Custom software and apps for food trucks

What running a food truck actually involves

A food truck is a restaurant that moves, which means every problem a restaurant has plus a few of its own. The menu has to fit a tiny kitchen, the location changes daily, the weather decides your sales, and much of the money comes from private events and catering rather than street service.

What truck owners tell us takes up their time:

• Telling people where you will be: posting the weekly schedule on several social accounts, then updating it when a spot falls through.
• Lines at the lunch rush that are too long, so people walk away before ordering.
• Catering and private event requests come by direct message, email and phone, and quoting a 150-person corporate lunch or a wedding late-night set is done from scratch every time.
• Permits and paperwork: health permits, fire inspections, business licenses and event-specific permits differ by city and county, each with its own renewal date.
• Commissary prep: figuring out what to prep for tomorrow’s stops based on the location, the expected crowd and what sold last time.
• Knowing which stops are worth it, since sales by location, day and weather are spread across POS reports.
• Multi-truck operators also need to schedule crews, assign trucks to bookings and track maintenance, generators and propane.

What we build into a food trucks app

• Live location and schedule: a map and weekly calendar customers can check, updated once and shared to your website and social accounts.
• Order ahead with pickup times, sent straight to your POS or a kitchen screen, so the window stays moving.
• Loyalty and notifications: punch cards, rewards and a push message when the truck is near a customer’s usual spot.
• Catering and event booking: a request form with date, headcount, location and menu, instant or reviewed quotes, deposits and contracts.
• Permit and inspection tracker with renewal reminders for every city and event you work.
• Prep planning: prep lists based on the stop, expected volume and past sales at that location.
• Stop reporting: sales by location, day, time and weather, so you know which spots and events pay.
• Fleet tools for multi-truck owners: truck and crew assignments, maintenance and fuel or propane logs.
• AI answering for the messages you get all day: where are you today, what is on the menu, do you cater, and is this date open.

Food truck POS and marketplaces vs a custom app

Most trucks should keep a standard POS. Square and Toast both have hardware and setups that suit mobile food businesses, take cards and contactless payments well, and offer basic online ordering. Catering marketplaces like Roaming Hunger can send you event bookings in exchange for a fee. These are good tools and we connect to them rather than replace them.

A custom food trucks app makes sense when you have a following that would use your own app, run several trucks or a truck plus a brick-and-mortar location, or do enough catering that a proper booking and quoting flow pays for itself. It also gives you the customer list, which a marketplace or a social platform keeps for itself. Owning that list means you can tell your regulars directly when you add a new stop or a seasonal menu item.

How a food truck project works

1. Ride alongWe spend a service with you, from commissary to close, and look at how you post locations and handle catering.
2. Pick the first winUsually order-ahead or catering booking, whichever is costing you the most today.
3. Design the appYou click through the customer app and your own views before code is written, and test them on a phone at the window.
4. Build and connectWe build in rounds and connect to your POS so orders, menu and prices stay in one place.
5. Launch and growWe help announce the app to your followers and keep adding features as the business grows.