Food trucks por la ciudad (5 puestos móviles de comida en el DF. Www.salud.df.gob.mx/ssdf/media/agenda/morta2/111.htm. Advice and Experience from a Food Cart Owner. Lisa and Brian Wood own and operate Big-Ass Sandwiches off SW 3rd and Ash.
Lisa graciously wrote the following as a guide to aspiring food cart owners. Thank you Lisa. So you want to open a food cart. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a food cart bonanza happening. High unemployment rates, difficulty finding work & a passionate, entrepreneurial spirit is bringing sidewalks in cities across the country an incredible array of culinary delights. Make no mistake, owning and operating your own business, especially in the service industry, is hard, exhausting work. You’re gonna need $20k – $40K to get opened. When you have a trailer & location, you will also need: A Day in the life….Running your own cart “How fun! Not so fast. Fun? Satisfying to create your own business and run it every day? Food Trucks 101: How to Start a Mobile Food Business. Editor's note: This article was excerpted from our Food Truck startup guide, available from the Entrepreneur Bookstore.
Today, a new generation of street-food lovers is lining up at food trucks and food carts like never before. Little do they know that neither food trucks nor food carts are new to the streets of American cities. Like so many other popular trends, they are the latest version of a long-standing part of American and world culture. Food Trucks: Latest Food Trend Mobilizes Food To Go. Food Trucks: Not Your Same Old Restaurant Technomic, the leading foodservice research and consulting firm has released a report on leading restaurant changes in the restaurant business.
Their bottom line is the restaurant landscape is changing many areas and their 11 for '11: Technomic names leading restaurant trends release discuss 11 trends they see as key for 2011 and beyond. I will focus on those that I think you will be most interested in, particularly for those of you either starting a food business or looking to capitalize on early trends to grow your business. Mobile Food Trucks. Frugality Fatigue , "Recession Weary", "Affordable Indulgence", etc. Social media and technology , look at Maggiano's Little Italy official Facebook Page that over 34,000 followers. Easy Restaurant Ideas- all about Inexpensive Restaurants. Not every new restaurant has to cost a fortune to open.
There are ways to open your own restaurant on a shoestring budget, without sacrificing quality or service. Tips For Writing Your Restaurant Menu- All About Writing Restaurant Menus. A restaurant menu is more than just a list of food with prices.
It is a reflection of your restaurant style and concept. A restaurant menu is not something to be hastily written up, but rather an important marketing tool that should be carefully considered. There are three main parts of designing a restaurant menu: Description, Layout and Pricing. Restaurant Menu Description A good rule of thumb when writing the descriptions of your menu items is to keep it short and simple. Food Truck Design - Commercial Equipment for Starting a Food Truck Business. Outfitting a food truck for business is a lot like designing a commercial kitchen for a new restaurant.
You need designated areas for cooking, chilling, storing and serving. Because a food truck is much smaller than most restaurant kitchens, you will need to utilize every inch of space. Much of your food truck design will depend on your menu-- will you be preparing a bulk of food in a separate area (like sandwiches or wraps) or will it be prepared on site (such as pizza or fried food). No matter what type of food you plan to serve, you’ll need to make sure that you food truck meets all local and state health and safety codes. Food Truck Prep and Storage Areas Enclosed cabinets or cupboards are ideal for storing paper goods, dry goods and other non-perishables. Popular Restaurant Trends. Like fashion, restaurant operations have trends and fads that ebb and flow with time- recall the roller-skating waitresses at drive-in diners during the 1950s.
Listed below are some popular restaurant trends that aren’t likely to disappear for a while yet. Offering Discounts and Coupons Recession or now recession, customers love a bargain. And even when the economy rebounds, consumers will probably never be as free with their money as they were in the past twenty years. People will still continue to expect maximum bang for their buck. In the What’s Hot in 2011 survey from the National Restaurant Association (NRA), 38% of chef’s surveyed cited offering value specials as the most successful strategy for maintaining and building business during the recession- this included coupons and prix fixe menus.
How to Start a Food Truck Business. Food Carts Portland Mobile App for iPhone - Food Carts Portland. GO Box Means No Waste at Food Carts. Like many Portlanders, Laura Weiss loves eating at food carts.
The Oregon city boasts between 600 and 700 of the tiny eating establishments, far more than most cities of its size. What Weiss does not love is the amount of waste generated by all those to-go boxes. In downtown Portland alone, she says, food carts go through up to 60,000 disposable containers every month. Many vendors have switched to compostable dishware in recent years, but most of those products end up in landfills, where they will not break down to anything useful. The rest of the containers are plastic or Styrofoam.
Weiss tried bringing her own reusable dishes when she visited food carts, but vendors were hesitant to use them for fear of running into problems with the health department, which has very strict regulations about how food can be packaged. Eventually, she founded GO Box, a Portland-based business that provides clean, reusable containers to food cart customers.