Food trucks boost restaurant technology
Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2024 8:37 am
After a long career in pharmaceutical manufacturing, Jonathan Post wanted to do something different with the rest of his life. He initially considered opening a restaurant, but decided the business was too risky and time-consuming. Instead, he set up a lemonade stand. On wheels.
Jack & Izzy’s Lemonade , named after Post’s two huskies, is a custom-built food truck that sells 60 different flavors of handmade lemonade made to order. Using a pneumatic compressed air wedge, Post and three employees squeeze thousands of fresh, organic lemons at 100 psi to make more than 500 lemonades in under three hours. Aside from the quality of their product, Post says the “high-tech gadgets” on their truck have made Jack & Izzy’s a profitable business. “I have an Infi touchscreen kiosk that looks like a smartphone with a giant 24-by-15-inch screen that I set up at festivals so people can order without having to wait in line,” she says.
That’s just a gimmick. Post also has an advanced Square Analytics point-of-sale (POS) system with reporting and analytics features in addition to traditional sales processing. Reports are presented on gross sales, net sales, and discounts, along with sales trends, item sales (how many people bought strawberry lemonade vs. blueberry lemonade), and sales tax information, depending on which state Jack & Izzy’s Lemonade is in. “I easily print out detailed quarterlies to send to my accountants,” he says.
Post has invested in the design of the food truck so it stands out at festivals and how to get uk whatsapp number other events. It was built from the ground up with an 18-foot-long window so customers can enjoy themselves while he and his staff “smash lemons” with the pneumatic wedge.
He also invested in a custom-made digital menu inside a 70-inch HDTV monitor mounted on a wheeled platform, which he pulls out of the truck to display each day’s lemonade menu. “I can instantly change the menu on my laptop to suit the type of event,” Post says. “It’s specially made by ElectroMenu to be visible in daylight and includes the most incredible graphics.”
Mark Evans, founder and CEO of ElectroMenu, says he was inspired “by old-fashioned sandwich boards, where the menu and prices changed daily.”
To do this, Post connects a laptop to the menu board with an HDMI cable. The menu templates built into ElectroMenu appear instantly, along with the “authoring tools” used to select one of hundreds of menu designs, each aligned with the theme of a particular event.
“Depending on the need, there are all kinds of videos, static images and animations that make the menu more interesting to capture the customer’s attention,” says Post.
Small big company
Welcome to today’s food truck industry, a business comprised of small vendors like Jack & Izzy’s Lemonade and large companies with multiple food trucks offering everything from hot dogs and tacos to culinary delights like crepes and pickled shrimp. According to estimates by Smallbizgenius , a digital community, there are approximately 24,000 food trucks in the United States.
During the early months of the pandemic, when traditional restaurants closed due to indoor social distancing, many food trucks remained open to serve customers outdoors.
Ross Resnick, founder and CEO of Roaming Hunger , an online food truck booking service that’s been running for 11 years, says his bookings slowed considerably at the beginning of the pandemic but took off from there. “Once it became clear that there was less risk of infection outdoors, everything skyrocketed; people were craving shared experiences,” Resnick says.
In 2010, when he came up with the idea for the Roaming Hunger app, which makes it easier for event organisers to locate and schedule a food truck, the industry has evolved rapidly. “Today it’s much easier to run a food truck as a profitable business,” he says. “When we started, we could only find about 300 vendors known for their quality and brand, and now there are 20,000.”
Roaming Hunger’s services have evolved with the industry. In the company’s early years, its business model was based on helping event planners locate food trucks; in 2014, it shifted the paradigm to helping vendors locate event planners. “Our platform allows vendors to create unique menus to offer at an upcoming festival or block party; the host then selects the vendor that best fits their food and budget,” Resnick says, noting that Roaming Hunger adds a small booking fee to the pricing package.
““It’s much easier to run a food truck as a profitable business these days. When we started, we could only find about 300 vendors known for their quality and brand, and now there are 20,000.” -Ross Resnick, Founder and CEO of Roaming Hunger
Jack & Izzy’s Lemonade , named after Post’s two huskies, is a custom-built food truck that sells 60 different flavors of handmade lemonade made to order. Using a pneumatic compressed air wedge, Post and three employees squeeze thousands of fresh, organic lemons at 100 psi to make more than 500 lemonades in under three hours. Aside from the quality of their product, Post says the “high-tech gadgets” on their truck have made Jack & Izzy’s a profitable business. “I have an Infi touchscreen kiosk that looks like a smartphone with a giant 24-by-15-inch screen that I set up at festivals so people can order without having to wait in line,” she says.
That’s just a gimmick. Post also has an advanced Square Analytics point-of-sale (POS) system with reporting and analytics features in addition to traditional sales processing. Reports are presented on gross sales, net sales, and discounts, along with sales trends, item sales (how many people bought strawberry lemonade vs. blueberry lemonade), and sales tax information, depending on which state Jack & Izzy’s Lemonade is in. “I easily print out detailed quarterlies to send to my accountants,” he says.
Post has invested in the design of the food truck so it stands out at festivals and how to get uk whatsapp number other events. It was built from the ground up with an 18-foot-long window so customers can enjoy themselves while he and his staff “smash lemons” with the pneumatic wedge.
He also invested in a custom-made digital menu inside a 70-inch HDTV monitor mounted on a wheeled platform, which he pulls out of the truck to display each day’s lemonade menu. “I can instantly change the menu on my laptop to suit the type of event,” Post says. “It’s specially made by ElectroMenu to be visible in daylight and includes the most incredible graphics.”
Mark Evans, founder and CEO of ElectroMenu, says he was inspired “by old-fashioned sandwich boards, where the menu and prices changed daily.”
To do this, Post connects a laptop to the menu board with an HDMI cable. The menu templates built into ElectroMenu appear instantly, along with the “authoring tools” used to select one of hundreds of menu designs, each aligned with the theme of a particular event.
“Depending on the need, there are all kinds of videos, static images and animations that make the menu more interesting to capture the customer’s attention,” says Post.
Small big company
Welcome to today’s food truck industry, a business comprised of small vendors like Jack & Izzy’s Lemonade and large companies with multiple food trucks offering everything from hot dogs and tacos to culinary delights like crepes and pickled shrimp. According to estimates by Smallbizgenius , a digital community, there are approximately 24,000 food trucks in the United States.
During the early months of the pandemic, when traditional restaurants closed due to indoor social distancing, many food trucks remained open to serve customers outdoors.
Ross Resnick, founder and CEO of Roaming Hunger , an online food truck booking service that’s been running for 11 years, says his bookings slowed considerably at the beginning of the pandemic but took off from there. “Once it became clear that there was less risk of infection outdoors, everything skyrocketed; people were craving shared experiences,” Resnick says.
In 2010, when he came up with the idea for the Roaming Hunger app, which makes it easier for event organisers to locate and schedule a food truck, the industry has evolved rapidly. “Today it’s much easier to run a food truck as a profitable business,” he says. “When we started, we could only find about 300 vendors known for their quality and brand, and now there are 20,000.”
Roaming Hunger’s services have evolved with the industry. In the company’s early years, its business model was based on helping event planners locate food trucks; in 2014, it shifted the paradigm to helping vendors locate event planners. “Our platform allows vendors to create unique menus to offer at an upcoming festival or block party; the host then selects the vendor that best fits their food and budget,” Resnick says, noting that Roaming Hunger adds a small booking fee to the pricing package.
““It’s much easier to run a food truck as a profitable business these days. When we started, we could only find about 300 vendors known for their quality and brand, and now there are 20,000.” -Ross Resnick, Founder and CEO of Roaming Hunger