The question is not answered with a simple “yes” or “no.”  While the food truck scene may struggle to grow in the near future due to a lack of space and prime real estate, Austin food trucks are built into the fabric of the city.  Austin is proud of its food truck scene and a majority in the city embrace it.  So long as the demand for the product delivered by Austin food trucks remains, the industry will continue to thrive.  Examples of this demand include the private catering for events which Austin food trucks are utilized for.  Wedding, corporate event, and luncheon catering are just a few areas where food trucks have served their delicious and unique eats.  Having an “Austin-y” wedding now includes catering by a food truck.  What better way to enhance the curb appeal of an event?

Austin food trucks will always have to hustle to survive, especially with the saturation in the marketplace.  However, where one revenue stream door closes, other ones will open.  As long as Austin food trucks are woven into the fabric of the city, there will always be a place for them.

Making money in the food truck industry is like re-creating your mom’s secret sauce.  There are a variety of components which you must constantly tweak, adding and subtracting, to get your bottom line to where it needs to be.  Just like your mom’s sauce, you cannot simply follow a recipe for financial success.  However, here are eight base components that can get you on your way:

(1). Market yourself.  Food trucks are a microcosm of a restaurant.  The most successful restaurants all have identifiable brands.  In today’s day and age, marketing can be free.  Last I checked, FB and Twitter were not subscription based social media services.  They do, however, require constant monitoring, effort, and creativity.
(2). Increase your revenue streams. The top dogs in the food truck industry all have identifiable brands, and they have capitalized on those brands by increasing their revenue streams.  Take my friend Josh Henderson’s airstream trailer, Skillet, in Seattle.  Not only does the trailer vend for lunch and brunch, but it caters a multitude of private events as well.  Skillet has also delved into the wholesale products line and Josh has a recently published cookbook.  Last but not least, Skillet has two brick and mortar locations including recently opened Skillet Counter.
(3). Don’t be a hardhead. I was recently in San Francisco and spoke to a chef friend of mine who helped us out with the San Francisco Street Festival.  He told me that restaurants are sometimes guilty of over-executing a plan even if it does not work. “If you are open for a year on Sunday night and all you are doing is break even, then you should close on Sunday night.”  Moral of the story?  Be prepared to change locations and shift your operating hours if they are not working and sales are soft.
(4). Two is Better than One. While food truck connoisseurs are likely to search you out, you will have better success if you pair up with other mobile concepts at a particular location.  Whereas potential customers are not likely to “restaurant hop,” they are likely to “food truck hop” and eat off multiple trucks.  Variety can only increase your sales.  Case in point: Trailer Food Tuesdays in Austin, Texas, which I founded.  Ten Austin food trucks meet up once a month to serve the city at a central, downtown location overlooking the Austin skyline.
(5). Network. If you do business in a cocoon, you will kill your business in a cocoon. Great businesses are built on a network.  This is how you get referrals, event invites, catering jobs and opportunities to vend. Build partnerships with influencers in the community.  Provide information to others and help them in the process.  Like I said, it has to be a win-win for everyone.
(6). Make sure you have a good product, and then charge appropriately.  I recently met with a couple of  Austin food truck start-ups and the one thing that stuck out with me was how cheap their menu items were. They were planning on using good product. Their low prices were based on their perception of what the market would pay.  If you don’t meet your margins, your family won’t eat.  Charge what you need to and go from there.
(7). Invest in your staff. Employee turnover creates not only a burden on you to constantly re-train, but it also drives your operating expenses up.  If you are consistently training employees, it will cost you a point or two on your bottom line.  Hire hard and train easy (stolen from Danny Meyer).  Make sure you are hiring people that will stick and then make sure they are growing within their respective positions.
(8). Strengthen the food truck industry. I think the biggest misconception in the food truck world is that individually we are all competitors to one another.  While that is partly true, if trucks do their part to make the industry as a whole stronger and more reputable, they will benefit from these efforts long term.  I make every effort to answer questions from fellow Austin food truck owners and provide whatever advice I can.  In turn, they are able to run their operations more efficiently and put out a better product.  This ends up reflecting positively on the industry as whole which will increase the revenue pie long term.

The prestigious Eater awards came out Monday this week, and we were honored to win Food Truck of the Year 2011.  It has been a long, strenuous journey to the top since we launched in 2010; it’s nice to be recognized for our hard work.  We strive to continue to produce a top product.  We have multiple projects lined up in the near future which will introduce our fans to broader, more diverse flavors.  You can view a full list of Eater Austin’s award winners here.

For our centrally located fans, make sure to check out the Google PUNCH’D event this Thursday, Nov. 17th from 12-5PM in the parking lot right behind the UT Co-Op.   We’ll be slinging out free tacos to anyone who downloads the PUNCH’D app. and gets a QR code scanned by us.  That’s right.  FREE tacos.  You can thank our friends at Google for making that happen.

For those that haven’t heard, half our team will be off to San Francisco next week to serve up banh mi and pad thai tacos at the San Francisco Street Food Festival.  The festival is scheduled for Saturday, August 20th from 11AM-7PM.

The festival itself is going to be fantastic.  An estimated 50,000+ San Franciscoan’s are projected to come out for the event, which consists of over 60+ types of vendors.  In addition to the San Francisco based vendors, there are also food trucks from 6 other cities (identified as street food hotbeds) including the well known Skillet trailer from Seattle and the Nom Nom truck from LA of Food Network fame.  We are pumped to be a part of this eclectic group of vendors.

The days leading up to the event are going to be chaotic at best.  We’ll have less than 48 hours to prep for 3,600 tacos.  This all while having to train our prep cooks, line cooks and other volunteers assisting us the day of the festival.  It’s going to be non-stop work, but in the end we hope that San Francisco get a feel for what our food and the peached tortilla are about.

For those that have family and/or friends in San Francisco, be sure to let them know we’ll soon be on our way.  It’s time for the West Coast to get peached.

-Eric

Dear tpt fans -

With the coming of “winter,” we have redesigned our apparel and come out with some awesome looking hoodies (American Apparel) and t’s (Tultex).  Our hoodies ($36) pop with the bright orange peached tortilla logo, canvassed by a dark gray background.  The t’s ($16) similarly pop, except they feature a dark brown colored shirt.

Come pick one up at the truck! Or, you can call 512.761.3241, and we’ll mail you your desired apparel.  Also, we still have the original t’s ($16, light grey with white and orange logo) in L and XL if you want to rock tpt wear old school.

Taste life, get peached and happy holidays!

Eric

banh mi sliders: photo by Meghan Heller (www.digimeg.biz)

It’s one of the oldest adages in sports.  Do you play to win or do you play not to lose?  There’s a subtle difference and if you fall by way of the latter you may be headed down the road of mediocrity.  The great teams in sports believe in their identity and process – their system to win games – and stick to it.  By contrast, the mediocre teams waver, unsure of which direction will lead to success.  They instead straddle the fence.  Instead of “yes” or “no,” they answer “maybe.”

So what does this have to do with food?  Well, I bring this mantra up because I use it as a guideline for what  I strive for with the peached tortilla.  We play to win, and by win I mean sticking to our identity and putting the best possible product we can out to the public.  In the coming weeks we will slowly roll out some new menu items which will only strengthen our overall product offerings.  In addition, we have a few tweaks in store which will continue the ascent of our core menu items.  I don’t believe in rampant change; but I believe in change for the purposes of constant improvement.  For the purposes of being bold and following in the identity we have carved out for ourselves.  It’s either that or straddle the fence…and who wants to play not to lose?

————-

On a separate note, we have a new Thursday lunch location at the Arboretum Complex, 9442 N. Capital of TX Highway.  If you are in the Arboretum area, be sure to check us out this Thursday from 11:00AM-1:30 PM.   Additionally, we are also extending our Thursday night hours at our UT-West Campus location until 11PM.  So for our UT fans, make sure to swing by before you head out for the night to 6th St.

Until next time,

Eric

A press section will be added at some point to the website, but for right now, I have hunted and gathered some of the most recent and interesting press on the peached tortilla.  Enjoy.

Austinist.com Interview

Eater Austin

Daily Texan Review

Blinded By The Bite: Gypsy Picnic Festival Review

South Austin Foodie Adventures Review

The Smart Kitchen: Gypsy Picnic Review

Taste of Koko: Gypsy Picnic Review

Behind the Burner Interview

Rebeccamendations Soft Launch Review

joining the food truck biz

Before I go any further, a quick interruption regarding our schedule this week.  We will be off our regular Friday schedule to prepare for Gypsy Picnic, which will feature us and 29 other food trailers on Saturday, November 6th from 11AM-8PM.  I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause!

The most frequent question I get while working the food truck is “why did you do it?”  Why did you leave a high paying job as an attorney to jump into a notoriously difficult to succeed industry?  The simple, one word answer?  Fear.  You see, nothing scares me more than the simple fact that I only have the opportunity to live this one life.  The fear of starting this new, risky venture was heavily outweighed by the fear of always wondering “what if.”  I dreaded the notion that five years down the road I would be sitting in an office asking myself “what if you had just followed through on that food truck venture?”   I studied food trucks like it was my job for over a year; it was time to make it my job.

A small sculpture from the Successories store sits on my nightstand at my parent’s home.  My father gave it to me as a Christmas gift when I was ten years old.  The sculpture is of a soccer ball and below it it reads “you miss 100% of the shots you never take.”  Or something to that effect; don’t quote me verbatim.  Yes, these motivational quotes err on the cheesy side.  I’m not going to argue that point.  Bottom line, though, is they are true.  For some reason, that quote has been stuck in my head like a tongue on ice for the past 18 years and it served (and continues to serve) as a driving force for me on this project.  Life is too short to ask “what if?”  I would rather just remove the question all together.  Life can pass you by in a blink of an eye.  Sometimes we get so caught up in our daily routine that we forget about that.  Don’t.  After all, you only live once.

In May of 2009, I sat in my St. Louis apartment with an idea for a food concept that I believed would satisfy an unsatisified niche.  A concept which was innovative and different but still familiar to most Americans.  After a few days of contemplation, I took pen to paper and began pounding out a business plan to figure out how I could bring to life such a food concept.  Practicing law had begun to wear on me, and I needed an outlet which would satisfy my thirst for creativity and entrepreneurialism.  The peached tortilla was born, but in between that fruitful day in May to this point, there have been plenty of peaks and valleys.  In fact, it has been nothing short of a roller coaster with the dream nearly disappearing on multiple occasions.  I have learned that while its easy to have a great idea, its not so easy to act on that idea and turn it into something meaningful.  However, nearly 16 months later, after a 180 degree career change and a move South, I am grateful to see the launch of the peached tortilla.  Less than two months ago I was drafting legal briefs in my office and now I will be serving food out of a mobile truck; life is weird, but then again, so is Austin.

My hope is that my passion for this business and this concept shines through in the peached tortilla; that it is visible in every minute detail down to the smallest ingredient in our dipping sauces.  I strongly believe that great food can make a person’s day better, and I draw real excitement from knowing that this concept has the potential to do just that.  I have collaborated with our extremely talented chef, Timothy Fowler, for countless hours, perfecting our menu in order to put out a tremendous product.  I believe that we have succeeded.

I could not be happier to launch this concept in Austin, a free spirited city with a distinct personality and a thirst for helping small businesses grow.  My hope is that one day the peached tortilla can mold itself as part of this city’s identity.  Until then, we will prepare to serve Austin in six short days.  I hope to see you soon.

- Eric Silverstein, founder