Food trucks have become increasingly popular. These mobile restaurants are able to park outside of businesses and serve all kinds of delicious goodies! Customers love the convenience as well as the fun atmosphere food trucks provide.
Mobile pizza is one of the most popular kinds of food trucks. There’s nothing better than being able to grab a slice on your lunch break or in the evening outside a local hot spot with friends. Maybe you’ve even considered getting in on the fun with your own mobile pizza truck.
Let’s take a look at a few things that will help you decide if this is the right business for you.
How to Get Your Mobile Pizza Making Business Off the Ground
The food truck industry has risen to new highs in recent years. It’s a great way to make a lot of money with little overhead. And a mobile pizza business has the potential to be even more lucrative. Keep reading to learn how to get started.
1. Learn the Market
If you’ve been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and want to sell mobile wood fired pizza, you’d better do plenty of research. Operating a mobile food truck can be lots of fun, but it’s still a business with a ton of details to learn.
Become familiar with the different types of events in your area, and understand the profit margins for each. In order to make the most of every opportunity, you’ll likely end up working both public and private events.
2. Have a Clear Vision
Every entrepreneur needs to have a clear vision of the kind of events you’ll plan to target. From music festivals to corporate parties and farmers markets.
We suggest working with event planners who can help connect you with local business owners. An event planner can also help you better understand the volume of business you can expect at various events. This is very important for managing both your truck staff and food inventory.
3. Be Aware of Available Power Sources
Because you are operating a mobile business, you are going to need an exterior power source to plug into. After all, you’ll have perishables that need to remain refrigerated and lights that require a power source.
Also remember that the bigger the event, the more food you’ll need, requiring more cold storage. This is information you’ll need to confirm before you show up ready to do business. Because without power, your food will spoil and you’ll end up serving cold pizza in the dark.
4. Understand What Licensing You’ll Need
Be aware that if you’re going to be working in the food industry, you’ll need to get licensed by the health department. There are two kinds of licenses you’ll have to know about: a Mobile Food Vending Permit and a Temporary Event License.
There will be fees for both, and operating without them will get you shut down in a hurry and fined by the city.
5. Be Insured
Nobody said that running a food truck would be an inexpensive operation. One of the major expenses involved is making sure you’re fully insured. This includes coverage for your mobile pizza oven, your pizza truck, as well as business insurance.
If you decide to save a few bucks and operate without proper coverage, not only are you asking for disaster to strike, you could find yourself on the receiving end of significant fines.
6. You’ll Need Food Management skills
The simple reality is that operating a pizza truck is no small task. There are a ton of details to remember and tasks to juggle. Not the least of which is your ability to manage your food and dough inventory.
Keep in mind that once you’re onsite, there’s no running to the store if your food runs out. Running a food truck is like any other business. You’ll need to know what days food will have to be delivered to give you time to prep the dough, as well as locating suppliers that have enough dough for upcoming events.
Not only will running out of food during a large event cut cost you money, a bunch of disappointed customers could cost you business in the long run.
7. Have a Knowledge of Menu Design and Pricing
Operating a successful mobile pizza truck isn’t a simple matter of tossing pepperoni and cheese onto your sauce and dough and firing up the oven. You have to offer an amazing product that will make customers want to return for more.
And part of selling amazing pizza is designing a menu makes your food look and sound irresistible. Whether you design it yourself or not, remember that your customers will judge your pizza by what they see and read before they ever take a bite.
8. Have a Contingency Plan for Bad Weather
There’s no getting around Mother Nature. Sometimes it’s going to rain, or the weather suddenly turns cold, or perhaps the wind picks up making it impossible for people to stand around outside and order pizza.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise that the weather can be unpredictable. So you’d better have a backup plan in case the clouds roll in and the beautiful day goes south in a hurry. Perhaps have a secondary venue lined up, or shut things down for a couple of hours and reopen once the shower tapers off.
9. Network with Non-Competing Vendors
Networking is always one of the best things you can do for your business. Get to know other vendors who can offer advice and share their experiences. These are people who will have useful tips for making your business run more smoothly by pointing out details that wouldn’t have otherwise occurred to you.
Taking the Pizza Business on the Road
Few things in life are as mouthwatering as mobile wood fired pizza. And as the food truck experience becomes more popular with each passing year, mobile pizza will be in greater demand than ever.
Operating a mobile pizza truck certainly requires a lot of work. But if you have the skills to manage inventory and the social acumen to make the right connections, it can be a great adventure that makes delicious pizza and a lot of money.
Click here to learn how to make big money with mobile pizza oven trailers.
