When running a traditional restaurant, staffing is crucial to ensure you are profitable and able to keep the lights on. When it comes to your food truck, you need effective employees to keep the engine running.
Because food trucks are a much smaller operation than a standard restaurant, a mistake in hiring or putting your employees in the wrong role can be detrimental to your food truck business.
Tips for Food Truck Staffing
Here are a few tips to improve your food truck staffing so you can grow your food truck business while generating a profit each month.
Establish a Clear Front and Back House System
Those with experience in the food industry know that traditional restaurants are typically broken down into two distinct areas of operation: the front of house and back of house.
Running a food truck is no different!
When hiring employees to work on your truck, it’s important to clearly define whether that individual is going to be working in the front house, back of house, or even both!
Front of house employees are the ones who will be interacting with your customers daily. It’s important that when you are hiring your front of house employees, they appear friendly and are well knowledgeable about the food and drink your truck serves.
Back of house employees have the job of doing admin tasks and cooking. They don’t always have a customer facing role, but just because they aren’t always interacting with customers doesn’t mean you should hire people who aren’t good with people. Back of the house employees include your bookkeeper and marketing team as well.
Ultimately, every person you hire should be able to deliver an exceptional experience to your customers. Your cooks should be good at cooking. Your checkout employees should be able to do quick mental math and answer questions.
Hire a High-Quality Cook
You can have the best-looking food truck in town, but if your food doesn’t taste good, you probably won’t succeed for very long. Hiring a chef or cook who can cook the cuisine you serve to perfection is an absolute must. It’s one of the most overlooked parts of food truck staffing.
Service Attendants
Your service attendants will often be the first touch point of your brand for new customers. This is why it’s essential you hire service attendants who have a positive attitude and can interact with your customers professionally. Ideally, you want your service attendants to have a love for your brand, be energetic, and have a friendly attitude.
Managers
Depending on the scale of your food truck operation, having a manager to help run your truck is also an important move. You want a manager who can get the most out of your employees while also having a knack for keeping your business healthy. When possible, consider hiring a manager who has food truck experience and has proven results in their past line of work.
Driver
While not a necessary hire for your food truck operations, hiring a driver to help make relocating your food truck easier is often a wise decision. Because every other employee has a specific job at hand, having someone devoted specifically to driving can help ensure your other employees are set up for success.
Kitchen Staff
While your chef or cook will lead the way, you want to make sure your lead chef has the staff and resources needed to deliver great tasting food quickly. Having one or two kitchen staff members help your cook decrease wait time and improve the overall quality of your food.
Making the Most of Your Food Truck Operations
Once you have your team ready, make sure people know about your food truck. Tell your new employees to share the word with their friends. This a great way to get some positive reviews and honest feedback on your food.
Make sure to list your food truck on a website like Truckster so people can see where you are that day. They can even order right from the app, boosting your sales.
If you are not yet a food truck owner and thinking of taking the plunge, check out our Food Truck Resources Page to see how Truckster can get you started on your own food truck success story!