The food truck industry was made for a place like Central Florida, a place that tends to see sunny days, great temperatures and a good amount of tourism, which are three ingredients that are essential in this industry.
By Jeremy Adams
If you live in a place like Central Florida, or Florida in general, and you also are an up-and-coming restaurateur, then you might want to consider opening up a food truck business instead of the traditional sit-down restaurant.
One might be saying their dream has always been running a sit-down restaurant. To those people, we say this: We completely understand, but now more than ever, the food truck industry is booming. Therefore, if your ultimate goal is to be a chef and run your own kitchen, then you could certainly do a whole lot worse than opening up your very own mobile kitchen.
Not only does a sit-down restaurant typically cost more money to start up, but it also typically costs more money to continue to run. Not only are you dealing with a bigger space, but you also likely have to hire more employees, which means you have more people to pay and manage.
Let’s face it. Not everyone has $100,000 or more to start up their own restaurant, which is why up-and-coming chefs would be wise to consider the food truck industry.
The food truck industry was made for a place like Central Florida, a place that tends to see sunny days, great temperatures and a good amount of tourism, which are three ingredients that are essential in this industry.
While a food truck is still going to cost a decent amount of money (it could cost well over $70,000 if you decide to purchase a high-end food truck), there are an endless amount of reasons why you should start up your very own lunch truck.
(1) The overhead costs are cheaper, which should be music to a business owner’s ears.
(2) Since your food truck is mobile, you can take it to many different places (although you can’t simply park wherever you want), which comes in handy when you want to venture to food truck events, or plan on tackling the catering side of the business.
(3) Not only do you get to follow your dream, which is running your own kitchen, but you also get to call the shots. You are a business owner/boss in every sense of the word when you own a food truck.
(4) It’s a great business opportunity.
While business owners and entrepreneurs are all about the risk, if you could take less of a risk and still follow your dreams, why wouldn’t you?
While this is not a get-rich-quick scheme, the sky is the limit in this industry. Your success — and great recipes, of course — could lead to you opening up a second food truck, or a sit-down restaurant.
A food truck is not only a great way to become established in the food industry, but it is also a great way to learn the ways of a restaurant and business, and it just so happens to be less of a risk than opening up a sit-down restaurant from a money standpoint.
What will certainly help your success, aspiring restaurateurs who live in Central Florida, is the fact that you can stay open year-round. Not every mobile kitchen owner has that option. After all, some places, such as Chicago or New York, tend to be taken over by cold weather and snow during the winters. When the weather is always nice, or at least nice most of the time, you can bet that a great amount of people will continue to venture to your food truck.
Your dream as an up-and-coming chef is likely cooking food, making people happy and enjoying every single day at the job, if you will, and the food truck industry can provide you with that dream.
On top of everything else, you get to pick your food truck concept, you get to run the social media pages (unless you plan on hiring a social media manager), you get to hire your dream team, you get to pick which food truck events you want to enter, you get to pick what the menu is going to be on any given day and you also get to be a chef in every way imaginable. Plus, the food truck industry is still growing right now — it hasn’t hit its peak yet.
What are you waiting for, future food truck owner?
