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Starting a Food Truck Business

“It’s Not Just About the Food”: The first step to a successful food truck business is developing your concept into a credible, effective written business plan, including marketing, operations, and financial projections. Having a written business plan is required for most funding sources, including bank loans that might be guaranteed by SBA, and for partnerships.

Not having a business plan is one of the top reasons for food truck business failures 

The plan should address critical areas for a successful food truck business:

• Market Research to test the feasibility of your concept
• Marketing, including the critical use of Social Media
• Financial Budgeting, particularly capital needs and cash flow planning
• Operations, including menu creation & testing (costing, pricing, & truck/commisary kitchen production), customer service, food handling & storage, hiring & training, etc
• Licensing & Regulations, which unfortunately is complicated, varying by state, county, and municipality
  • Take special care with researching regulations, including parking  and other restrictions; sometimes an adjoining municipality might not allow operation of a food truck in their jurisdiction; also see https://www.score.org/blog/4-licenses-and-permits-food-trucks-need-operate

We recommend your use of our Startup Roadmap online learning series to help step you through the key elements of business planning, marketing, finding funding, hiring, etc. See the SCORE StartUp Roadmap and download the Simple Steps to Starting a Business Workbook. We can provide you feedback on your plan as you develop it to help you make it the best possible.

We also found food truck startup resources at https://foodtruckempire.com/how-to/case-study/   [See their Food Truck Startup Kit] Also see another sample business plan for food trucks at https://www.webstaurantstore.com/article/54/how-write-food-truck-business-plan.html

Here are other resources to consider as you develop your business plan:

• State of Ohio - how to start a business  business.ohio.gov  ; including a checklist on restaurants & mobile food services:
• Cuyahoga County Board of Health Applications at https://www.ccbh.net/food-forms-apps/
  • and free pre-review of a truck plan at https://www.ccbh.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-CCBH-mobile-unit-plan-review-app-final.pdf
• Cleveland’s Central Kitchen Accelerator if this is your first commercial food services venture; also see ECDI's Food Fort
• Trade Associations, including
  • Ohio Restaurant Association 
  • NEO Food Truck Association
• Food Truck Marketing: https://pomelomarketing.com/blog/food-truck-marketing
• Helpful & Insightful Articles, including
  • 61 Food Truck Owners Share Their Secrets
  • Four Questions a Food Truck Owner must answer before launching
• Industry food truck blogs, including
  • http://restaurantmba.com/blog/  
  • https://roaminghunger.com/blog/13208/advice-for-starting-a-food-truck-business
  • https://www.foodtruckoperator.com/
  • https://www.restaurant-hospitality.com/operations/food-truck-dilemma-when-rent-and-when-own 

Remember, SCORE provides free mentoring - we can help you navigate the startup process, provide feedback on your plan, and assist you with advice once you have launched - request free mentoring at www.score.org/find-mentor

Acknowledgments: Thanks to Zac Rheinberger and David Miller of Cleveland's Central Kitchen, Jessica Hatfield and Lee Negrilli of the Northeast Ohio Food Truck Association, SBDC Northern California, Score Miami mentor Frank Taylor, Score Fort Worth mentor Greg Kalina for their help and feedback on this article

Here's Recording of our Mar 20, 2021 Webinar

For fun, listen to the Food Truck Blues playlist on Spotify.