Double as Disaster Relief Vehicles
When emergencies happen, you need teams of highly-skilled people that can mobilize quickly and travel to a distressed area to help. In critical situations like this people like first responders, fire fighters, nurses, and law enforcement usually come to mind. These people are the first at the scene of a catastrophic event. But in recent months, seemingly unlikely food trucks have also been called upon to serve their communities after natural disasters. Food trucks answered this call by moving to support emergency workers and victims of storms like Hurricane Irma. When the power goes out and fresh water becomes non-existent [...]
Florida Restaurant & Lodging Show 2017 Exhibitor Review
This week you'll find M&R Specialty Trailers and Trucks at the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Show running from October 11th - 13th, 2017. This annual event is being held at the Orange County Convention Center and brings together over 8,000 professionals from across the culinary and food service industry. Whether you're looking for cutting-edge flavor combinations for your menu or looking to grow your existing restaurant franchise this Florida's premier event to accomplish these goals. If you plan to be in attendance, we encourage you to head on over to booth 1301 to say hi and check out our display. [...]
Concession Trailer Plumbing Blue Print / Layout Example
Although requirements for concession trailers differ across the country there are some requirements that are standard across the board. One of the standard requirements is for a 3-compartment sink and hand washing sink. These requirements are in place for food safety handling reasons and something you want installed on your unit regardless of legal requirements. At M&R Specialty Trailers and Trucks, we develop 3 different blue-prints / layouts for each custom build. There is an electrical layout, kitchen layout, and of course a plumbing layout that we will cover in this post. You can view an example of one plumbing [...]
Food Trucks Continue Serving Communities After Hurricane Harvey
Hurricane Harvey has devastated the Texas coastline from Corpus Christi to Houston while uprooting thousands of families in between the two cities. For many residents, their businesses and homes have been completely destroyed. Some areas were hit hard by the hurricane winds. Others had walls torn down by rising and rushing water. According to this article from Fortune.com, the financial impact of Hurricane Harvey could top $180 billion. While there has been a level of destruction and damage the likes we haven't seen in the United States since Hurricane Katrina there are always examples of the resilience of the human [...]
Could Negative Yelp Reviews Be Hurting Your Food Truck Business?
We live in a world where customers read reviews and view food photos well before they ever step foot into a restaurant or dine at your food truck. That means that for many prospective customers, if you're online reputation isn't pristine you probably won't get their business. There was recently published article of MarketPlace.org that says negative Yelp reviews could actually be helping to put some restaurants out of business. The punch line of the article is that a restaurant with only two or three stars will be 14% more likely to go out of business in the event of [...]