Food Trucks Tweet to the Hungry

(Guest post by Dorine Sinigaglia)

Recently, I noticed a friend of mine following a food truck company on Twitter. Call me old-fashioned, but I didn’t even know food trucks were still around – let alone had Twitter accounts! Food vendors always reminded me of a place where starved businessmen would run to grab a quick bite in TV sitcoms. I realized I knew very little about this business, so I began to do some research, as the concept of food trucks’ branding and marketing tactics on Twitter began to intrigue me. I was amazed at the amount of information I found online revolving food vendors’ online presence and I quickly grew an appetite to write a new post.

Street food vendors, trucks and carts have been around way before the time of Twitter – so it’s evident that their primary source of growth and ways of  promoting locations on an hourly basis is not solely done through Twitter (most of them have developed websites with full menus and directions to daily location stops). On the other hand, since Twitter is now available as a means of marketing and promoting brands, food vendors have quickly jumped on the Twitter bandwagon and are utilizing its real-time status updates to their advantage. According to Ann Handley from Mashable, “a growing number of street vendors have been leveraging Twitter in innovative and interesting ways, serving up lessons for any business” – in her article Tweetable Eats: What Street Vendors Can Teach Businesses About Twitter. With the help of Twitter, street food vendors can promote their precise stopped locations and what they are serving throughout the day by tweeting to the hungry public.

Many brands are on Twitter but don’t know how to engage with their followers or create constant dialogue to keep them coming back to read about company news or industry updates. When searching for street food vendors’ presence on Twitter, I found that most of them didn’t have more than 2,500 followers – and some had as few as 250 followers. Since their target markets are “geographically constrained” – says Ann, you won’t find food vendors on Twitter with tens of thousands of followers. For street food vendors, “1,000 followers who will actually do business with you are ultimately more valuable to your business that 100,000 less-engaged people.” There are exceptions of course – like Kogi Korean BBQ –  an extremely successful Korean BBQ taco truck that has a dynamic website filled with photos, videos, a blog, and also a Twitter account with almost 50,000 followers! According to an article in the LA Times – Living section featuring this successful taco truck,  Kogi brings in “300 to 800 people each time it parks (often several times in an evening).” But overall, street food vendors have to do much more than just “follow” people on Twitter in hopes of gaining a customer or two – for it doesn’t matter how big the list is if they don’t make it to the food cart.

For street food vendors, it is about finding the right followers in order to ensure a successful lunch hour. There are a few important tips that food vendors must keep in mind in order to get proper exposure in general – and most importantly, before lunch time when its their busiest time for sales.

First, they must know who their target market is. If the local taco stand or hot dog cart tends to remain in the Los Angeles region, for example, roaming from one college campus to another within the same county boundaries, their target audience is specifically people who live in Los Angeles and attending students of those colleges. If the food cart tends to post up near local museums, on the other hand, their target market is much wider and appeals to a variety of crowds. In general, it is crucial to know who their target market is and where these customers roam in order to ensure a high attendance to their parked food cart.

Next, street food vendors must create a tasty demand for their products while simultaneously creating a sense of urgency in their tweets. Some vendors post a brief menu of their available foods or how many items they have left before they run out for the day to create that sense of urgency in the customer’s potential purchase and gets their mouth watering for the vendor’s food (if they can throw in a quick link to a picture of their melting grilled cheese sandwich or their sizzling hamburger, this helps wonders!). According to Ann, food vendors must “communicate the breadth and depth of your products or services on Twitter in a fresh, compelling way, and in a manner that speaks directly to your customer’s needs.”

Food vendors must humanize their brand in order to reach out to their customer’s hungry heart. Monitoring conversations online is key in this business and goes a long way in terms of keeping customers feeling appreciated and humanizing the brand. Responding to customer’s comments and questions in real-time is crucial to keep the business going successfully and they should listen to customer’s suggestions and feedback with the use of Twitter and use this vital information as a resource for product development and ways to improve their business. According to Ann, food vendors must “reveal a little bit about the people and personalities who run your business so that your customers can connect with you on a human level.”

And now, its all about continuous open communication. Twitter’s real-time social platform allows food vendors to be in regular, instant communication with its customers and keep them informed on news and updates – even if the news is not in their favor (for customers respect honesty and would rather know the truth than come hungry and be let down). Whether food vendors publicize their locations and hours on Twitter or send a tweet about how they didn’t find parking on the street, communication is key to keep the customer engaged and coming back for more tasty treats.

Done correctly and with style, Twitter goes a long way in having the ability to connect customers with their business in an immediate, intimate level. But since Twitter is only one social media tool for food vendors to utilize for promoting their brand, like any marketing efforts, spreading the word about their tasty foods is done best when integrated with other valuable tools – like having a company blog, a dynamic website and by reaching out to the blogosphere for other companies to write about their products. Now, Twitter is simply another great resource for food vendors to be able to reach out to their community in a quick fashion with real-time updates and tasty tweets that bring hungry customers to their cart simply because they feel they have to save the last, lonely hot dog from the stand before closing time.

Is it lunch time yet?

Dorine Sinigaglia is the Account & Content Manager at Blonde 2.0