Food Truck Vending at Events

There are two entirely different things an organizer can want from a food truck, and mixing them up wastes everybody’s first email.

Catering is where you pay us and your guests eat for free. You pick the menu, we quote a price, nobody at the event takes out a wallet.

Vending is where we turn up and sell to whoever is there. You are not buying food. You are providing a crowd and a place to park, and we bring a kitchen that makes your event better without appearing on your budget.

Both are normal for us. This page is about the second one.

Where vending works

The requirement is people who will be there for a while and cannot easily leave to eat.

Sports events. Tournaments, ball games, race days. Families are there for hours, the concession stand runs out of ideas by the second game, and nobody wants to leave and come back.
Fairs and festivals. The standard case, covered in more detail in booking us for a fair or festival.
Markets and community days. Where the food is part of the reason people stay past an hour.
School and fundraising events. Where a budget for catering does not exist but a hungry crowd does.
Workplaces and shift breaks. The most common vending booking we do. Covered properly below.

Shift breaks and workplace lunches

Almost every time we pull into a plant, this is what we are doing. The company is not buying lunch. We park where the crews come out, staff buy what they want, and the company’s only involvement is saying yes and telling us where to stand.

It suits a shift pattern for one reason. A break is thirty minutes and it does not move, so a truck that takes ten minutes an order is no use to anybody. We are set up to serve quickly. We stay parked across two or three breaks and keep cooking through all of them, so the last crew out gets the same food as the first.

For an employer this is close to free. No budget line, no headcount to commit to, no invoice. What it needs is somewhere legal and safe to park inside or beside the site, and someone to tell staff we are coming.

If the company wants to pay and have staff eat for free, that is a different arrangement and it is corporate catering.

Why organizers do this

Because an event with food on it runs longer than one without, and people who eat somewhere tend to stay there. A tournament where families can get a real meal without driving off site keeps its crowd through the afternoon.

It also costs the organizer nothing in food. What it costs is a parking space and some coordination.

What makes a vending event work

We will want to know the same things a festival organizer gets asked: the dates, the location, how long the event has run, an attendance figure you can point at, and how many other food vendors are booked. Those five are explained in booking us for a fair or festival.

Two more that matter specifically for vending:

Whether people can leave and come back. An event people can walk away from for lunch is a harder sell than one where they cannot.
Where we are placed. Being near the entrance or near where people already stand is worth more than the size of the pitch.

Short events

We will look at anything from about two hours upward. That is shorter than a lot of vendors will consider. We are set up to serve quickly. A short event with a real crowd is a shape we can serve properly rather than one we have to apologize for.

What your site needs

The trailer is 22 feet long and is towed by a full-size Chevy van, so it needs a route in and room to maneuver into the spot.
Solid ground. A trailer this heavy will sink or get stuck in soft ground, and that matters most after a wet week.
Nothing else for catering or a one-day festival. We are self contained.
For festivals of two days or more, a 50-amp RV-style outlet within 50 feet, and access to potable water.

Where we go

The truck works Grundy, Coffee, Franklin, Warren, Marion and Sequatchie counties in Tennessee week to week, with Fayetteville to the west and Crossville to the east as the outer edges. Chattanooga comes up once or twice a month and south Nashville every couple of months.

An event further out is still worth asking about, particularly a multi-day one, because distance matters less when it is spread across a weekend.

Asking

Call 931-271-7455, email nicholas@itsloaded.com, or send the details with the dates, the location and an attendance figure, and you will get a straight answer.

If what you actually want is us feeding your guests on your budget, start at catering instead.