A coffee truck could work if the goal was to get neighbors out of their house and get them to chat. The coffee truck rolls up, the stay at home parents and people working from home all come out at the same time. They order their coffees and stay in the street chatting after the truck leaves. If the truck had an espresso machine or other beverages (macha, ginger beer, etc), it could provide drinks customers don’t have at home.
If it were legal, a cocktail truck, or even a weed truck, might be an even better business idea because it taps into the same relaxed impulse-buying that ice cream trucks do.
A possible challenge is staffing. You’d need an employee who can switch between driving a truck through complicated neighborhood streets (pedestrians, speed bumps, lack of a grid, figuring out where to pull over) and preparing potentially complex drinks all day long. Your employee probably needs to either prefer that setting over working at a coffee shop, or you need to drive more business with the truck than a typical coffee shop does so you can compensate them better.
An app requires onboarding. I think it might be better to just play music that sounds different from an ice cream truck. Pick a limited route and drive it routinely. Have a big sign on the truck that explains the business model. You run the risk of annoying people daily with music, but you need the music to cue them to come outside.
Another possibility would be some kind of “summoning” app. Let people freely indicate via the app that they want the truck to drive into their neighborhood. The truck can then take that into account when deciding on its route. If there’s only one request, the truck can still go there. The driver can potentially indicate via the app where they’re heading to next and what requests they’re responding to. Then it’s “better than doordash” because requesting the delivery is free and has no commitment. And if the driver responds to requests, then users get a feeling that their input actually matters and become more likely to use the app.
Being able to take orders via an app might be nice. So it would be a bit like a hybrid doordash. If somebody puts in an order, you drive there and deliver like doordash, and charge a premium for the delivery. But you’re also driving around all day. You can discount orders that are pickup, meaning that they’ll come to your truck to get it wherever your truck happens to be.
Potentially you could carry pastries, like a coffee shop. Maybe bread too, eggs, sandwiches, other breakfast or lunch items. Many coffee shops source their baked goods from local bakeries, so you wouldn’t have to bake them yourself.
A nice aspect of this setup is that you wouldn’t have to pay rent to park a food truck or rent out a brick and mortar. However, you’d have to pay gas and maintenance costs, so it may or may not be a true advantage. Refrigerators on food trucks are notorious for breaking because they’re designed for buildings with more insulation. If you could avoid the need for refrigeration, you might have an advantage over the issues that come with food trucks.
It’s a relatively cheap experiment. You can buy the equipment used. If it doesn’t take off, it should still have most of the resale value. Seems like it should probably be launched by someone who already knows their way around an espresso machine and intends to be the owner/operator and has a passion for the work.
A coffee truck could work if the goal was to get neighbors out of their house and get them to chat. The coffee truck rolls up, the stay at home parents and people working from home all come out at the same time. They order their coffees and stay in the street chatting after the truck leaves. If the truck had an espresso machine or other beverages (macha, ginger beer, etc), it could provide drinks customers don’t have at home.
If it were legal, a cocktail truck, or even a weed truck, might be an even better business idea because it taps into the same relaxed impulse-buying that ice cream trucks do.
A possible challenge is staffing. You’d need an employee who can switch between driving a truck through complicated neighborhood streets (pedestrians, speed bumps, lack of a grid, figuring out where to pull over) and preparing potentially complex drinks all day long. Your employee probably needs to either prefer that setting over working at a coffee shop, or you need to drive more business with the truck than a typical coffee shop does so you can compensate them better.
An app requires onboarding. I think it might be better to just play music that sounds different from an ice cream truck. Pick a limited route and drive it routinely. Have a big sign on the truck that explains the business model. You run the risk of annoying people daily with music, but you need the music to cue them to come outside.
Another possibility would be some kind of “summoning” app. Let people freely indicate via the app that they want the truck to drive into their neighborhood. The truck can then take that into account when deciding on its route. If there’s only one request, the truck can still go there. The driver can potentially indicate via the app where they’re heading to next and what requests they’re responding to. Then it’s “better than doordash” because requesting the delivery is free and has no commitment. And if the driver responds to requests, then users get a feeling that their input actually matters and become more likely to use the app.
Being able to take orders via an app might be nice. So it would be a bit like a hybrid doordash. If somebody puts in an order, you drive there and deliver like doordash, and charge a premium for the delivery. But you’re also driving around all day. You can discount orders that are pickup, meaning that they’ll come to your truck to get it wherever your truck happens to be.
Potentially you could carry pastries, like a coffee shop. Maybe bread too, eggs, sandwiches, other breakfast or lunch items. Many coffee shops source their baked goods from local bakeries, so you wouldn’t have to bake them yourself.
A nice aspect of this setup is that you wouldn’t have to pay rent to park a food truck or rent out a brick and mortar. However, you’d have to pay gas and maintenance costs, so it may or may not be a true advantage. Refrigerators on food trucks are notorious for breaking because they’re designed for buildings with more insulation. If you could avoid the need for refrigeration, you might have an advantage over the issues that come with food trucks.
It’s a relatively cheap experiment. You can buy the equipment used. If it doesn’t take off, it should still have most of the resale value. Seems like it should probably be launched by someone who already knows their way around an espresso machine and intends to be the owner/operator and has a passion for the work.