You have likely heard the saying that people “eat with their eyes” before actually tasting the food. In order to provide the ultimate dining experience, the food must look fresh and be plated artistically. When all of these come together, the dish you eat is memorable.
The same can be said for your food truck’s exterior design. The way your food truck looks causes potential customers to form instant opinions of your brand. If the design is fresh, inviting, and beautifully composed people will naturally expect the food to be amazing, and if it is, your food truck will be the talk of the mobile eats scene. Here are three tips to help you nail a killer exterior food truck design that will attract more customers to your street eats.
How to Create A Mouth-watering Exterior Food Truck Design
If you want to appeal to the younger crowd, your food truck has got to have a “vibe” that is all it’s own. These tips will help you create a mouth-watering exterior design for your food truck the NOBODY can resist.
1. Hire a Food Truck Builder Company to Develop and Lay Down Design
It goes without saying that hiring a pro to develop (or assist in dev) and layout your truck’s design will give the finished product a professional look as opposed to you doing it yourself or hiring your nephew. That said, you may agree that working with professionals is your best option, but why not just go to any custom auto graphics and design business? Very simple: marketing. When you work with an established custom food truck builder like Legion Food Trucks, your graphic artists are also clever marketers who know how to pair design with various markets.
Working with a professional food truck company to design your truck’s exterior is also a good idea because they can get you a better price on vinyl wraps for vehicles in this specific class (as most other custom car shops don’t have connections with vendors for design options specific to larger autos).
Vinyl wraps are much better than painting because you get a more polished look, they are more durable than paint, and marketing studies show they convert better than airbrushed paint. However, vinyl wraps are extremely difficult to install and easy to ruin if you don’t know what you are doing. This is why having a professional wrap your food truck is recommended.
2. Color Matters in Food Truck Design
Color is a vital part of visual marketing psychology. Multiple studies show that different colors impact various subconscious thoughts in the human brain. For example, red promotes energy and excitement while green promotes feelings of peace. Purple signifies royalty and creativity and orange amplifies friendship and brotherhood. Your food truck business should have a marketing strategy designed to attract certain groups of people.
Once you identify your customer audiences, find out what motivates them, what their lifestyle is like, and why they want to eat your food (aside from being hungry). Then consider which colors would best attract these people to your food truck’s design. For example, if your food truck sells spicy hot food and your main customers are people who visit a local roller coaster park, use red to capture the thrill-seeker side of the buyer’s brain.
For this scenario, you could also create branded slogans for various menu items in flaming orange letters that say “dare your buddies to eat one”. In this example, we see how the subconscious appeal to friendship and excitement play into your brand’s color in direct correlation to who your customers are.
3. Inject Familiarity into a Design Your Customers Will Love
One marketing no-brainer is that people tend to buy from things that are recognizable because that which is recognizable promotes feelings of trust and buyer confidence. If your food truck is going to have one primary location or have the same weekly route, incorporate familiar aspects from your market’s location.
If you plan to sell by the beach, add waves into your branded design. If you plan on running a food truck in Los Angeles, think about adding a play on local landmarks into your truck’s look. When you give your customers the ability to better relate to you, you will see steady growth in customer numbers (and attract loyal eaters too).
Custom Food Truck Designs Are The Way To Go
Custom food trucks can be more expensive that a used vehicle, but the return on investment will more than pay you back. You simply cannot compete in this business with the freshest, most original concept on the streets.
At Legion Food Trucks, we custom build every single one of our vehicles. Everything from the signage and menu board all the way to the vinyl wrap or powder coat, our team of designers will customize every aspect of of your truck to match your vision. Contact us today or use our interactive food truck builder to learn more.
