The Ultimate Guide to Food Truck Recruiting

Food truck recruitment is extremely necessary for running a smooth and profitable food truck business. Hiring the best staff will ultimately play a major role in increasing output and delivering a wonderful customer experience. 

A well-trained team of professionals can become a great asset in your business which will naturally improve your quality standards. This is why it is important to select the best executives and train them well.

The recruitment process for a food truck business can be tricky and time-consuming at the same time. To ease up your recruitment procedure and assist you in selecting the best staff, we have curated this ultimate guide to food truck recruiting. 

1. Determining the number of employees required

number of employees

The first step towards recruitment is to determine the number of employees and staff required to run your food truck business. 

Usually, we divide the staff operations into two major groups: in front of the house and back of the house.

Front of the House

This group of staff includes cashiers, staff who will serve and interact with the customers and PR. 

These employees will be the face of your business as they will be interacting with the customers on a daily basis and that will decide the overall customer experience your business provides. 

For the FOH group, you must look for those employees who are friendly, enthusiastic and customer service oriented.  

Back of the House

This group of employees are those who will perform other operational tasks in producing the final output and running day-to-day operations smoothly. 

This includes your chefs, cleaners, accountants, HR, marketing team and other helping staff. 

Look for skilled and experienced employees for these positions as they will help in running operations smoothly and in the organised way possible. 

According to Mobile Cuisine, a food truck usually holds from 2 to 7 employees depending upon the capacity of the food truck and the daily output and targets. 

2. Select the staff positions 

Some of the important positions in a food truck business are explained below:

1. Window Attendants 

window attendent

Service window attendants are the face of your food truck business. 

They are the ones who receive orders, assist with customer needs, serve the orders, accept payments, prepare checks and take customer feedback. 

Some of the qualities that a service window attendant must possess are good communication skills, effective listening skills, patience, multitasking, proactiveness and problem-solving skills. 

2. The General Manager

When we come to the back of house operations, the manager plays a very significant role in overlooking and supervising the day to day functions. 

A manager must be highly competent in leadership qualities, multitasking and supervising skills. Some of the responsibilities of a food truck manager include:

  1. Opens and closes the food truck according to the business timings.
  2. Prepares staff shifts.
  3. Ensures that there are no absentees.
  4. Resolves customer complaints.
  5. Connect with suppliers.
  6. Ensures inventory and stock replenishment.
  7. Settles staff disputes.
  8. Keeps up the team spirit.
  9. Performs additional tasks. 

If you do not wish to employ a separate marketing and sales manager, a general manager fits into these roles as well. 

3. The Accountant

An accountant makes all your financial operations easier and organised. 

The accountant must be skilled and experienced and must be able to keep track of all the cash inputs as well as expenses and also make sure you are not crossing your budget. 

Responsibilities of a food truck accountant include:

  1. Keep track of cash inflows and expenses.
  2. Prepare financial statements and profit and loss statements.
  3. Keep track of receipts and invoices.
  4. Manage licensing and tax requirements. 
  5. Prepare weekly, monthly and annual reports of sales and turnover.

The accountant must also be well-comprehended about administrative duties and requirements. 

Nowadays a restaurant management system (POS) does your accounting tasks as well in the most efficient and paperless manner. 

A POS can deal with inventory tracking, manage cash flows, determine profits and losses, maintain records for future references and alleviate overspending. 

4. Chefs and Kitchen Staff

food truck chef

Chefs and cooks determine the ultimate output of your business, that is, to create mouth-watering, delicious dishes. 

According to Posbistro, the difference between a chef and cooks is the amount of experience and culinary knowledge. Usually, there is one head chef and 2-3 cooks in a food truck. 

The head chef plans the menu and recipes as well as ensuring the inventory and supplies are restored or not. 

The cooks follow those recipes and culinary skills in preparing those dishes under the supervision of the head chef. 

Selection of the chef and cooks must be based upon certain factors. Some of them are mentioned below:

  1. Experience.
  2. Knowledge about different cuisines.
  3. Food presentation.
  4. Knowledge of different culinary skills.
  5. Supervision skills.
  6. Tracking inventory.
  7. Multitasking 
  8. Vivid creativity and imagination.
  9. Taking safety and sanitization measures seriously. 

Cooks must also have the skills of cutting, chopping, slicing and preparing ingredients for the dishes. 

They must also handle the storage of meat, vegetables, sauces and other ingredients to keep the prep food fresh and avoid food wastage. 

5. Cleaning Staff

Cleaning staff ensures the cleanliness and hygiene of your food truck. 

The cleaning staff does the cleaning during and at the end of the daily business hours to make sure the food truck is spotlessly clean for the next day. 

Cleanliness is important to maintain standards of your food truck and avoid the perpetuation of germs and diseases. 

Poor sanitization may cause municipal and food health authorities to take actions which will not bring a good reputation to the business. 

Lastly, the cleaning staff must also keep track of cleaning inventory and choose the best cleaning equipment.

During working hours, regularly cleaning and sanitizing the cooking equipment, stove and grills, disinfecting the floor and taking out the trash must be performed. 

3. Spreading the Word

Next task is to open a forum for applications. 

Mention the vacant position, job description, work timings, salary and required qualifications and skills in the application. 

You can get the word out through family, friends, existing staff and trusted connections. 

Post your vacancy on online job websites like Craigslist, Indeed, Mobile Cuisine and LinkedIn as well as on social media handles. 

Ensure that you are mentioning the responsibilities and requirements well. 

Use keywords like multitasking, friendly, team player, experienced, customer-oriented skills, culinary skills, passion etc. do not worry if you are putting out an extensive list of requirements. 

This will avoid irrelevant applications from flowing in due to confusions and queries.

4. Interviews and Selection

Once you have received ample applications, it is time to shortlist the applicants by reviewing their resume. 

When you contact them and ask them to arrive for the interview, make sure you have the necessary materials and questions ready. This will vary from position to position.

Make the candidate comfortable and begin by asking about their day or their interests. 

Brief them about your food truck business and begin asking questions about their experience, skillset, passion and why they should be hired for the job. 

Finally, put the candidate in a hypothetical situation which may occur during their day-to-day operations. For instance, how would they resolve a customer-related problem or a food-related problem? How would they resolve a staff dispute? What measures will they take if the inventory work is not run smoothly on busy days? 

To select the perfect candidate for the job, it is always better to have 2-3 rounds of interviews and questionnaires to test personality skills, behavioural skills, critical thinking, creativity, leadership skills, team management etc. 

Conduct a background check on the final shortlisted candidates. Recheck their work experience, accomplishments and personal information they have provided to you. 

5. Employee Training and Induction

Once you have selected the best candidate amongst the lot, it is time to familiarize him/her with the food truck and colleagues. 

And induction training is important to acquaint the candidates about their responsibilities, duties, goals, targets, company policies and management style. 

Familiarize the trainee about the equipment used such as grills, ovens, stove and other culinary tools. 

Assist them in learning the menu, preparing the food, learning service standards, hygiene measures, safety and how to interact and deal with different types of customers. 

Also, set realistic goals and achievable targets for them. This will differ from position to position.  

In the beginning, you can allot them simple tasks and once familiarized, the tasks can be allotted normally.

Do not forget to brief them about the health and safety guidelines, sanitization, first aid measures in case of injuries and fire extinguishers and how to use it. 

It is very important to train your employees about the actions taken during an emergency and the helpline numbers they must contact. 

For this purpose, do consider hanging up posters about safety guidelines, fire exits and emergency numbers.

To compose all these instructions and guidelines, it is recommended to prepare an employee handbook for further references.

An employee handbook contains the following:

  1. Non-Disclosure Agreement, if the employee has signed it.
  2. Company policies
  3. Safety and first-aid measures.
  4. Salary information
  5. Work timings, uniform, behaviour policy, etiquettes and code of conduct.
  6. Vacations and leave policy
  7. Additional benefits, compensation and allowances.
  8. General FAQs
  9. Contact of reporting authorities. 

Remember to update the employee handbook and ensure that each staff carries a copy of the same. 

A well-trained team brings professionalism to your business. They help in raising quality standards and delivering great customer experience due to efficient hospitality and service. 

This is why failing to provide proper training to the employees might cause chaos and dissatisfaction later on.

6. Tracking Employee Performance and Providing Feedback

Once your staff has started their day to day operations and are working regularly, it is important to monitor their performance from time to time. 

Create an individual employee file that contains their personal information, work duration and track their shifts, leaves and performance.

Refer attendance checks, shift hours and leaves taken by the employees while tracking the employee performance from time to time.

Refer to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to determine performance. 

Some of the KPIs are listed below:

  1. Weekly/monthly turnover
  2. Food per cost percentage
  3. Inventory worth
  4. Total work hours
  5. Total employee costs
  6. Email responses 
  7. Overspending or crossing the budget
  8. Other customer-oriented complaints or disputes.

Amongst these KPIs, analyze your team’s potential vs their actual performance. 

Provide constructive feedback and maintain a sense of encouragement and team spirit. 

Discuss what could be done to improve certain services and do not neglect ideas from the staff. 

Conduct regular team meetings to resolve customer complaints and disputes, if any. Regularly communicate with them through a common platform or emails for providing regular updates.

Finally, to keep the team’s spirit high, regularly offer bonuses and encouraging incentives, launch best employee awards, staff parties on festivals and additional recognition incentives that will create a positive mindset.

The Takeaway

Making profits in the food industry is not easy. 

However, with a team of professional, well-trained staff that smoothens the process of day to day operations can bring in a lot of good reputation and professionalism. 

Pay heed on updating and training your team regularly on the latest trends, changes in technology, new equipment and customer-oriented requirements. 

Through successful and efficient management, you must remember to use the employee’s skills to its maximum potential for the maximum output and in return, create a learning experience for them. 

What techniques do you use to hire employees for your food truck and how do you retain them? Let us know your secrets in the comments section below!

Author Bio: Shristi Patni 

Shristi is a content writer and owner of F and B Recipes. Formerly the Chief Content Officer at Raletta, she is currently working on her second cookbook. She’s known for her articles on topics such as Soul Healing and Transitions Counseling.