How to Make a Food Truck Menu: 5 Quick Tips

Food trucks have taken the country by storm over the last couple of decades due in part to changing technologies, allowing customers to follow their favorite moveable feasts via social media. Whether you’re just starting your mobile eatery or been running it for a while, one of the most important things to consider is how to create a food truck menu.

Naturally, you want to stand out from the competition with an inspired menu, but you have to remember why you’re in business—to earn a living. That means designing recipes that not only speak to eager eaters but that work with your budget, provide flexibility and increase profitability. There’s certainly a balance, but you can create a menu that gains audience attention while delivering maximum profit with a few helpful tips.

1. Keep It Simple

In foodservice, there’s a tendency to want to please all the people all the time. It’s no surprise – you’re in the service industry, after all. However, when it comes to the food truck game, you’re better off choosing a niche and doing one thing really well.

When it comes to making your menu, this means narrowing your focus a bit. Can you serve tacos, BBQ, sushi and ice cream? Maybe, and you might attract a wide range of customers with this tactic. Or you might just confuse people and cross-contaminate equipment like your electric fryers. Either way, there’s a fair chance you won’t end up pleasing anyone.

When it comes to generating niche food truck ideas, focus on your passion and your strength so you can be the best at what you do. You’ll have a much better chance to attract a devoted crowd that loves what you have to offer. A simpler menu can also help you to minimize costs and streamline production for faster service, improving profits along the way.

2. Choose High-Quality But Cost-Effective Ingredients

Food trucks walk a fine line between gourmet appeal and fast, affordable fare. On the one hand, you need to offer meals that provide the same relative speed and budget appeal of a drive-thru, although depending on what you serve, you can get away with charging a bit more. However, you also have to put restaurant-level quality meals on your menu. A quarter-pounder with cheese isn’t going to cut it. How can you meet expectations on every front?

The best strategy is to consider how to budget your main ingredients into a feast and price your menu items from there. For example, you could go for a chuck roast and transform it into a hearty chili to spice up your hot dogs. Cheap chicken cuts can be seasoned, cooked and shredded for tacos. Adding color and flair through veggies and special house sauces, giving even simple dishes that gourmet appeal foodies are looking for.

3. Create Recipes that Use Many of the Same Ingredients

When you’re stocking your under-counter refrigerators, economy is the name of the game. You don’t want to sift through 50 different ingredients when you’re in a hurry or wait to grill needed items because the cooktop is packed with ingredients for other recipes.

Naturally, you’re going to offer various dishes on any given day. Still, when you utilize many of the same ingredients across recipes, with just a few key parts to differentiate, you can economize both food storage and cooking and streamline your entire operation. Plus, if you run out of an ingredient, you can simply re-prioritize the remaining ingredients to other menu items.

4 .Offer Specials

Whether you put something new on the menu daily or weekly or simply discount one menu item, you’ll not only attract new customers. But you can encourage repeat visitors to try something new. You might also offer a loyalty program of some kind, like a punch card that comes with freebies after a certain number of purchases or dollar amount to encourage repeat visits and take advantage of popular fast food trends.

5. Experiment with New Recipes

You’re likely to find that many repeat customers come back for specific menu items, and you should always keep your most popular dishes on the menu. However, you can also encourage repeat business and attract new customers by throwing innovative recipes into the mix once in a while.

Offer a limited run of new menu items, perhaps at a discount, and get instant feedback from patrons. That will help you decide whether to make experimental items a regular addition or consign them to the recipe graveyard.