Entrepreneur Life: Start a Food Truck Biz

1. Course Welcome And Introduction: Being an entrepreneur is about many things. It's about the thrill of imagining a new business and seeing it through to the point of launch is the vision and dreams of all at that business can eventually become and is constantly striving in driving for the top to reach your ultimate goal. Entrepreneurs are those who see possibility, but others don't and accept challenges that others won't. This is entrepreneurial life. Hey, I'm Ken, Thanks for taking the time to check out my Skillshare course entitled entrepreneurial life, how to start a food truck business. So you think you want to get into the food truck game? Well actually you could have chosen a better time. The industry is expected to grow to $2.7 billion in revenue over the next couple of years. Which means is a really great opportunity for those of you out there who are really willing to work hard. But don't take my word for it. Take a look at this quick example and see for yourself, I'm going to pass out. By the time we're ready to open. I will be ready to pass out. It's the most incredible thing ever that this is the way it is for us every time we serve. It's amazing. I mean, I've I've grown up until it's my whole life and I've never witnessed a food truck that can be as busy as some of the best local restaurants in town. I don't know, many restaurants that have 60 people waiting the moment that they opened their doors. For mustard, mustard, yellow. I know a family that makes the best potato soup on her. I know a family that makes the best bacon I've ever had or the best homemade biscuits and gravy. And all of those families wants to also start coming up with Bootstrap. Pupils are accepting a more, that's what you get is a mushroom. We need the price. I'm going to pull the price down to your left. You get that person who you only got the best chicken fried steak whenever you went over to your best friend, Steve's out because his mom makes the best preconfigured fried steak. Well, that guy can open up a truck and serve the best freaking chicken fried steak dollar Tulsa, and that's it. That's what we want. That's what I want. I want I want this whole part surrounded with trucks that are all just as successful as we are. It's very difficult. So like on weekdays, if we do a launch every time we do a lot of sense like this every single time. This is reminiscent of what our Friday and Saturday. If we like, the best day to come get us when you know that there's not gonna be afraid you're not going to wait in line for 30 min is Wednesdays and Thursdays. Those are typically slow, steady. But every single lunch we do is exactly like this. Every single week we deal with exactly. Alright, so what do you think about that? I thought that was pretty impressive. And let's look at the numbers of that for a minute. So they said they have upwards of 60 people waiting for them when they open their food truck. Let's say that each of those 60 people bought one meal. In the meal average ticket price is $15, which is probably low. That means they have $900 in revenue winning for them each and every day before they even open their doors to their food truck or their window is the case may be. I think that's pretty impressive. And if that's what you want to get into urine the right place. Before I talk about the course, a little bit about me. My name is Ken, I'm a serial entrepreneur. Over the last 30 years, I've created many businesses ranging from traditional brick-and-mortar businesses to online businesses. Even being here in Skillshare is an example of entrepreneurship. In fact, one of my businesses was featured on MSNBC several years ago. I love entrepreneurship. I love the process of thinking about a new business, creating it, determining how to market it. Some people love to paint, some people love to sing, but my creativity is expressed through entrepreneurship and I really enjoy it. Let's talk a little bit about the course. So obviously it's going to be talking about and teaching you how to open your own food truck business. I want to point out this is not going to be an MBA level course where we go super in-depth. I'm going to keep this light and I'm going to keep it fun. So you don't have a tremendous time commitment here. We're going to talk about those, some real practical issues like the cost of a food truck and how one might be outfitted out. We're going to talk about some of the permitting issues dealing with the health department finding a parking spot. And we're also going to talk about some practical considerations with regards to designing your menu. All of that will be included in this course. The fun part is going to come in with our class projects. And there's two parts to this. First, I want you to come up with a great name for your food truck. And I want you to avoid the normal names like Joe's food truck or a Kate's eats. I really want you to come up with a name that's going to speak to the people and tell them what it is that your food truck is about what sort of food you're serving there. So make sure you come up with something good, unique. You don't have to reinvent the wheel here, but definitely a name that when the people see it from afar, especially if there's other food trucks out there. They're going to know exactly what you're about and they're going to want to come over and experienced your food. The second part of the project is designing your menu. Now again, there's gonna be some discussion in the class about that. So I want you to use those constraints because inside the truck there is an envelope. You can only carry so much food, you can only prepare so much food. So there's an envelope created by the truck that you have to work within. But within that envelope, the sky is really the limit. You can do so many different things. So I want you to get your creative juices flowing and come up with a great, great menu that is going to be really appealing to your customers. As soon as you're done, I want you to upload them onto the class projects page so all of us can take a look at it if you have any questions. I don't want you to hesitate to reach out to me. I'll always be available to you. So I look forward to seeing your projects. I look forward to meeting you through the class discussion portal. Again, I thank you for being here. So let's get started on the course. 2. Food Truck Walkaround: You've made it back in, you're in part two of the course, so I'm really glad you're here. So let's get into the meat of what we're gonna be talking about, and that is the food truck business. So in this chapter in this module, we're going to talk about is the most important thing you need for starting your food truck business. And that is That's right. A food truck or at least some sort of vehicle to prepare your food in something with wheels you can get from point a to point B. Generally speaking, you're looking at either a food truck, which we all know we could also be looking at a food trailer. There was a bit of a difference there. If you're gonna be in a tight, congested city environment, truck is really going to be best because you're gonna be working with limited amount of space with a trailer. You have a towing vehicle and you have the trailer, it just takes up more space. If you're gonna be out a country fairs and you're in an area where there's a lot more space in the Midwest or the South, someplace like that. We don't have to worry about the congestion of a city, then the trailer me work out just fine for you, particularly if you're already have a really good pickup truck or something that you can tell it with. It could save you some money. But typically, we're talking about a standalone food truck. They do come in many different forms. Of course, you can buy new, you can buy used. There's larger, there's smaller, There's many different brands. And there's gonna be a lot of different outfits on the inside in terms of how it's fitted out to apply to whatever type of food you're going to be cooking and preparing for your customers. So before we get into that, why don't we take a look at a new food truck in tour around the outside and inside of that. So let's take a look at that right now. Alright, so here's a truck and I'm going to pause it here for a second. Appointed few things out. Right here you can see we have a nice stainless steel fall down Service table. Your customers can place their food there. You can also put condiments out there. Your service window. You've got a couple of lights, one on either side of the service window. And you also have a fold-out awning or canopy Ray for protection from the sun or from the rain. You can see the ventilation dome on top. On either side of the eye you can see some air conditioning units. The rear emergency exit door. Nothing fancy here, just a basic drivers cockpit. That's a fuse panel, just like you're going to see in your house. Pause it here for a second. You can see the rubber Maddie. That's gonna be great when the floor gets wet, it prevents slips and it's also great at fatigue protection. After a really long day, you're going to welcome having these mats under your feet. Big truck are very well laid out, all stainless steel. Very bright. To be a wash sync with the third smallest stick next to it. Really big refrigerator, plenty of storage. Three bay for later station with a warmer next to it. In a really nice size grill. And you notice that it's angled so the green strips off it automatically. Inside this area, you should have your propane and your generator storage, cold prep area, and your final service counter along with your windows, additional cold storage. And that's the ventilation hood. Alright, so there you have it. A nice food trucks setup to show you what one looks like. Now if you're like me, one of the things you may have noticed on that was that it was really, really kinda plane, just basic black in this case, a lot of them are white, but this one was black. But what you want to think about is that that truck is sort of like a Canvas, just like to Canvas for this painting was it was blank. And then an artist came along and put paint on it to depict water and sky and ships and boats. And to make this beautiful painting that I look at every day in my office. So that truck is going to be a canvas for you. You want to think about it as a way to express to your potential customers what you are and who you are and what you serve. So when you're looking at that, I think of all the things you can do, not only placing your menu on there. But all the different colors are the different pictures, all of the things that you can do with it to really show the customers your personality and how you're going to interact with them and draw them in. So when they're at a distance looking at your truck, they can look and say, Wow, that's really attractive. There's something about it that says, I want to walk over there and see what's going on because it's going to reflect who you are and your personality. So make sure you look at that truck because a canvas and put your personality on that canvas. Now you can have some companies that will do the painting in all the artwork for you. Most of them will, in this case, the accompany just took the basic black truck. So how do you get a truck like that and what's it going to cost? Something like that is probably gonna be. But $100 thousand. Average food trucks are going to run from, say, 50 to 150 thousand, maybe upwards of $200 thousand depending on how big and how beautifully fit it out. It is. But again, something like that. It's gonna be roughly around a $100 thousand mark can give or take brand-new. So when buying a truck like that, what are your options? Well, if you have plenty of savings and you have great credit, you can go to the company and you can buy it outright. If you have the money, you can finance it. And you can either go through the in-house financing that the company will have. So when you go to them, they're probably going to have a financing option just like when you go to Ford or Toyota and buy a car, they have in-house financing options, while most likely the company about the trunk firm will have the same sort of in-house financing options for you. Another financing option is going to be going through your bank, the one you use for your personal and hopefully business banking. So you can really solidify and extend that relationship with them. So if you're going to borrow money from them, first of all, you should already have a relationship with them. So that puts you in a good position to get money from them. They're going to want to loan money to you if you've been a good customer. So it's going to make it potentially a little bit easier. But the other thing is when you borrow money from them for your trucking or paying it off every month, as you should be doing, is going to show that you're a good credit risk. So if down the road you want to get money to expand your business or you're going through a rough patch and you need a little bit of money to get over that rough patch. So you need a short-term loan. That bank is gonna be very likely in wanting to lend to you because of the good relationship that you have with them because you've been paying back the truck loan that you have. So that business banking relationship can be very, very valuable. So one of the first ways you can really start to solidify that relationship is by getting your banking loan through them for your truck. So let's say you can't afford a new truck. What are the other options? Will of course, you can buy used. And I did mention earlier that you can get trailers. Trailers is gonna be less expensive if that's going to work for you. And if you want to go use, there are many options. You can look locally on Craigslist and other avenues for finding used food trucks. They're out there. You can find people who already own food trucks and ask them if they know of anybody that has a used food truck that they're trying to get rid of, you can buy it. Or if somebody has a new food truck and they have their old food trucks are sitting in their driveway doing nothing. If you can't afford to buy it outright. How about going to them and say, Hey, can we work out a deal? Can I rent it from you? Can I lease it with an option to buy and get into the business to airway. It's gonna be a low-cost way of doing it. It may not be exactly the truck you want, but it's gonna be a great alternative in a way to get you in, to get your feet wet and to allow you to build up a customer base to give you enough business to start thinking about getting the money to buy a truck. So you can get creative just like you want to get creative with the outside of the truck and how you present it in all the pictures you put on it, in the food you cook. You want to get creative with how you do your financing and how you get trucks. The reality is if you want a truck, you're going to find a way to get one. There's always an opportunity, There's always a way there's some way out there. There's some truck for you. If you really want to get into this food truck business, you just get a fair way to do it. So if you meet barriers, if you come to two walls and you can't get through them, you need to figure out a way over them, around them, under them to get to your goal, which is getting that food trucks you didn't get up and running. Alright, so that's it for the food truck module. Hope you enjoyed it. Let's move on to the next module. See you there. 3. Business Structure : Everyone, welcome back. In this module, I want to spend a few moments talking to you about the type of business structure or business ownership that you're gonna be using with your food truck business. And here we have three basic options. We have the corporation, we have the LLC, and we have the sole proprietorship. So let's talk a little bit about all of those. First, the corporation, and we all know corporations, McDonald's and Coca-Cola, Apple, they're all incorporated companies. It's a very broad, very complex form of business ownership. It can be very expensive. And it's just way, way more than what we need for a food truck business. And for most small entrepreneurs, corporation is just definitely not the way to go. It's really for larger businesses. So let's take the corporation form of business ownership off the table and dismiss that one. Let's look the two remaining ones. We have the LLC and we have the sole proprietorship. So the sole proprietorship is really the simplest. Essentially you hang your shingle out as Joe Smith's Food Truck and you're up and running. There is no legal separation between you and the business. You are the business and the business is you you're wanting the same thing. There's no paperwork to fill out. There should be no fee because there's no structure there. So again, it's simple, it's essentially free, and it's very fast. The LLC is a little bit more complex. The LLC stands for a limited liability corporation. And its most basic form, it's actually a form of partnership, but most people are not partners that you use it. You don't have to have a partner. Most people that use an LLC are not part of partnerships. The great advantage of an LLC is that it protects you. So let's take a scenario here. Let's say somebody sues your food truck business because they slipped and they hit their head on the side of the serving table in front of your truck and slice it open so they're suing you. It could happen if you're a sole proprietor and they sue you, they are suing you. Remember what I said? There's no separation between you and the business. You are the business and the businesses use. So when they're suing you, they think they're suing the business, but there were also suing you and the lawyer is going to get everything you have into that lawsuit, your home, your savings, anything you have like stocks, your car, everything could be on the chopping block. As far as that lawsuit is concerned, There's a tremendous amount of personal liability with being a sole proprietor. If we go to the LLC form of ownership, if they sue you, they're suing the business, but they're not suing you because the LLC has created a separation, has created a legal entity out of that business. So they can sue the business and if they win, they can do damage to the business, potentially close it, maybe depending on how the lawsuit is filed and how your insurances work in such. But they're not going to touch you. At least they shouldn't be able to because there's a separation. So your home, your car, your savings, your checking account, all those personal items should be protected using the LLC. Now, the disadvantage of the LLC is that there is filing paperwork to take care of and there's a fee associated with that. But in most states, you should be able to file an LLC for probably less than $1000 in as a fee for the person who's filing for you and then the state fee, the state is going to want a certain amount of money for filing that. But again, you should be able to do this for less than $1000 in most states, you can go to a local lawyer who could do it for you. Potentially your account or CPA can do it for you mind? Can you can also go to your bank or your insurance agent. They might be able do it for you or at least recommend somebody who can do it for you. So again, this is where these relationships we've been talking about, fostering these local relationships that can come into play and help you out. So you've filed the paperwork. You can also go online to something like Legal Zoom in. They can do it for you and just about every state. So my recommendation to you is do the LLC if you can afford it. If you absolutely can't, you can go with sole proprietor. But I'd recommend putting a few dollars aside and making sure you do the LLC so you're protected. It's going to help you sleep better at night, knowing that your personal life and your business life are separate and your personal life is not in jeopardy. Alright, so that's it for how to form a business, the business ownership and structure. Let's move on to the next module. Thanks. 4. Argh: Permits, Licenses, etc: All right everybody. So in this lesson, what I wanna do is talk to you a little bit about all the types of permits and licenses that you may need to get your food truck business up and running legally. I want to point out that this is going to differ from one state to another, even within the state from one town or city to another. The requirements could be different. So you really want to pay attention to what your local codes require you to do. So therefore, I can't give you an exact listing of the things you're going to need, but I can give you a rough overview of what you should look for in the things you can expect to need to apply for it. So why don't we get right into that. The first thing is going to be registering your business. So for me, for example, I live in a smaller town. I can just go down to my town clerk's office. I can get the forum for registering my business, fill it out, bring it back down with whatever the fee happens to be, and drop it off. Sometimes the building department wants to get involved in this because they want to make sure that whatever type of business you're running out of your home, assuming you are running it out of your home, that that structure is suitable for that type of business. Now, one note here. If you are running the business out of your home and you rent rather than own, you may need to get approval from your landlord to run the business out of that location. So that's the case. Make sure you find out if you do, and then contact your landlord and say, Hey, this is what I'm thinking of doing. Are you okay with that? If so, can you send me a letter dated letters setting that yes, you are okay with having me run this business out of that. You will need to submit that letter with your registration if you are a renter. So make sure you take care of that. Now, one other interesting thing here you may not know is that when you go down to the bank to open up your business checking account, they're going to want to see proof that you've registered your business so he can't just go in and open up a business checking account these days. You need to register your business. So they're gonna be very happy to have your business. They'll want that business checking account, but they need to see proof that you've registered the business first. So make sure you go take care of that process. It's usually not longer than a week or two at the most to get your business registered, especially if you have everything in place such as a letter from your landlord. But go take care of that as soon as you get it. You can get out of your bank and you can get your business checking account up and running so you're all set. The other thing I want to talk about is an EIN number, and this is not through your town or city, it's not through the state. Is stands for employer identification number and this is through the IRS. So if you plan on hiring any employees at all, you definitely have to have one of these. It's essentially like your business's social security number. Just like you have a social security number and use it on your taxes, you're going to use that EIN number on the businesses taxes. If you don't have any employees at all, you don't need to have this. You can use your social security number even if you were an LLC. But again, if you plan on hiring any employees at all, even if you think you might down the road, it's really in your best interests to get that EIN. Let's say for example, all of a sudden a big job comes your way for next week and you really want to go take care of it. But you need some help and you can get somebody to help you out and pay them. But there's no possible way you can get that EIN number in one week. It's going to take many weeks or even a few months to get that EIN returned to you. So when you're starting your business up, just apply for the EIN. If you think you're going to ever have any employees, then you've got it in your file, you're all set to go. So again, that's through the IRS website. The other thing and this is really obvious, but I'm going to bring it up anyway, and that is a driver's license. This is not like a McDonald's. We're just going to sit on a lot and just stay there. You're driving this restaurant around. So make sure you have whatever driver's licenses you need to drive your truck around legally. Now, you may need a CDL license, commercial driver's license, probably not, but you may particularly depending on the size of the vehicle that you're driving. So make sure you determine what it is you're gonna be driving and then check with the Registry of Motor Vehicles perhaps in your state and see if you do need to CDL, that chances are you don't, but you might. So just make sure you check into that and make sure you have the right license for the right type of vehicle that you're driving, make sure you don't get on the wrong side of the law with regards to that. Another thing is you're going to need a permit, also known as a food service license. So because this is a food-based business, unlike say, a painting business, you're gonna have to deal with the health department, which usually encompasses the people who deal with food. So they're going to want to make sure that you're running your truck in a proper sanitary ware that's going to prevent people from getting sick. They're going to want to come down and they're going to want to see that there are, for example, ample hand-washing stations. So employees commissioner, their hands are washed. They're going to want to see that food is stored in a proper way at the proper temperatures. They're going to want to see perhaps even that you've sourced your foods from an approved vendor. They don't want to thank you've gotten your meat from some guy in the street corner who's selling it out of the back of his truck. That's not very sanitary. They don't want to see that. They want to see that you're getting your foods, especially meats, things like that, from somebody who is a recognized and approved food vendor who also abides by proper health department laws for how they store their food and sell it. So you want to take a look at that? They also would probably want to see that. The fire department or the fire inspector has come down and taking a look at your truck and has approved it. And so you're probably going to have most definitely a fire extinguisher on board, at least one. You may need to have fire suppression system in your hood, your ventilation hood, and you're probably gonna need to have an emergency exit out the back so you have more than one egress if there's a fire. So make sure you abide by that. You can show that to the health inspector. They may also want to do things like calibrate your meat thermometers and make sure that you're cooking meats to the proper temperature so that people don't get sick. It's really all focused and centered around making sure that your customers don't get sick. For example, if you're using raw chicken in the preparation of your food, they definitely don't want to see that you're taking a piece of raw chicken out of the fridge and then putting it on the counter where you're also going to be assembling the final sandwich, putting it there, and then putting it into the fryer later or the oven, whatever you're doing with that piece of chicken and then put a piece of almost finished food on that same counter and then hand it to the customer. That's very unsanitary. So they want to see that there's no opportunities for cross-contamination. They want to see that things are stored properly. They want to see that you've gotten your food from approved vendors, all these things. And you will understand and learn very quickly what it is these inspectors are looking for. I've dealt with a lot of inspectors for a lot of different reasons over the years. One thing I learned was that every inspectors seems to have his or her thing, their pet peeve that they look for, they want to see you're doing right? So you can find this, you can find this out by talking to the food inspector even before you have the inspection by saying, Hey, I'm starting up this food truck, my name is Joe Smith. What are some of the things you think I should really pay attention to their prey going to tell you right then and there, the things that they're really picky about. So listen to that. Take notes if you need to, and then make sure when they come down to your truck that those things they mentioned are taking care of. You want to make sure everything is done, but make sure those things in particular are taken care of. And when they come down and inspect, make note of the things that they may have said to you about this needing to be different or changing. Because the chances are, those are the things they're going to pay attention to the next time. And if they see that you're paying attention and you're taking care of those things to the best extent possible. It's going to make your life so much easier. Because you're going to, you're going to show them that you're very serious about their responsibilities and what they're trying to do. And so when you need to get that signature on that card that allows me to keep operating. But they're gonna be much more likely to give it if they see, you're trying hard to abide by the things that they think are important. So make sure you do those things. And lastly is going to be a food handlers permit or card or certificates. And this essentially is training that really shows you how to do the things we just talked about, about how to properly keep things, sanitize, how to properly handle food, and all the things that are encompassed within safety within a restaurant. So when you have one of those, you're gonna go through training to get this permit or certificate or a license and whatever it's called in your state. And you can show that to the food inspector. You may be required to have it and most likely, you're gonna go through that training. You're going to get that permit or certificate or license, and then you'll have that on file as well. Now another thing we'll talk about in another lesson, and that is a parking permit of some sort because we can't just park anywhere you want, but we're going to talk about that in a different module. So that's it. Make sure you Bye, bye. All these rules, all these regulations. They're very important. They are for the safety of your customers there, for your benefit. You literally do not want to be known as a, as a food truck that hurts people with the quality of food that poisons people, that makes them sick. You don't want to do that and you do not want to get on the bad side of any of these inspectors. So as much work as it is, as difficult as it may be some times, make sure you go through all the right rules and regulations apply for all the right permits and abide by the rules that are there for you to keep you and your customers safe and coming back for more and making you more money. Alright, so that's it for this one. Let's move on to another module. Thanks. 5. The Dreaded "I" Word: Insurance: Alright guys, why don't we spend a moment talking about something nobody really likes talking about, and that is insurance. I know, I know nobody wants to really talk about insurance, but it isn't necessary evil. And if you're running a business, you're going to have to have some insurances on that business and also on the workplace, which is gonna be your vehicle. So let's just take a couple of minutes to look at a few of the policies you might need to have so you can get your business approved to operate. The first one is going to be a general liability insurance policy which essentially every business has to have. This is going to protect you, let's say for example, someone eat your food and get sick because you didn't properly refrigerated and they file a lawsuit against you. The general liability insurance could help protect you against that. Let's say somebody slips and falls on the front of the trunk because you didn't shovel it off or the city didn't shovel it off. Even though you don't own that sidewalk, you don't own that property, it's conceivable that you can be brought into a suit for that person's injuries. So the general liability policy could again help protect you and that sort of situation. Moving on to another policy, workers compensation. If you have any employees, you're probably going to be required to have workers compensation insurance. So if your workers get injured in any way on the job, the workers compensation policy will kick in even if they cut their hand and they need to get stitches and they go to the emergency room. If it was an injury sustained while on the job, the Workers Compensation will cover it. Their personal health insurance will not. So this is a really essential type of insurance. If you don't have any employees, you probably don't need to worry about this at all. Property damage insurance. And there's a couple of types here. There's gonna be property damage insurance for just the vehicle or the trailer, and then also the contents. So this is fire theft, vandalism. These policies could help you protect against that type of loss. You want to make sure that the vehicle is covered and also the contents. You can get policies which we'll cover just the vehicle against those types of losses. And then policies which will cover the content. So you can conceivably have coverage that covers the vehicle only. But all your contents, your refrigeration equipment, your grills, everything are used for cooking. The contents might not be covered against fire or vandalism. So you want to make sure that you have both those things covered because you will invest a tremendous amount of money in the contents and the equipment on the inside. So make sure the vehicle, the truck or the trailers covered and also the contents. And then lastly, you're gonna be looking at a normal auto liability type policy like you would have for your car. It's interesting that this is a unique aspect of the food truck business. Your auto liability policy or regular auto insurance policy which you have for the truck, will apply once the vehicle is moving. So when you're going from your home to the workplace or to get supplies. The auto liability policy or the audit policy is what you're looking at in terms of coverage. Once you stop, that policy essentially is inactive for that period of time, usually. And that's when your general liability policy is going to be taking over. So you can see that there's multiple different policies and depending on what you're doing, whether you're moving or not and what the type of issue is. These different types of policies are going to kick in at different times. So again, insurance is not fun, but it isn't necessary evil. It's one of those things you have to take into account. You need to take the cost of those insurances into account, which we're going to look at a little bit later with regards to markup on your food. But make sure you call a good broker in your town. There's insurance brokers all over the place, insurance agents and just about every town. So call went up and tell them what you're doing and they can make sure that the outfit you with a good policy or multiple policies. And you can just work from there, just like with your bank and foster a good relationship with that person. Alright, so that's it. Let's move on to the next module. Thanks for watching. 6. Location, Location, Location: Alright, so I wanted to talk to you in this lesson about something that I touched on in the last lesson, and that is parking your restaurant. One of the great advantages of owning a food truck is that it's mobile. You can go from one location to another and you can go where the people are. That's great, but it does add a little bit to the complexity of running your business and a body by whatever rules and regulations there are for mobile businesses. In some places like New York City, very populous places, there are real strict rules and regulations as to where you can park and can park. And while I've never been a food truck business there, I can assure you that I've heard that they will shut you down very quickly and they will find you very quickly if you're not abiding by those rules and regulations. So what you wanna do is you want to talk to you, most likely the people we mentioned in the last lesson to town clerk's City clerk or the health inspector, food inspector. And find out from them, Hey, where are the places that I can park? Most likely those are the people that actually will determine where you can park. And they're always going to let you know what hours you can operate. If you're not able to operate very early in the morning or late in the afternoon or whatever. If there's any special rules and regulations with regards to that, they can tell you if there is a special permit that you need. They're most likely going to be the people who issued those permits. So talk to them, find out what the rules and regulations are and make sure you fill out for any parking permits you need to get. Clearly when you're looking for locations, you want to find places where there are gonna be people. So during weekdays, you want to find places where there are people working and they're going to be on their lunch breaks, they're going to come out and go to your food truck. So that could be an office parks. Again, in city environments where there's a lot of people. You don't want to just park in any old street corner and assume people are going to come. Although I will tell you that in my town, there is a guy with a hotdog trailer truck. He's been there for years and he's parked in a very small parking lot just in front of a small park area. And people were there every day. I think he opens up around 103011 o'clock and there are people there every single day. There's no businesses right there within walking distance, everybody has to come and drive to that location and they do. So. It's not absolutely essential that you have people in office buildings right there within walking distance. But it helps this guy that was proof that you don't necessarily have to have that, but he's been there for years. And so his reputation as there are people who've driven by for years and seen him. So they decided to stop one day. I'm sure it took time to build up that visibility even though it was right there and excellent main road. It took time for people to come in and build his book of business up. So you want to really look for where people are. Obviously there, you're going to be your customers. The weekdays that's generally where people are working. On the weekends, you're going to try and find fares and festivals That's especially effective and prominent during the fall years in the Northeast and the North where they're going to be having those sorts of fall festivals as such. You want to find those, see if you can contact the fair or Festival organizer and see if he can bring your food truck there. Usually they're going to be really happy to have you. They may have, again, rules and regulations with regards to how many trucks they can have or how many they can accommodate, but reach out to them if you can't get in there this year. Strike up the relationship. Again, it's a relationship. Things strike their relationship up, keep in touch with them. Maybe you can get in next year. It's going to take time. So you build these relationships. And with time, those relationships are like plant in the acorn or the oak tree. They grow into something very big, but you gotta give a time. So again, you'll want to make sure you look at all the rules and regulations with regards to where you can park, where you can park any hours you need to operate within weekdays. You want to find a place that is going to have people working, coming out on your lunch breaks to go to your truck weekends. You want to look for fairs, festivals, sporting events, for example. Anything where there's gonna be people. You can go there and hopefully start developing a good book of business and get your reputation now. Alright, so that's it for this one. Thanks for watching. Let's move on to the next lesson. 7. Designing Your Menu: Alright, welcome back. So in this module I want to spend a few moments talking to you about designing your menu. This is not a course about different ingredients and foods. This is a business course, not a cooking class. So we're not going to talk about that sort of thing. I just want to keep you aware of and make sure you remember that when you're designing your menu, you really need to keep one overarching theme in your mind. And that is that this is a food truck. You're not dealing with a standalone restaurant. We have lots of space for storage, for preparation, that sort of thing. It's a food truck. So your menu needs to be designed with that in mind. So when you're doing your menu design, you can put running the top of the paper. This is a food truck and remind yourself that you're working within the confines of that space. Let's go back from it and just think about that video that we saw about that Tulsa food truck, which is amazing to see the numbers that are doing. It appeared and I don't know what type of sandwich that was, but they had abundant or they're putting it looked like perhaps a cucumber into and then clicking some meats and then they had some french fries and I'm sure they have some drinks. So my guess is that that sandwich, whatever it is, that Tulsa sandwich is their main offering and perhaps they have different versions of that sandwich. They may have different types of toppings or a dressings, that sort of thing. But my guess is that's essentially what they're doing. That's their category, that sandwich, whatever it is, the fries. Maybe there's another type of sideDish, but I guess it's mostly fries. And then a few different types of drinks. And they're taking that one sandwich. First of all, you can see that they can prepare a lot of it beforehand. The bonds they can cut up before they open up, put the cucumbers or whatever that was inside of it. The meats look like a, perhaps was either chicken or pork, along with some vegetables being cooked on the griddle that could be prepared that morning or the evening before in their home kitchen and then refrigerated and brought to the site. And then they cook it as they need it, prepare it, and then serve it to the customer. But that sandwich is most likely their thing. They're category, they're known for it. So they're just killing, killing that category, whatever that sandwiches they sell hundreds and thousands of them each week. And it's very simple to prepare. You have the bread which doesn't require cold storage. You have the chicken, which does require cold storage, your fries, which most likely are frozen, but perhaps they're prepared fresh. So very simple, very basic. And then they sell to the customer through the window, they move on to the next one. So really, really simple. I know a guy with a hot dog cart. Very simple. He has hot dogs, he has buns. He has some onions if you want it. And then outside and the table are your condiments, mustard, ketchup, that sort of thing. So really simple. He's only storing the hot dogs in the cold storage his drinks, which I think he actually has a cooler for. And then husbands which don't require cold storage. The onions. You don't require cold storage for those as well. You just prepare them as you go and if they're old, couple of days old, you just get rid of them. So really, really simple. When he gets home, he can just take those boxes of hot dogs out, put them in his fridge and his garage or when his house and he's all set for the next day. So that's really what you wanna do when you're designing this menu. If you're going down the menu and all of a sudden you get 50 items. You're going way too long, that's way too much stuff. You need a back-off. You need to think about the one thing that you're really going to do. I'm just going to kill that category. I know one of the guy with a food truck that does southern food. So brisket, ribs pulled pork, but he specializes in one food per day. So Fridays maybe pulled pork Saturdays maybe brisket because you can only carry again so much of that in the truck. So he kills a category each day and then he moves on and recycles each week and goes through it. So you've got to think about what you're doing when you're preparing. So when you're designing this menu, the overall overarching theme is that you've got a food truck and you've got a very small envelope within which to work. So your storage is limited, your preparation is, your area's limited. If you have a food that requires all sorts of different steps, it's probably not very practical. You may love that food, but it's not practical to serve in the food truck. Certain things like flaming baked Alaska, you may love that, but it's not practical for a food truck. So when you're designing this, you obviously want to food that's going to appeal to the people that you think is going to build excitement. But it's also going to be very simple and easy to prepare fresh right there for the customers, serve it out to them and move on to the next customer. So when you're doing your class project, you really need to keep that in mind. And also for your actual food truck, you're within a food truck, you're going to be very limited. You're going to be very concise, really hone in on the things that are going to sell high-volume for you that you can make good profit in markup on. Alright, so that's it for the menu. Of course, hope you enjoyed it. Let's move on to the next one. 8. Show Me the Money: Alright, welcome back and welcome to this module. So in this one, I want to talk to you a little bit about markup and profit making money with your food truck? Yes. You're doing your food truck is you want a job that you love. You want to have some fun, but it is a business and you need to run it efficiently and profitably. And you want to make money above and beyond your expenses. So after you pay for all your expenses, you pay yourself, your employees, all those sorts of things. You definitely want to have money left over a profit. And you know, don't shy away from profit. There are people that a little bit uncomfortable with profits thinking is somehow a bad thing. Profits are a great thing. Profits mean you're running your business very, very well and efficiently. Profits mean you can pay yourself and live a comfortable life the way you deserve for all your hard work. Profit means that you can grow and expand your business. Profit means that you can reward your employees for all their hard work. And it means the if you want to, you can contribute to society, to the community in which you live and help those that are in need. So profits are a great, great thing. Don't shy away from it. That's the whole point of your business, at least from a financial standpoint, is to make money above and beyond your expenses and to get a profit. So what we're gonna do is we're going to take a look at this. I've got some graphics. So let's go over to my desktop and we'll take a look at that. Alright, so let's take a quick look at markup and profit with your food truck. So what are your first orders of business is going to be determined your COGS, which stands for cost of goods sold. So this is all the things that it's going to go into making whatever finished product are given to the customer. If it's gonna be a hot dog, it's gonna be the been, the hot dog itself, maybe some onions, that sort of thing. Let's take a look at a burger example. So deconstructing the hamburger, Let's take a look at it piece by piece. So the button is going to be $0.52 and that's very easy. You're going to take how many bonds you buy her price and just divide that number route to get to a cost per bun, let us $0.12. So this is a little bit harder to determine, but let's say you put one head of lettuce out and you track how many burgers you get out of one head of lettuce and just divide that cost by the number of burgers. And you can get to your cost per burger. Same thing with the onion rings here. It's one sense. The lettuce is $0.12 tomatoes, $0.07. So you need to do a little bit of experimentation with all these things and kinda determine what your costs are per burger. And these prices are going to fluctuate because those raw material prices will fluctuate. Lettuce, onions, tomatoes, those things are marketed. Items are gonna be fluctuating daily, but you can get a rough idea and a good approximation for where you are. The beef of course, is the biggest part at a $1.5, then your condiments, you're just gonna have to take a really good educated guess at this pretty low-cost $0.03 to sense, and $0.04 altogether. So everything on this burger example as up to a $1.86. Now they're approaching this slightly differently. They're looking at wanting to achieve an average finished selling price of $9, which equals an average markup of 384%. Let's say, for example, though, that you don't know exactly what you want your finished price to be, but you want to make sure you're making enough money. So if we know that our cost of goods sold is a $1.86 and using a standard 300% markup. And I have standard in parentheses because they're really actually is no truly standardized markup in the industry. But I found this to be fairly common. A 300% markup, we get you to, uh, finish price of $7.44. And you can take that price and you can round it to a more even numbers such as $758, et cetera. When a calculator just take 300 per cent and add that to your cost of goods sold to get to the selling price was 744. And again, round it to whatever number is more comfortable for you to deal with. That's really going to be a good starting point. But in order to understand your profit better and your expenses better, you need to look a little bit more deeply and dive deeper into your expenses. So let's take a look at some of the following things you're going to need to take into account some of the overhead expenses, the cost of owning the truck, your monthly payment on the truck, or your lease payment, the insurance is on the truck, any upkeep, fuel, etc. The desired salary that you want to take out of the truck, do you need to figure that out? That's very important. Any insurances such as liability and workers comp insurance, advertising expenses, fees such as permits, licenses, etc. These may be yearly fees. So you can just take those amounts and divide it by 12 to get to your monthly costs, any employee salaries, and really any other type of costs that you incur or running your food truck business, those are all included in the monthly expenses and those should be added in. So if we do a little bit more math, let's say that all the non COGS expenses add up to $10 thousand per month. The things we just looked at, the equal $10 thousand per month. If you're selling 5 thousand burgers per month, you would have $2 of overhead costs attributable to each burger. That's $10 thousand divided by 5 thousand. Adding that to your cogs of a $1.86 per burger gets you to $3.86 of costs and overhead per burger. If you sell each burger at 750, you left with $3.64 in profit. So that's it. I don't know how realistic these are. You may not be able to sell 5 thousand burgers per month. But keep in mind, not only going to be selling burgers, but you're also going to be sewing fries and ships and drinks. So the number should even out pretty well. Obviously your numbers can be vastly different, but this gives you a basic idea of what you're looking at in terms of figuring out your cost, figuring out what you're selling price should be, and making sure that you're getting a profit out of every sale. Alright, so there you have it, markup and profit and your food truck. And the reality is that discussion was really, it's not even tip of the iceberg, that's like a snowflake on top of the iceberg of this massive, massive subject and can be discussed in so many different ways. What I gave you with just a taste, a real sliver of information that allows you to hopefully understand better how to mark up your food and get started in a profitable way. There's lots of different things we can look out here and there's lots of research you can do on your own. I do want to say one thing. If you're ever in a situation where for whatever reason your truck or whatever business you're in. But here we're talking about food trucks is not making any money. You're spending more than you're bringing in. Let me tell you from experience, you need to stop right away and assess why that's happening. Don't keep going because something's wrong. The whole point here is to bring in more cash than you put out. Again, we talked about profits. That's the whole point here. Even breaking even is it's okay, you're not losing money, but you still want to take in above and beyond. You need to have that rainy day fund. You need to have those profits to grow your business. Profit is the whole point. So if you're at a point where you're taking you're paying out more than you're taking in. Again, stop immediately. Figure out what's going on and change it. Lower your costs, raise your prices, which is usually the two things you have here. You can change those two things to change your profit equation. You've got to do one of those two things or both of them to start making money. Don't ever, ever keep operating a business that is not making money and in fact, his losing your money and forcing you to draw funds out to see your personal savings or from a spouse's income. Don't ever do it. Stop right away and reassess. Alright, so that's it for this lesson. I hope it helped you out. Let's go onto the next one. 9. Say it, and they will come. Advertising.: Okay, everybody, welcome back to the course. In today's lesson, what I want to talk to you about is marketing or advertising your business getting the word out there. And when I say marketing and advertising people think is essentially the same thing while they're connected. Advertising is a part of marketing. Back many years ago when I was in college and studied marketing, there was what we call the four Ps, product, price, promotion and placement of those for promotion would be the advertising component. So advertising is a part of marketing, but there are different aspects to it. But we're talking about here is advertising, or at least getting the word out. So people know about your food truck. So the first thing is the obvious one, which is the people you know, your social circles, that can be physical social circles, people you see in your neighborhood, your family people you see at work. So you wanna make sure you let all those people know about what you're doing, be proud of what you're doing. Put it out there and let them know these can be potentially some of your greatest customers, your biggest cheerleaders. So make sure all these people know about what you're doing and show them how excited you are to get them excited to make them want to come down. And then beyond that physical social circle, today we are have the advantage of something like Facebook. We have social media, facebook, Instagram, Twitter, wherever you happen to use to get the word out and connect with people. So where are your physical social circle, maybe this big, your social circle on social media, maybe this big. Now granted, those may be people that you've actually may have never met, but there's still people you're connected to. So they may potentially be great customers. So you wanna make sure you get out there and let all those people know what you're doing. You want to set up a page, if you can, a business page on Facebook or whatever social circle platform, a social media platform you're using. And make sure you put your business truck up there and make sure you put pictures pictures of you, pictures of the truck, pictures of your food. Because pictures do say a thousand words are worth a thousand words. And then let all those people know when a continuous basis, not just once, many, many times, what you're doing, This is gonna be my grand opening date. Here's the food. We're really excited about it. Keep pushing it and let them know that you're out there. You can't just do it once. And I'm going to talk about that at the end of this lesson. One thing, one post, one ad doesn't work. It's not the way it works. It never will work that way. So make sure you get a regimen going at least once a day or if not once a day than a few times a week of getting posts out there. If nothing else, with a picture your food so that they see your active in a kind of whet their appetite, so to speak, literally and figuratively for coming down to visit your truck. So use every bit of social circle, everywhere that you are connected to people. Make sure you use those opportunities to let those people know that you're going to be opening this food truck and really invite them to come down and be a part of your grand opening celebration and ongoing customers as well. Beyond that, this is an avenue that I discovered many years ago. A lot of people don't know about it. It's called BMI, BMI Business Networking International. They have chapters all across the country, thousands of them, in fact, they're international now, it's a really cool group is for business owners, local business owners. And if you get accepted into the group, you're going to be the only person in the group who does what you do. So you should theoretically be the only person who does a food truck. There's gonna be a lawyer, although in my group that was different lawyers because one lawyers specialized and I think it was real estate law. The other person specialized in family law. And while they could kinda do the same thing, stay specialized in those things, there wasn't any strict overlap. So you're going to be the only person in there. And you're going to get to meet all these other local business owners who could potentially become customers and also could promote your business to their customers and to their families and friends. And I actually found it to be very beneficial for a couple of reasons. Number one, I did actually get customers out of it and did work for them. So that was good. The other thing is if you're a person who's a bit shy as I am and you are a little bit nervous about public speaking. When you go into the group every week, you have to stand up and do what's known as a commercial for yourself. So you get up there and you stand up and you're going to talk about your business. You may change it up a little bit every week just to have a slightly different emphasis of what you want to speak about. But you can have roughly one to two minutes to do this commercial. So if you're at all shy in a bit nervous about public speaking and a lot of us are, That's a great way to just kinda force yourself into a situation where you're not going to be after a while, you're not gonna be shy, you're not gonna be nervous, or at least not as nervous as you may be currently thinking about public speaking. A business owner really should be able to get up in public and speak about their business. Some people are better at it than others. But public speaking is one of those things you can get better at if you do force yourself into a situation like BMI where you're forced to speak all the time and it's a good easy way. People are very forgiving. And so really getting up there for 403540 minutes, speech is very short, a minute or two, and then going to sit down. So I highly recommend you go there, you can go and attend a meeting for free, check it out, and then you will have to go through an interview process. Hopefully you get accepted, but go check it out and see what you think. I think you might really find it to be a very beneficial. So beyond that, we're going to start looking now at the paid advertisement you can do online. And we think of Google or Facebook, that sort of thing. So let's just take a look at Google and I put this up on the screen for you to take a look at. So when you get to the Google Ads homepage, this is what you're going to see. You'll notice that there is some information across the top you can click on to get more information about the how R works and how Google Ads is structured. You will notice a phone number, which is a great thing about Google. You can talk to somebody and get some information. So if you want to do over the phone, you can, you can also do this on your phone with your smartphone by downloading the Google Ads app, you can scroll down and get some more information. I found Google asked to be very, very easy to work with. I have created ads based on just using my phone, my smartphone. And it's very simple, very easy, and I found it to be very cost-effective. You can target the ads really geographically. So you can just really pinpoint the area that you're going to be. And that becomes very effective and very cost-effective as well. So Google Ads is one thing you can take a look at. Now, let's take a look at another avenue we're all very familiar with, and that's gonna be Facebook ads. So let me get that up on the screen for you. Show you what you're going to look at when you get to the Google Ads page, you notice in the top left corner that it says Meta, that's what Facebook is calling itself now, meetup. But under Meta is Facebook. So you can see there's gonna be some information there. There is no phone number on this one, but there's a great deal of info, educational resources, technologies, and inspiration. Create an ad in the top right corner. Click on it and you can create an ad. So a lot of info here just on this. And then when you sign in, you'll be creating a Facebook ads manager account. One thing I want to see about Facebook is I'm fairly new to Facebook advertising, but I have found them to be very, very strict. They have a strict code of ethics as to how their ads are setup and making sure there's nothing inappropriate, there's no copyright infringements. And they are very, very strict about it. So I've heard of people getting there as rejected and they weren't even sure why they were rejected. They were not inappropriate adds really. But there's small little things that can really trigger the rejection. So you need to be very patient in your research and make sure you're creating the ads based on what they say they need to abide by. Make sure you do that so you don't risk any rejection. Because I have heard of people submitting several ads. They keep getting rejected and they can actually be banned at a certain point. And again, there isn't necessarily a lot of explanation as to why which can be frustrating, but they are straight. So just keep that in mind when dealing with Facebook. Let's take a look at another one, and that's gonna be next door. So I really liked the idea next door because it's hyperlocal advertising. And this is because we're built on the neighborhood concept. That's why they call it next door. So when you go on there, you can create your free business page, which is like a profile page. Immediately you can start posting for free, which I really like. You can post the people in your area just based on the zip codes that you want to be in, the geography you want to be in. And then beyond that, you can also supplement the free posting by using paid ads. So it's a fairly new concept to me, but I've looked into it, I've tried it and use it. It looks really good. I like it. And again, I like that hyperlocal, that neighborhood concept. And it seems like more of a community compared to something like a Facebook, which can be a little bit colder. So you may want to give something like next door advertising and try with all these with Google, with Facebook, with Instagram. Instagram is a part of Facebook. Also, you could do YouTube, which is a part of Google. So Google owns YouTube. Facebook owns Instagram, where you can try the next door as well. I like next door just because of how easy it is and how local is. But I was going to say that with all these, you can start with a very minimal amount of money. You can start with just a few bucks a day, $5.10 dollars if you can do $10 per day, That's what I recommend, which roughly equates out to 3 $310 per month. So if you can afford to do that and just have a constant add running a certain number of impressions every day. That's gonna be really beneficial. If you can't do ten, then try $5 per day and you can always shut them off or pause them when you need to. If you're running into a cold period for money, you can shut them off for a couple of weeks and then turn them back on. So that's one of the great things about all these platforms as you can really start small and then build from there. That's the next door. I really recommend trying that one and let me know what you think. What I want to point out about marketing and particularly about advertising, and this is the mistake I made. I don't want you to make this mistake. A part of my teaching all this is to help you guys benefit from what I've learned in the mistakes I've made and hopefully you don't make them. Because I've been around for a long time and done a lot of businesses and One of the mistakes I made when I first was very young and first started advertising was that I thought I could take out a few ads and the local media and I would get some business out of those ads. And I can live off those for several weeks or in a few months depending on how big the jobs were. And then when I needed to, I could advertise again, it's simply doesn't work that way. You really need to constantly be in front of the public. If a word, we could just do one or two words than McDonald's and Coca Cola would just do one great ad during the Super Bowl. And then live off the revenue in the business from those ads for an entire year and then do it again next year. It doesn't work that way. We see add France from them all the time. Well, why is that? Because advertising is like building a relationship. Here again, we're talking about relationships, but it's so true when you're advertising that ad that the person sees whether it's in print media or in your neighborhood, or if it's on Google or next door, whatever it is you're doing. That ad or an impression as they call it impressions. That impression that's impressing upon the people to give them an impression of you, what you're like. You're essentially you're building a relationship each time you see that ad. It's another brick and the foundation of that relationship. But it takes a lot of bricks to build that relationship. It'd be great if I could give you a formula that allows you to get people right off the bat. And you may, which would be fantastic. But advertising is a relationship. You're building that relationship with the customer, your potential customers. Every time the ad runs, you make yourself a little bit more familiar to them. You warm that relationship up a little bit. And then months could be months or years where they feel comfortable in their inspired to come down to see your truck or to go to your store or whatever it is you're running food truck in this case, it could be that they have a very positive impression of you. They Sr ran, they like what they see, they just are never a customer of yours and that's gonna be fine. Not every person is going to be a customer, but do keep in mind with the advertising that it's a relationship. You're building it over time and it doesn't happen with the first ad or the second ad, it's constant. That's why you need to set a budget up for each day, for each month and just let those ads drip. Just let them keep going and going and going and build-out warmth and build that relationship up. The big thing I can tell you here is be patient. Yes, you may have to experiment a little bit and see whether it's Facebook or next door or whatever this is gonna work for you. But one of them will, but you wanna make sure that you give each of them sufficient time to work before you decide it's not working. So a week or two or three different a month really isn't enough time, give us some time, set up a consistent schedule, so it's running all the time and let it go and let it start building that relationship with your customers. Alright, so that's it. I hope you enjoyed this. Again, I'm gonna be doing a course on this hyper-local type advertising. So follow me on Skillshare, and when that gets released, you'll be able to take that course. Thanks for watching. Let's move on to the next lesson. 10. Class Project and Conclusion: Alright, You did it, you made it to the end of the course, and now it's time to talk about the class project. So great job. And let's get into the project. So as I mentioned in the opening video to the course, it's really simple and it's two parts. I want you to, number one, to come up with a great name for your food truck. And as I said, let's avoid the most common names, things that are really simple like Joe's food truck. I mean, that's easy. Lets people know you're a food truck, but it doesn't really show any creativity and it doesn't speak to your character, to speak to your personality or the type of food that you're serving. So make sure you come up with a really good name, something like Wiener on wheels, which people will know exactly what that is. They may get a laugh out of it, but they're going to know when they look at that truck, they see that name. They're going to see the big hot dog. They're going to know that it's a hot dog truck and they're going to say that that name means the person who owns it, who runs it and assert as the food, is probably somebody with a great personality and a great sense of humor doesn't take themselves too seriously. So they're gonna be drawn in by that sort of thing. Little touches like that in a business, especially when you're interrupting so intimately with the public, can make a big, big difference. So make sure you come up with a really good creative name that draws people in, shows your personality and it also speaks to the type of food that you're serving. So that's number one. Number two is come up with a menu. And remember what I said in the module on making your menu, you really can't do too many things. So you want to make sure you have essentially a core offering and you can offer varieties off of that. But make sure you keep it tight, concise, really potent, and something that can sell in high volumes and be very, very easy to store and prepare. So make it up. You don't have to get too fancy here if you want to make a beautiful Word document or something with also some graphics, you can do that. But you don't have to just a basic word document that shows what it is you're serving in a couple of lines to top that describes what your food truck is about, the type of food and the emphasis. And just let us know so we get a feel for the flair and the the intention of the food truck and what the fluid is you're serving. So get those loaded up. I can't wait to see them. Everybody else wants to see them too. And we'll take a look at them. I'm going to put one up there as well so you can take a look at that. So that's it. I'm looking forward to it. Again. I want to thank you for taking the course. This is not the first course I've taught, but it is the first one on Skillshare. So I'm excited to be here. I love to hear your feedback. If there's anything you would like to see me teach in the future, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. I've got many courses already in my mind that I'm thinking about doing. And I'm going to try and get those up in the next few months before the holidays. So stay tuned. There's lots of good stuff coming. But again, if you see something or you know, something you really would like to learn. If I'm capable of teaching it to you, I would be happy to make a course on it. Again, thanks for taking the course. I look forward to your projects and I'll see you in the next course. Thank you. 11. Start on a Shoestring: Real Life Story: Hey, how are you? Welcome back to the course. So I'm releasing this drop in less than a couple of months after the course was launched. Because I want to let you know of a couple of exciting things that are recently learned with regards to food trucks that I think are really be beneficial to you in informative and entertaining. One of them is about a woman that I recently met at of all places, the gas station, who started her food truck business or more specifically, in her case, her food trailer business on a real real minimal shoestring budget. I want to tell you her story. And the other one is about a major American city. There's really rolling out the red carpet to food trucks. It's a very exciting story. In fact, why don't we start with that one right now? Take a look at these pictures I'm going to put up on the screen for you. This is a food truck park that is going to be built in the city of Syracuse, New York. And he can see the outside. There's gonna be a beautifully built building landscaped area. There's gonna be dedicated areas for food trucks to park. It didn't really get into how those spaces would be allotted, whether there was gonna be a lottery and how much was going to cost. But nonetheless, there will be specific spaces for food trucks to park, to be outdoor dining areas. They'll also be areas for customers to park in as well. And then if we move into the inside, you can see us a really, really nicely laid out, beautiful building that apparently there's gonna be a bar they're serving alcohol and interior places for people to sit and eat. So people, no matter what the weather can come to the food truck parked, they can get food at your food truck and then go in to a protected area if it's raining the middle of winter, they can have a full sit-down meal there. I believe there might be the ability for the food trucks to deliver the food into the customers so they don't have to come back out. And this is really, I think this is a great, great concept. You can see it's really just very nicely designed, very nicely thought out and laid out. This is really going to take the food truck theme, which really is dependent upon the weather, is going to extend it really throughout the entire year, particularly in someplace like Syracuse where you gonna get a lot of snow, particularly lake effects nose off the great lakes. This is a really, really going to help a tremendous amount. So you can turn it into really a twelv month a year type business. Whereas in some instances you may not have that continuous income throughout all 12 months. So I think it's really, really an interesting development. I think that's a really a good omen for food trucks. I think more cities will be doing this. Syracuse, I'm sure it's not the first one, but this is the first one that I read about. Alright, so that's one story. Let's talk about this woman that I met at the gas station. So I wasn't the gas station a few weeks ago filling up. And I saw a woman with a Toyota pickup truck and the trailer behind it. I was looking at it from the driver's side. So all I saw was a truck and a trailer which looks like a fairly old camper trailer, which had been painted up a tan color of some sort, but I couldn't see anything else beyond that. So I thought it was just her camper trailer when I get into my car and started to leave and went around to her passenger side. I could see that it was actually a food truck. She had taken her camper trailer and converted it into a food truck. She had cut a window into it. And there was some graphics on there for her menu and just to attract customers. So actually stop and talk to her for a couple of minutes. She said that she bought the camper from a family member for just a few hundred dollars, I think three or $400 and put maybe 13, 14, $1,500 into it to cut the window out, do a little bit of renovation and the inside. She's just doing cold foods. She was doing sandwiches. So she didn't need any grills or anything like that. For roughly $2,000, she was able to get this food truck business up and going, which is really, really minimal. And again, she's just doing sandwiches, so no expensive equipment is really needed. She needed a basic fridge. She has a cooler for her drinks. I noticed on the inside That was a clip with ships hanging off it for customers to buy. Really a basic simple setup, but it allowed her to get into the business and start producing revenue. And you know, that story kinda reminds me of the man who started chipotle restaurant. He had actually trained as a formal chef and wanted to open up his own sort of white linen, beautiful steak house type restaurant, but didn't have the money to do that. So he said, I'm going to open up this taco shop and get money from that to then put into my more formal restaurant. Well, of course, the taco shop was Chipotle and the rest is history. It end up being far more successful than the other restaurant would have been. And it's all over the country, but it's in many different countries now. So it's a great way to get your foot through the door of life with this woman did basic trailer, very basic amenities. So $2,000. She had her food truck business or food trailer business up and running. So that goes to show you that you don't really need tens of thousands of dollars to get into this business. If you've got it, you want to buy the big truck. That's great. But if you're really, really on a shoestring, you can do it just like this woman did. So there you are. Food truck parked in Syracuse in somebody who started their food truck business. Absolutely. On a shoestring. So I hope you enjoyed these stories. If there's anymore, I'll drop them into the course as we go along. Thanks for watching.