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Month: March 2022

Starting a Food Truck Business in India: A Complete Guide

Posted on by inresto

The Indian food industry has witnessed many evolutionary changes, one of them being the introduction of food trucks. Even though food trucks have been prevalent since the last decade, it wasn’t until a couple of years back that the food truck business caught on.

Starting from burgers and hotdogs to delicious South Indian foods and oh our favourite Chinese cuisine, you will come across food trucks selling a variety of cuisines in the country. Several factors have contributed to the growth of this industry type, out of which financing is a primary attribute. Considering everything, the capital required to open and run a restaurant is colossal. However, a food truck can be opened with a total capital of about INR 9 to 10 lakhs, which is most certainly an affordable range.

Starting a Food Truck Business in India: A Complete Guide

However, owning a food truck business is undoubtedly a blossoming idea. That’s why many aren’t aware of all the prerequisites one has to meet to open and operate a truck restaurant successfully. However, like all dreams, your food truck business is also possible if you stick around and read how to proceed! On this account, we have discussed everything you need to know to open a food truck business.

1. Decide your Cuisine

Your first job to do is to decide the type of food you want to serve. Like other industries, the food industry is divided into several categories based on the food type and the cuisine. 

Without deciding your cuisine and menu first, proceeding further will set you on a path of failure. This decision determines the truck size, the prospective location for business setup, the types of equipment you need, and many other attributes. inresto’s restaurant management solutions are built to optimize your ideal cuisine and menu types and enable you to avoid wastage and manage your food inventory effectively. 

Here are some of the popular food cuisines that are perfect for a food truck business:

  • American dishes like burgers, hotdogs, sandwiches, wraps, burritos, bagels, and others.
  • Various fruits and vegetable juices, beverages, shakes, and smoothies.
  • Authentic South Indian dishes like idli, sambar vada, dosa, uttapam, etc.

2. Understand the cost differentiation of starting a food truck

Every startup business needs capital. Usually, for a standard food truck, the total setup cost is around 8 to 11 lakhs. However, if you want a fully equipped food truck with advanced equipment and setup, the price can increase up to INR 16 to 20 lakhs.

Before we move further, let’s take a glimpse at the price differentiation so that you can understand how much to spend for which purpose.

  • For types of equipment like cooking stations, refrigerator, microwave oven, furniture, will cost you up to INR 2 to 2.5 lakhs.
  • Since you need to buy a truck, you need to spend around INR 3.5 to 5 lakhs based on the truck’s volume, features, and other attributes.
  • You will need an inventory of raw materials for cooking which will cost you around INR 15 to 25 thousand every month based on the amount, the ingredient types, and sales. Click here to know more about inventory management.
  • If you are working independently at the start of the business, you won’t have to worry about the staff cost. But, if you hire a staff, their salary will be about INR 15 to 20 thousand per month, per person. We definitely suggest that you hire at least one person on board so that there is effective management. While one is cooking, the other can take orders, serve, and collect payments.

3. Get the required food licenses

Without proper licenses issued by the government, you will not be able to register your business and make your dream come true. So, before you jump with excitement at the idea of owning a food truck, prepare for obtaining the licenses. Following are the legal documents you will need for conducting the food business:

  • If your business gross turnover is more than INR 12 lakhs annually, you will have to get the FSSAI license.
  • NOC is needed from the Chief Fire Officer since owning a food truck means fire hazard, which means that people’s lives are in danger, including yours.
  • Allowance letter from the municipality body of the area where you will be setting up the business.
  • Vehicle license to register your food truck business with the government.

4. Choose a proper location for the food truck business

Since it is a truck, you cannot set it like an old, traditional restaurant. You have to focus on the area and the road from where you will start the food business. For choosing the location, you need to consider the three most important attributes.

  • You need to confirm with the municipality body about your truck’s parking since every food business needs a spacious ambiance to operate and serve meals smoothly.
  • Another factor that will matter is visibility. Make sure to choose a location that is regularly visited by flocks of people. This will help you to earn more revenue because most people like to grab a small meal on their way rather than going to a restaurant.
  • To beat your competition, you should look into ways to make your customer service and marketing unique and intuitive to build a loyal diner base.

5. Get the required finances for the truck business

If you cannot arrange all the money required for opening the food truck business, you can take help from different financing methods. For example, a loan will help you with the capital needed to start the truck and get everything in motion.

6. Look for brand marketing and promotion

Lastly, you need to market your brand, and for that, you need to rely on advertisements and social media. Many companies offer promotion and marketing services on the digital platform. You can integrate inresto’s marketing solutions to simplify your marketing activities such as social media marketing, customized website and online delivery platform creation for your restaurant business, and much more. This will give you much-needed exposure to your business, and soon your customer base will grow.

Final verdict

Opening a food truck business might seem overwhelming at times. But, in reality, it is one of the easiest business models to set up. Follow these easy steps and build a successful food truck business for yourself.

Strategies to Apply in your Restaurant Marketing Automation

Posted on by inresto

If you are an avid social media user, you might have already come across various campaigns launched by businesses where they invited their customers to create an ad for them. The businesses then chose some of the best ads from the influx of submissions, which won crazy cash prizes and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. 

These campaigns have almost always gone viral and created a loud buzz across social media. Process? The proper use of marketing automation with precision.

Marketing automation for restaurants involves using new technology to reach out to potential customers and maintain a healthy relationship with the loyal customers to increase revenue through various media networks. The use of personalized content, catering to individual needs on a large scale, making the customers feel heard makes restaurant marketing automation a very important aspect to adapt in today’s social era.  

Strategies to Apply in your Restaurant Marketing Automation

The online presence through regular campaigns via SMS, emails, and social media posts ensure communication with the customers leaving a lasting impact. It helps in developing the restaurant’s reputation as well as new leads. Personalized content enables the customers to dwell upon the offers and act on them. They are more likely to order food or visit the restaurant frequently if the content caters to their personal needs. 

The process becomes easier when automated, which is done with the help of multiple software and saves a lot of time in the restaurants. The restaurants can then entirely focus on serving the customers to the best of their capacity without worrying about typing each message individually and sending them out one by one. 

The below guide will help you with the strategies to automate restaurant marketing or the areas where you can easily trust technology to come to your rescue. 

1. Social Media Promotion

Social media presence in today’s time has become almost equally important as having a physical presence. The automation process allows you to schedule your posts to create your content in one go and then post it using automation tools whenever you schedule them. The content must be engaging and user-friendly to garner a wide reach on social media. This saves a lot of time for handles such as Instagram and Twitter, which do not allow scheduling otherwise. Automation uses the content you created and then posts it regularly as and when scheduled, maintaining an online presence and communication.

You can outsource social media marketing solutions for your restaurant. Companies like inresto create posts and run social media ads for restaurants that garner results. To break the ceiling, we suggest restaurateurs invest in their own restaurant websites and online delivery systems. These two can catapult the results brought in by your marketing efforts.

2. Customer Reviews

The first thing everyone notices after searching for a restaurant online are reviews. They help in making a huge impact on the customers. The automation process helps you to filter out the reviews as soon as you receive them and even helps you find the mention of your restaurant anywhere online. Timely action on positive and critical reviews allows you to build a reputation that you value your customers and respond and listen to feedback. You can also put your side of the story to negative feedback to ensure that the other people reading reviews get to read both sides. 

3. Restaurant Loyalty Programs

The Loyalty Program works the same way as a Debit/Credit Card reward point system. The more a particular customer spends with your restaurant, the more reward points they receive, which they can redeem with different offers or packages pre-decided by the restaurant. inresto Loyalty program helps you create personalised loyalty programs for your customers. These programs can be spend based, or visit based. 

The loyalty points can be recorded with a particular identity like an email address or the customer’s phone number, and the same medium can be used to remind them of the points they have earned so far. However, the main focus should be on keeping in touch with the customers with exciting offers they can avail through the already earned reward points with the restaurant. 

Past orders and ordering patterns of the customers can be considered when sending out personalized SMS or email. For example, if one customer orders only on weekends, you can set out an automation reminder for that particular customer on Fridays about ordering from your restaurant the next day. You can even send out discounts for being a loyal customer and wish them a happy weekend to give a personalized experience.  

4. Promotional Campaigns

SMS and Emails can be used to send out promotional campaigns to loyal customers. The data can be collected while they order food. It can then be used to make them aware of new deals and discounts or the changes in the menu. Simply sending out the best sellers of the month also works wonders. The content has to be created in advance, which can then be sent out with the automation process regularly to customers. The messages and intervals are properly recorded in the automation system, and you will have the data at your fingertips. Tools like the inresto campaign module can do the job for you. 

5. Table Management

Automating the reservation process and table management eases the task of the in-house staff and enables them to prioritize customer service. In addition, it maximizes the table turnaround efficiency and allows you to streamline reservations from multiple sources. inresto has reduced the customer waiting time by a whopping 200% for restaurants through their table management Guest and Reserve. The restaurant assigns a table according to real-time availability, but all the data is provided on-screen very systemised. 

Conclusion

Marketing Automation has worked as a very useful tool for restaurants, and above, we have discussed how to automate your restaurant marketing. If done right, it can boost the customer base and revenue. Also, it is very important to make timely changes to your automation strategies and your content. You can easily refer to inresto for your marketing automation needs which include app-based marketing, social media promotions, and media coverage, among other activities.