Hey, it's Damian from Marketing Food Online, and in this video, I'm going to give you eight different streams of revenue if you are looking to operate a food truck, or if you're already operating a food truck, I'm going to give you eight ways to make money while you are at events, and we're going to jump into those eight right now. All right, so I'm Damian from Marketing Food Online, and as I mentioned in the introduction, I'm going to give you eight different ways that you can actually create a revenue stream from your food truck, or if you want to start a food truck and you're thinking, are there other ways to make revenue while I'm at an event, actually on my food truck cooking?
"How to make money with a food truck festival"
And the answer is absolutely yes, so I'm going to give you eight of these. They're not in any particular order, but they're definitely different ways that you can create different revenue streams starting today with your food truck, and as always, if this is your first video, welcome to Marketing Food Online. My name is Damian. I am the founder of Marketing Food Online. I am a food entrepreneur and have been in the food business for roughly about 30 years now, believe it or not. I've actually had 12 years of e-commerce experience, and we have about six stores that we operate online right now, and then we have a store on Amazon, on eBay, Etsy, and, of course, our own website, and we also do a handful of other businesses as well, so definitely hit that subscribe button. We have over 900 videos to give you information on how to start your own food business, get a food truck up and running, create a packaged food product, or even get your product into retail or sell it online. So how to make money with a food truck festival So let's jump right into it.
These eight income streams are going to tap into your food truck. Now, there are two different things I wanted to let you know about. If you've already started a food truck and you have a following, then implementing these eight is going to be a lot easier, and you'll understand why, of course, if you already have a food truck. So this is definitely something for both beginners and people who are already running a food truck, as it is. So do food trucks make good money? Now, if you're a beginner and you want to start a food truck, definitely focus on all of the licenses, permits, and all of the insurance, all of the legalities of getting your food truck up and running.
"Do food trucks make good money"
These eight are things that you can work on as you begin to grow a following and as you begin to get a customer base in your local area, in a city, or even if you're well known within the state that you're in, it's always best to implement these eight if you have an existing customer base, and I'll get into just what that means in a couple of minutes. So number one is a packaged food product. So what is a packaged food product, Damian? So let's say that you operate a food truck and you have an amazing spice, an herb blend, a rub, maybe even a marinade, a salad dressing, some type of sauce, or even salsa. You can actually take that product and have it co-packed for you. While you are on your truck, working your different events, you can create and establish a packaged food product that a co-packer could produce for you, then get it into retail or even sell it online.
That is one revenue stream that a lot of food trucks actually operate and do today, but it is definitely one that you could do when you've got a fantastic ingredient or some type of spice, a sauce, or even a side dish that you could actually have produced in bulk and then sent out to retail stores or even sell online. Number two, if you have a following, you've got to tap into the market for merch. A lot of people really, truly love to have unique hats, t-shirts, and all kinds of apparel, and that merch is something that you can push and promote when you go to an event and when you have that existing following. So if your asking can food truck make a lot of money keep reading! So when you've got those followers, and you have a lot of them that either meet you at certain events locally or maybe they're just always at a specific location when you are there with your food truck, you need to tap into that, and send them over to either your website, where they can get merch, or your YouTube channel.
"Can Food Trucks Make a Lot of Money"
That's number three, so number three is actually creating a YouTube channel. I cannot tell you the amount of success and financial benefit that I have had, not only through Marketing Food Online, but my son and I have two other kids' channels where we have a combined view of over 20 million views on those two channels, but what's great about that is that it offers us, it gives us an opportunity to talk about toys and talk about other things that are kid-related, but that streams of revenue that come from video views off of YouTube can create another stream of revenue for you.
So you're probably thinking, "Well, I operate a food truck." I don't have time to film and, you know, you don't need to have a Steven Spielberg-produced video or something of that high-grade, high-caliber, expensive cameras and lighting. No, you can actually do it off of your phone. Most Android phones and, of course, iPhones have fantastic cameras, and you don't have to make it a big production.
You can video your day-to-day operations with your food truck, create a food channel, and get those followers who are meeting you at these events to subscribe to your YouTube channel, and you could show them behind the scenes, maybe how you prepare the foods, maybe when you're in your commercial kitchen or your commissary.
Any of this footage creates great entertainment, and people who follow you will love to follow you over to YouTube. While people are watching your videos, you're creating another ad revenue stream for yourself because ads will be pushed out onto your YouTube channel. So that is another stream. While you are at an event, videos that you already have on YouTube are drawing interest and are drawing views. It is another revenue stream utilizing your truck. Number four is kind of a cool one. This is for those who are actually producing entrees, dinners, lunches, and meals, and it's actually creating a frozen food line. If you have a product, even if it's a mac and cheese that you have and everybody loves, put it in a frozen food department within a retail store, but you're thinking, how in the heck am I going to be making my food and then go into food truck events and create?
"Do Food Truck Owners Make Money"
Again, co-packers are companies that can produce it for you. They produce the product, freeze it and then send it to or distribute it to those places and avenues where you have it, whether it's a retail store, or maybe even sell it online. But Damian, how do I fill out an order? If I'm running a food truck full-time, I don't have time to fill orders. Guess what, you don't have to. You want to know why? Because they have these things called fulfillment centers. If this is a new idea to you, a fulfillment center is actually a warehouse where you can actually send products to and have a website. When they get an order on the website and you sell a product, those fulfillment centers will actually fulfill the order for you and send your product to your customers while you're doing your food truck events.
That is a great way to make an additional revenue stream, and that is number four. So number five, this is kind of playing into the YouTube realm in regards to creating stories and having a storyline, is creating a blog. If you blog about your events, you can blog about your experiences as a food truck operator. Whether you're talking about events and people that you've met and you've gone to, or you want to teach people how to do it, blogs are a fantastic additional way that you can tie into your YouTube channel and send people from your channel and videos over to your blog where you can create AdSense revenue and affiliate marketing as well for your blog.
There are endless ways to create revenue on a blog that's related to your food truck, so why not do that? And again, you don't have to be a writer or someone writing a 700-page dissertation. You just need to create simple blogs and maybe talk about daily activities and things within your food truck. You could post a few pictures and you can even add and embed some of your YouTube videos onto your blog to further explain what happened at this event, what went on at that festival, and how you did and how your sales were. All of that stuff is really intriguing to those who are following you. Why not make more money doing that? Number six, the food service industry. Now you're thinking, what does the food service industry have to do with my food truck? Go back to what I was talking about earlier with a packaged food product.
Now imagine your rub. You have a dry rub and maybe you have a barbecue food truck. Okay? You've created a fantastic rub. You can actually sell that in bulk and get it into other avenues by utilizing food service. Food service providers are those who actually supply hotels, events, stadiums, large-capacity universities and colleges, hotels as well as hospitals, and other different places that actually sell and prepare a lot of food at once in bulk. You can create your own rub, or your marinade, or sauce in much larger quantities. Food service deals with those larger portions that are sent down to a lot of restaurant chains, franchises, and other types of places. Food service is another avenue where you can take a concept you created for your food truck and actually make more money with it as well, so food service is a fantastic one, and it's not going away anytime soon.
Even in the midst of what's going on right now, a lot of hotels and travel places have slowed down, but eventually, they will begin to pick back up and they are, obviously, everyone has to eat, and there's not going to be a complete do away with all restaurants, all eateries, all hotels, and all cafeterias. There is always going to be a need to eat, so if you've got an item like a sauce or a marinade like I mentioned, that is a great other avenue to create more revenue. Number seven, supplying restaurants, Now I know what's going on, obviously, with this current situation, and there are a lot of restaurants that are closing, but not all restaurants are closing, and they will reopen, and there will be some that come back. Yes, it's an unfortunate situation that is affecting everybody right now, but going back to the idea of having an ingredient, a certain sauce or marinade, or some type of item that could be added onto a restaurant's menu, restaurants have the ability to also purchase outside of where they supply the food from.
So if they're getting a food service product, they can always independently purchase products outside of that. You can solicit restaurants in your local area, in your city or your county, and you can let them know, "Hey, I've got a fantastic product you may want to incorporate into your list, on your menu, and use it as an ingredient." This is something else that is definitely a doable item that could create another stream of revenue by selling a certain portion of your ingredients that you produce. It could be a taco seasoning, it could be a burrito seasoning, it could be a filling, it could be a certain way that you prepare a certain product, but if you can create it in bulk and sell it to restaurants, that is another stream of revenue tapping into your existing food truck.
Number eight, selling videos. Now, you could teach people exactly what you've done. Now you might be thinking, Damian, I don't have time to do that. Well, if I told you that if you were an experienced food truck operator, you could create videos and they don't have to be super long, They could be super short. Many of the videos here on my YouTube channel are anywhere from four to five minutes. Some of them are 30 minutes, but you can teach people and even utilize YouTube as a way to teach others how to start a food truck, a food truck business, or a particular type of food truck. If it's ice cream, if it happens to be something that's heat and serve, if it happens to be any type of ingredient or product that you're making, show people how they can do that as well, and you can sell those videos.
There's actually a website. I believe it's called Teachable, and they allow you to even upload videos where people can watch them either for free, at a discounted rate, or you can even sell the videos. It offers you an opportunity to take the experience you already have as a food truck operator and make money doing it, because those videos can be downloaded automatically. Once you create that product, it's actually a digital product, as it's known, you can be at a certain food truck event and still make money teaching other people how to do it. There's nothing wrong with that, so with these eight different streams of revenue, you can take a profitable food truck business and make it even more so. You can implement maybe one or two of these.
You don't even have to do all of them, but it's a great way to have another form of income while you're sleeping, while you're at an event, or while you're working in the commissary and you're creating your food truck business, have another form of income, and create multiple streams of income for yourself. So those are eight quick ones, and I'll let you go. If this video was helpful, as always, please do give me a big thumbs up. If you have questions about this type of income stream, let me know down below, and as always, I'll try to get to the questions as soon as I can, and I'll see you guys on our next video. Take good care of it.
Thanks for watching Marketing Food Online, and if you are looking to create your own food truck, start a home-based food business under the Cottage Food Law, start a packaged food business, private label your own food products, sell on Amazon, get your own online store or sell food online, remember to subscribe and check out these videos for more resources. Take good care of it.
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