With the surge of outdoor dining, it’s no wonder people are increasingly interested in unique food concepts such as food trucks. Vantage Market Research’s report on the food truck market notes how the global market revenue was at US $3.94 billion in 2021, with its projections estimated to reach US $5.78 billion by 2028. This consumer trend shift encourages new and existing businesses to adopt food trucks into their business models. However, with this new concept comes challenges in staff work. Food trucks have limited space, which also reduces the number of staff who can handle tasks like billing, cooking, and cleaning. This often leads to burnout and high turnover, which can affect the quality of food service. Instead of relying purely on manual labor, businesses can adopt food truck technologies to ease staff workload and improve overall productivity. In this article, we’ll discuss how technologies can support your food truck employees and their work:
Ensure food safety
Unlike traditional restaurants, food trucks face more significant challenges with weather and limited space, which put them at risk of food safety violations due to temperature, malfunctioning equipment, or storage of materials and ingredients. As food safety is essential — given how almost 1 in 10 people falls ill after eating contaminated food — health and safety measures in food preparation are something food truck owners must pay attention to. Adopting technologies that monitor food and equipment can ensure greater efficiency in safety inspections, saving your employees time and preventing costly health mistakes. With software like SafetyCulture, you can customize safety checklists for each employee and establish food safety audits. Furthermore, you can also integrate temperature sensors into the system for kitchen and product monitoring to generate digital reports. Through these trends, your team can gain insight into what they can improve on and increase overall efficiency and safety.
Streamline communication
Proper communication is a critical part of any business. Regarding food truck operations, having clear messages can ensure customers’ orders are completed on time. In addition to customer service, communication is the key to boosting employee engagement and loyalty. Better communication is the answer to your business’s engagement and retention woes, enabling you to establish expectations and roles within the team without overworking any individual. Considering how food trucks are also typically hired for big events like festivals or company gatherings, event management software is a must-have for food truck businesses. Applications such as Event Staff App allow you to schedule and manage your staff for different events from the convenience of your mobile phone; these technologies ensure your team is aware of any changes to regular food service and when they are scheduled to work.
Improve customer ordering through mobile POS
As mentioned earlier, food trucks often face staffing shortages that complicate order processing and fulfillment. To combat these issues, you can invest in cloud-based technologies that move away from traditional point-of-sale (POS). This can give your employees a head-start in preparing orders and reduce customer wait times through mobile ordering options. While many third-party delivery applications allow your customers to order food, having your own custom app for your food truck can ensure greater efficiency when it comes to in-house delivery and order management. Furthermore, these applications can provide customers with alerts and notifications on special discounts or updates on the location of your food truck, encouraging them to use the application and helping you build a name in the community. OrderUp Apps is an excellent solution for building your food truck app, enabling you to change menus, offer custom promotions, and implement in-app POS billing solutions to enhance your food business.
