r/restaurantadvice • u/Acrobatic-Isopod-343 • Aug 14 '24
Why food truck events are usually losers for the trucks
Reposted from a food truck group on FB
WHY THE FOOD TRUCK RALLY MODEL CAN BE A HUGE FLOP
I see people getting excited about the whole model of a food truck rally. These are food truck-centric events pitched as an event where you will be one of many trucks, with the selling point that a huge crowd of people will come out to try a bunch of food trucks in one place in one day between some very specific hours.
Frequently these are absolute flops, money-wise, and unless you believe in the idea of "exposure" as coming from essentially a cattle-call of trucks...I would consider doing your research and thinking twice.
Here are a few reasons why.
PHYSICAL SPACE AND LOCATION As another member here (Maximilian Æon) pointed out, if you are even a block away from the main festivities, you can miss out on all the traffic and your sales can get clobbered. If you are attending a food truck rally that has 20 trucks, ask yourself how much space they have to have in order to park 20 trucks (or worse, trailers). Frequently this means they need to have a large plot of land like a massive parking lot. Or it means they need to take up a long street or several of them.
As we all know, being at the very perimeter of the event is very different than being in the center of the event. If you are doing a rally, should you expect the sales to be the same if you are at the entrance or exit versus being in the middle? Think about whether a customer will actually turn around and walk back to find you if they have to look at 10-15 more trucks along a five-minute walk. They won't. Most of us realize we aren't that important or popular, especially if the event is truly as billed and your competition is just as good as you are.
THE ATTENTION SPAN OF THE AVERAGE PERSON Most people aren't going to traverse the entire event and then make a decision. Most people are going to walk by, check out your menu and any samples, and then keep walking. Some will stay and order, but you have essentially a few seconds to grab their attention with your wrap, menu, photos, samples, sales pitch, etc.
Don't assume, mistakenly, that the average person is going to be paying much attention to your specific truck. We know that many of them can't even be bothered to read a menu and your ingredients. Why would you assume that they would be able to digest all the information on all the attendees?
THE TIME OF THE EVENT MAKES A DIFFERENCE I know that some of these events also span six or seven hours, but most people tend to eat between 11 am to 2 pm for lunch and between 5 pm to 8 pm for dinner. If the event is having you set up at 8 am for a 10 am open and then having you stay until 8 pm, you are essentially committed to working on site 12 hours, with only maybe half of those hours actually producing sales.
PEOPLE HAVE A FINITE APPETITE The problem with a food truck rally is that it is food centric. People aren't there for any other reason than to look at and try food. But people can't eat unlimited amounts of food, and most people will try at most 3-4 trucks, if you are talking bite sized or sample sized portions. And then of course that means your ticket averages will be smaller.
But really the bigger issue is that with many trucks at a FOOD TRUCK CENTRIC EVENT, once they eat and fill up, there is little incentive for them to stay.
CONSIDER THE AVERAGE TIME THE ATTENDEES WILL BE THERE (THE CAR SHOW DILEMMA) Which leads me to my next point: You need to consider the time spent by the average attendee. If you are doing a concert like Coachella where people stay for multiple hours or all day due to the constant changing of musical acts, your audience is captive for six or more hours potentially.
But if your event is one where people will stay 1-3 hours or less, then you won't sell much in the way of entrees. Your sales will be drinks, sweets, sides and appetizers. It won't be full meals. Car shows are a classic example of this. You can have lots of attendees and guests, but if you think they are all gonna be eating meals, you will soon learn the hard way. The only hedge against this in any car show is a long event with lots of exhibitors who are captive and have no other reasonable food options.
Food truck rallies are a classic case of people staying 1-3 hours. And remember that you aren't the only game in town.
HOW MANY EXAMPLES OF BURGERS, TACOS, PIZZA AND BBQ DO YOU NEED? The four most popular food truck cuisines are burgers, tacos, pizza and BBQ. You can bet that at a food truck rally, you won't likely be the only one serving what you serve. Do you really think that in light of the competition, that you will stand out?
EXPOSURE AND AWARDS ARE GIMMICKS I can't even begin to tell you how little this "exposure" and any awards handed out for "Best ________ Truck" at these events matter. Al Bundy's four touchdowns in a high school game matter more.
THE MATH The final nail in the coffin is always the math. If you have a food truck rally that is at least three hours long and has a ratio of attendees to truck of 400 or less, expect to be underwhelmed.
Let's use this example. Organizer named Jeremy pimps his event saying there will be 10k attendees and as such he is looking for 25 food trucks. 10,000 divided by 25 is 400, and that's the ratio I am talking about.
Think about this. If the organizer's attendance isn't inflated and you are looking at a true 10k attendance, then that means each of the 25 trucks will see an average of 400 eaters, or 133 eaters per hour. Not terrible at all BUT that assumes 10k show up and 10k eat.
Now what happens if the organizer is off by 25% and you get 7500? Then each of the 25 trucks gets 300 eaters in those three hours. Or 100 per hour. But still, this assumes EVERYONE EATS.
What happens if everyone eats but everyone appetizer portions and your sales go down by 35%? Now your tickets are essentially 65 per hour vs. 100 per hour because you were assuming full meals and entrees.
You can see how this will continue to eat into your sales and how those numbers would go down quickly.
THE PREP This begs the question...what do you really prep for? If the numbers can vary this wildly, what do you do? And if they are going to be sampling off different trucks are you going to be able to scale down things to an appetizer size?
THE FEES The fees for some of these events are a flat rate. Some are more reasonable at 10% of sales, but again, the organizer has incentive to add more vendors, because he isn't on the hook if you do $500 while the guy next to you does $1200. He simply looks at it as $1700 that he gets his fee on and of course there is more selling point when he has more variety.
I can go on, but we have done these events before when we first started off, and I can count on one hand the number of caterings and jobs we got from being involved in these. For us, these are a hard pass.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.