u/JDartist

I need to re-coat or re-paint at least one side of my food trailer. It is a basic white trailer. I am not sure what products are used they originally coat these? Perhaps a powder coating? I did use a Krylon metal spray paint once, and it was pretty darn close. It is made by Lark United Manufacturing, and they have since apparently closed down so I can’t call them.

Anyway, what have you used if you did this?

Hey everybody. I hope you are well. I am taking my business through a rebrand soon (name stays the same), and part of that will be redoing the physical menu on the trailer. Currently our menu is roughly 20-inches by 30-inches, and resides on the right side of our window. It has no photos, and the menu also can’t be seen by potential customers when we are closed. In addition, it makes it hard for customers to determine their purchase ahead of time when they are in line.

The plan is to remove it from the window and put it on the side of the trailer, in a larger size. I am going to hire a photographer for photos for online assets, and I am trying to determine if the new external menu should use photos or not. I have seen it done well with good photos, and I have seen it done really poorly as well. I don’t think every item needs a photo. Perhaps the heavy hitters and most popular items could have a photo. In the end, a lot of our items use similar ingredients but arranged differently, like most food places.

What have you done regarding photos on your physical menu? If you have used them, have you received feedback they are helpful? If you are a consumer reading this, do you like them or not?

Thanks for any feedback! All points of view are welcome.

Currently, we use DoorDash and UberEats. We use them via tablets so we save the Toast integration fees. We used GrubHub roughly 1.5 years ago via tablet, and we found they weren’t as good as the others. It maybe brought in an extra $100 a month at the time.

They are reaching back out as they have some new partnerships they are trying out. I don’t like the idea of having a 3rd tablet, as it is already hard enough to get employees to make sure everything is turned on in time. However, $30 a month is $720 a year for two locations, and I am not sure what their market share is like these days. I would imagine they are still lagging behind quite a bit.

In short, what has been your experience with GrubHub recently? Do you use a tablet or POS integration? Any thoughts are welcome. Thanks!

Side question: if you went from tablet to POS integration, with any platform, was it worth it?

Hello everyone. I hope you are well. I post in here every couple weeks or so, and the idea is to understand what’s working out there.

I run a couple of food trailers in a larger city in Texas. I am trying to see what levers I can pull to get more people to come visit us, and want to understand what is working (or has worked) for you. If you read my last post, most of us agreed sales are down roughly 10-15% across the nation, and it’s a tough time right now. For this purpose, take that into account but also think about when times were decent as well.

We sell breakfast food for the most part, and our hours are 9:00-2:00 during the week and 8:30-2:00 on the weekends. To start, I don’t think we operating in the peak breakfast decision window. I think it would be a very hard lifestyle change, for myself and the employees, if we opened at 7:00. With that in mind, I am entertaining the idea of shifting the hours to 8:00-1:30 daily. That 1:30-2:00 timeframe is usually dead anyway. There’s no guarantee opening earlier will get more sales, but 9:00 seems late to open for breakfast food (I inherited these hours when I bought the company over a year ago).

I have also entertained the idea of doing a student discount, during the week only, at our locations. Maybe 10% off with student ID type of thing. I know discounts work for some people and others are absolutely against them. We use Toast POS and it is easy to configure something in there.

What’s working for you? How are you retaining and attracting new customers during the week or even on the weekends? Are there certain promos you like to use, guerrilla marketing tactics couple with social (hidden coupons etc), or anything else? Thanks for any meaningful discussion!

Edit: we do use DoorDash, UberEats, and we are involved in bulk lunch programs.

It seems like business has been slower in the past year, and especially in the past 2-months. I think the higher gas prices have freaked people out along with inflation in general. People don’t have as much disposable income. Are some of you seeing this as well? For what’s it worth, we have not raised prices and we are a well established brand in our area with two locations. Things were certainly good (better) prior to a year ago.

Side question to the owners out there….how are you dealing with raises when the money isn’t there? I talked to another food truck owner, and he said the past year has been harder for him and there won’t be raises this year. He usually does a raise when business is good, but he just can’t do it this year.

I was looking at a local restaurant’s menu online yesterday, and I noticed they do $5 delivery through Uber. I went there to eat later that night, and they said it is something they offer through Toast. The manager said the benefits are the customer doesn’t pay a higher price (assuming you have markup through DD or UberEats), and the employees get tipped. However, she did say the main drawback is you, the business, have to deal with bad orders. So if a driver takes too long to deliver the food (cold food) or they somehow mess it up along the way, they don’t own it like they would with their regular delivery offerings.

Have any of you done this delivery through Toast, and if so, what has been your experience so far compared to the regular delivery methods? Pros and cons?

Thanks!