Food Truck Rotation Checklist

Knowing your tenants is one thing, but understanding their workforce is what you really need to do. Typically 10% of tenants will participate in any given activity, so if your largest tenant allows their employees to work from home on Fridays, your numbers may not support having a food truck onsite.

With the new normal allowing for remote employees or shorter work weeks, understanding the days when folks are actually onsite can impact when you should have a food truck or event. Food Truck Fridays are generally a thing of the past in our local area, since many employers only run mid-week in person schedules now.

When you're trying to establish a breakfast rotation, you need to know what time tenant employees actually arrive to work. If you plan for a breakfast truck to arrive at 10am, you're likely to miss the incoming crowd at 7am, 8am or 9am depending on your tenants' work schedules. For lunch rotations, we typically recommend 11:30am-1:30pm, but if your tenants have split shifts or required staggered lunch times, a better timeframe may work for your property.

Communication is key. Some tenants already provide food for their employees as an incentive, so if you're planning for them to eat at food trucks you may be surprised. Survey your tenants to know if their employees are interested in having food trucks, if there are better days of the week or better times for them, and if there are particular trucks or types of cuisine they're interested in. You might think the Bao truck is hot, but they might be more interested in pizza and tacos.

Most food trucks can serve up to 100 people in a 3 hour shift, and will be looking for a minimum of 60 people. Minimums are set by individual trucks, and we've seen them as high as $1200 in sales. This means if your property only has 30 employees coming out, it will be hard to keep trucks committed. It also means that you may not be able to host mulitple trucks at a time - you'll need a large crowd for that.

Many property managers are hosting food trucks and paying for some of the food as an amenity. It might be via food vouchers for so much off their meal, or actual free food days. This can be a great strategy for launching a new rotation, as well.

Having the right location that's accessible, offers shade, is easy to find, and has enough room for both the truck (parking a truck can be a feat) and employee parking can be a challenge. If your rotation will have mulitple trucks, you'll likely need more space than you imagine.

Many employees come out to the food trucks because they want to enjoy the outdoors. By offering a comfortable outdoor seating place in close proximity to your food truck location, you'll make it easy for them to socialize and get away from the office. We've seen employees eating in their cars at locations that don't have this basic amenity just so they don't have to eat at their desks.

You'll need communication both online and off. An online calendar showing which trucks will be on campus when is necessary for real-time schedule changes, online preordering and more, but your calendar can't exist in a vaccuum. You'll need the ability to share that calendar, including via QR Codes and a permanant link, as well as email, SMS and social media notifications. Don't forget about fixed location signage, and special event announcements via posters throughout your property, digital signage like on lobby tv screens, and mailbox notices.

Make sure your facilities team frequents your food truck parking location before and after each truck visit. This will ensure that the area is maintained. An ant infestation will drive away employees, as will piles of garbage! Be sure you offer trash and recycling recepticals near the food truck location, and that they're emptied regularly.

Folks don't turn out when the weather is bad, and some conditions may actually be dangerous for food trucks. You'll want to determine if you're trying to have service rain or shine, or have an adverse weather rescheduling plan in advance. This needs to be shared with your tenants so they'll know what to expect.

Stuff inevitabily happens. Trucks break down, generators quit, cooking or food storage equipment goes on the fritz. Sometimes a truck legitimately cannot attend a scheduled event. Being clear about how and when they need to communicate issues with you, and how you'll deal with excessive unexcused no-shows is important for building a good relationship with your food truck operators. Reliability and communication are also important for continued tenant participation. 

YES! And MOBLZ is here to help.

Does this checklist look intimidating? We have experience and can help lighten the load on your staff who have other responsiblities. Let's see how we can help you!

• Trucks do not generally charge to come to a site. They also do not pay to come to a site. They expect a reasonable number of customer sales during their scheduled time to make the site attractive to them. Consistency of customers is also impoartant.
• MOBLZ charges a fee for our coordination assistance.
• There could be regulatory fees from the local government.
• Fixed or temporary improvements to the property to faciliate truck locations or events are within the property managers/owners control.

• We learn your interests and suggest how to best meet your interests while being an attractive location for trucks and vendors to come to.
• We can suggest preferrable locations within your park.
• We schedule trucks to locate at your site and assist with or provide marketing to employees.
• We can suggest improvements and enhancements that will make the selected site more attractive or usable.