I'm actually going to cover the three types of food, truck, health inspections you could potentially be getting. And one of them is one you definitely don't want to get, and I'm going to cover those three types of food truck.
I mentioned in the introduction, super important, one of the most important aspects of running and operating a profitable food truck, no matter what state you are in, or even what country you are going to get the potential three types of health inspection for your food truck. Now, one of them, as I mentioned is one that you definitely don't want to get, and that's going to be number two, and I'm going to cover the three of them in just a second.
And as always, if this is your first video from marketing, put on, welcome to my channel. I am Damian Roberta I'm, founder, CEO of marketing food online. I've created marketing foot on line. After being in the food industry for almost 30 plus years, I operate six e-commerce food businesses with my wife, and I've done over 900 videos here in marketing and food online and done consulting as well with over 400 amazing small food business startups.
So one other thing that we do offer is consulting. If you want to speak to me directly, check the link down below. Of course, that will take you over to marketing photo line.com and you can sign up for your one-hour consulting call directly with me. So let's not waste any more time. Let's get to the top three and the only three health inspections you will get from your food truck.
One is going to be your general yearly food truck inspection. This is something that is a norm in the industry. You may get it actually either every year or potentially every six months, depending upon how the scheduling works with the health department in your city and your county. Okay? So these are very general. Basically they come in, they're going to check the sanitation of the entire truck, make sure that all the papers and documentation that you need to be running legitimate are up and running.
They're going to also check if you've got food at the time, they will check the temperatures that you're holding, that food that you're preparing at. You also want to make sure that any other guidelines or permits or food handler cards that are necessary for the either owner or the operator or the employees, making sure that everybody has the proper information in place as well.
Now, when it comes to the sanitation, I can speak from this, from my own experience. When I operated our Italian bakery, they will look through everything, every nook and cranny, hopefully, depending upon of course, how thorough your health department is.
You definitely want to make sure everything is clean and sanitized. Not only just to clean down or wipe down, but there's also a sanitation process that you should implement as well. And you want to make sure everything is super extra clean. Okay. Now can the health department find health violations and then write you up? Yes, that is a potential thing that could happen, but you want to stay on top of your food truck.
One of the great things about having a food truck, unlike an Italian bakery that we had, where people could come in and sit, and you've got a lot of equipment, you've got prep tables, you've got display cases for your pastries and cookies.
The bakery was different because there was a lot of space. food trucks are great because believe it or not, they're just not big. Yes, they are big on wheels. As far as a truck is concerned, but in no way, are they in comparison to running a deli, a bakery, an ice cream shop, or any type of restaurant or cafe, you don't have a lot of space really to be clean and kept sanitary. So as long as you stay on top of it, day in and day out through the daily operation. [inaudible] These inspections that are yearly.
The number one, that should be absolutely no problem at all. So the dreaded number two, this is one that you don't want to get. Number two is complaint oriented inspection. One that is triggered that will come to your food truck based on a complaint that is issued by a customer who ate with you, either through getting sick or having food porcine or having some reaction or something that was obviously unsettling to the point that they contacted the health department and turned it into your truck for a violation of some kind.
Now, this is not the one that you want to get because when they do come for those, they will look high and low and even take potential samples or look into the specific food that was served at that time for that customer. These inspections can sometimes not be scheduled at all.
They will just show up and they will tell you that they have received a complaint and then go through the formalities of the paperwork, et cetera, but they will be on your food truck really, really fast. They will inspect it, every nook and cranny, again like a traditional inspection. But this time they will be looking through things with an extra fine tooth comb and potentially writing up any type of violations that they find.
Okay, this is one that I thank God at my deli at the Italian baker that we had. We never got any type of complaint like that.
I was well aware of those because of course, you know, these things are going through the business and having them through the years. But the traditional inspection that comes every year is always something that we welcome. And we're glad that they're there to do that, but we never had a followup to a complaint. So number two is one you definitely don't want to have. And they'll pass at the end of the video near the end. I'll actually go through a few steps that you can take to implement certain procedures and policies for you and your team. So you don't have to actually ever incur one of these types of inspections. Now, can your food truck be shut down where they complaint inspection right off the bat? It's only if the health department finds a consecutive or numerous amounts of violations, that they will then make a determination based on a case by case basis.
Now, these follow-up visits that would be for these types of complaints, don't necessarily mean they're going to shut you down, but you definitely don't want to have them come and start writing up a number of these violations, because then they're going to come back again. And that leads me to number three.
So number three is one that you, you kind of want to get when they do the number two, but the number three is the follow up to that number to visit. And of course, when they do this, you want to make sure that all those violations, if you had more than one, or if you had a few, make sure that those are definitely addressed and they do not exist when they come back for a follow-up visit.
So the third type of health inspection you could potentially get on your food truck would be the follow-up visit.
Now, again, that is one that potentially will not be scheduled either. They may just show up sometimes help departments based on where they are. Of course they don't all necessarily operate this way, but when they come back for that additional inspection to the follow-up for the complaint, they will show up whenever they show up. So they want to make sure that you stay on your toes. And to be honest with you, it's actually kind of a good thing because you don't want to obviously serve anybody food that they're going to get potentially sick from. You want to serve your customers, quality food, and you want them to come back over and over. But the drawback to a food truck is you normally hit a lot of local routes, right? Or local events. If the local word gets out that your food truck is getting people sick, that's going to be damaging to your business.
And nobody's going to stand in line for your food, no matter how cheap it is or how good of a quality you think it is. Because if people are getting sick and ill from it, they will not come back as repeat customers. And they will not tell their friends. I can guarantee you that. So I say that only from an experience again, running our retail cafe and bakery, we had, we had a lot of thank goodness. We had a lot of good positive feedback, but we always wanted to stay on top of every single customer that comes into the store for you. Of course, every customer that eats from your food truck, you want them to rave about it. So what can I do Dana, to kind of almost ensure that we do not get complaints or get people sick. Number one, we want to create a specific book set up for a policy procedure and a process.
If you will, on keeping your food truck sanitary, creating a cleaning process is ultra important. And it's key to it, the food business success, but especially to a food truck. And as I mentioned in the beginning of the video, food trucks are not very big. Physically. If you have two or even three people in a food truck at a time, there should be no reason why a food truck is getting dirty or unclean or unsanitary. So you as a food truck owner and you want to be successful at a mobile food business, you want to create it, create a binder, go to detail, go to town on what you expect your team and employees to do in order to ensure a clean sanitized truck. So at any point in time, when you do get an inspection from the health department, you will just sit back and say, look, I've got this covered.
I know it because we have implemented policies and procedures and a process to make sure that everything is kept clean, no matter how busy or how slow we are. And that is the first step to never having a number two complaint, especially from a customer about the quality of your food. Okay. Now the next thing up is to also work and keep a good rapport and relationship with your local health department. What do I mean by that? If at any point in time, there's any type of relationship that you build with the health inspector or the head of the department, make sure you maybe stay on top of any new procedures or new laws that may have been implemented for the food truck itself. Now these change and fluctuate, and of course, every city and county will operate on their own. But overall, basically speaking the end, the idea of TPA, food trucks, clean and sanitary is really common sense, and it shouldn't need any additional laws or processes or procedures put in place by a city in order for you to maintain your own investment and maintain your own brand.
Obviously, that's another thing you want to keep in mind as your brand grows and people love your food truck, make sure that everyone and anyone you bring on board as an employee or as a worker within the food truck knows that this is the standard that you're going to operate your food truck from, and everything needs to be followed in line. Next up number two is a checklist not only creating a procedure to clean or implement cleaning sanitation processes, but also keeping a checklist. It's fantastic because at the end of a day, you can go through that actual checklist consistently and maintain a very high standard of cleanliness. Okay? So we also have that here at our facility where we operate our canyon snack business. We have a process by which we clean things and keep them sanitized. And every single week we go through that and check it out.
So there's nothing wrong with having checklists. They are fantastic. You can, based upon the equipment, you have the space that you have, or the processes for you to make your food product go through and create a specific checklist for those particular items and make sure that they're clean and wiped down next up at number three is maybe even going in next step further, not only in yourself expecting it, but having a specific employee who is in charge of sanitation and cleanliness, and whether it be a manager or supervisor or whatever, the title may be put a particular person that you have in charge of that. So not only will you as the owner of the food truck follow up, but you'll have two people who will know and expect a certain level of cleanliness. And that's always a good thing to fall back on when you've got an additional supervisor or somebody who is maintaining those standards.
Okay? So those are the three types of food truck inspections that you are going to get your annual food truck inspection, which is a norm. It may be actually by year, maybe every six months by six months at a time or every quarter that's potentially what could happen, but normally it's about every year. And of course, number two is the complaint inspection, which you don't want to get to trust me. And number three is the follow-up to the complaint inspections. Those are the three types of inspections you will get from the health department. So if that was helpful as always let me know down below, if you have any comments about food trucks and health inspections, let us know. We'll try to jump on it as quick as we can. We'll get the team to create the some question and answer videos for you.
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 franchise, a food operation start a packaged food business, private label, your own food product, sell on Amazon, get your own online store or sell food online. Remember to subscribe and check out these videos for more resources, take care.
Website Design Services : https://bit.ly/35XnxK4
Food Business Books: https://bit.ly/3kP5oV3
Commercial Food Products: https://bit.ly/325gNsg
Nutritional Labels: https://bit.ly/343tTaZ
Social Media Help https://bit.ly/3k3aRqX
Mobile Food Business: https://bit.ly/2TMo4J6
FREE VIDEOS: https://bit.ly/2HMSx7z
Catering Business: https://bit.ly/35VBGY7
Food Truck Business: https://bit.ly/3kPGYuD
Spice Business: https://bit.ly/34TBR7b
Co Packers: https://bit.ly/381TjIv
Food Business Consulting: https://bit.ly/3kQOZzn
Food Packaging : http://bit.ly/3dCBuAr
Food Business Blog: https://marketingfoodonline.com/blogs/news
Small Business Classes: http://bit.ly/3q8vbtC
Homebased Food Business: http://bit.ly/2XrugYX
Sell Food On Amazon: http://bit.ly/2XveJHj
We are part of the Fiverr Affiliate program and receive a commission when you buy through the above link.