Catering Trucks Provide Alternative to Finding Catering Jobs
by Kirk Bangstad
kirk.bangstad@chefschoolreview.com
Chef School Review Columnist
If you’re in the catering business, you know that advertising, marketing, and essentially landing lucrative catering jobs can be a lot of work. Why not get your name out there by buying a truck and selling food to people during their lunch hours?
In catering school, you probably learned that branding was one of the most important ways to land consistent catering jobs. If you developed a quality brand by marketing and then providing consistently tasty food, the word would eventually spread and you’d start to see the catering jobs roll in.
Catering School vs. Real Life
Unfortunately, what you learned in catering school is a lot harder to put into practice in real life. Catering school probably didn’t tell you that with a ton of other catering companies out there, making people remember your name is pretty tough. Here’s an idea that might get your name out there and even make you some money. Buy a catering truck and bring your tasty morsels to people during their lunch hours. You can go pretty much anywhere on a catering truck, including business parks, county fairs, weddings, etc. If you put your logo, phone number, and website address on your truck, and people know that the food inside it is pretty good, you may start to field a lot more catering job calls.
If this catering truck idea sounds good to you, make sure to follow all the rules. ABC News recently reported that the government in Fresno, CA conducted surprise inspections among the city’s mobile catering trucks. Over 30 citations were filed, although luckily few were food related. Most of the citations were issued for traffic or machinery violations.
So go buy your truck, get your license, make sure your smog filter works, and go show the world that what you learned in catering school is paying off.
Sources
About the Author
Kirk Bangstad is a singer living in Chicago, IL. Having received his B.A. in Government at Harvard, Kirk previously worked as a management consultant.
Posted on August 28, 2006 at 4:52 PM
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