The sizzle of the grill. The aroma of your signature dish filling the air. Your mobile food dream is about to become reality!
But a crucial first decision looms: food trailer or food truck?
Welcome to the ultimate mobile kitchen showdown. Making the right choice can make or break your culinary venture.
So which solution reigns supreme? And could a Good Concession Trailer be the secret ingredient that supercharges your success?
Table of Contents
Equipment Resilience
Anyone who has ever driven a car of any kind knows they’re prone to all sorts of issues. Tires blow, engines grind to a halt, power steering systems fail, belts snap, and transmissions blow.
Trailers are mechanical systems too, so they aren’t without their failures. But they’re less complicated than vehicles are. While they need maintenance and repairs, they typically need less attention less often than vehicles do.
If you’re running your mobile restaurant out of a bona fide truck, then business grinds to a halt as soon as that truck needs to go to the shop. If you can’t drive it, you can’t sell out of it, and there’s no back-up plan to be had.
If you’re running a food trailer, you can just swap out the towing vehicle with another suitable truck while you’re waiting for your primary towing vehicle to get out of the shop. Or, in some cases, you can park the trailer, detach the truck, send it on to the shop, and keep right on selling right where you are.
Either way, you reduce the risk of downtime.
We’re not promising your trailer won’t ever have to go to the shop, mind, but trailer repairs also typically take less time than major vehicle repairs. Swapping out a tire or tightening a lug-nut don’t approach the amount of work and logistics it takes to replace an entire transmission system.
Increased Work Space
A dedicated food trailer will always have more space than any truck. Why does it matter?
The obvious answer is more space means greater comfort and efficiency for you and your staff, which means better food and better food service. It means you get orders up faster and increase your profits.
But there can be a legal dimension to the amount of work and storage space in your rig, too. Limited space and the use of that space is a common reason for clashes between mobile food businesses and the local health department. The more limited the space, the harder it is to stay safe and sanitary.
While the increase in trailer space vs. truck space may only be the matter of a few feet, those few feet could make a big difference in your ability to remain operational. They could make an even larger difference to your happiness as you do so. Nobody likes bumping into equipment, countertops, or other people all day long.
Increased Storage Space
Inventory. Cups. Flatware. Napkins. Equipment. All mobile food businesses need plenty of storage space.
Increased storage space is related to increased work space of course, but the two considerations are not exactly the same.
Good Concession Trailers come with cabinets and shelving space galore. Those cabinets are wide and deep, so items stay out of your way until you need them. And it’s not just about convenience: proper storage space can help you prevent spoilage and cross-contamination.
Want more refrigeration space? It’s easy for us to customize any Good Concession trailer so you have more space for fridges or even freezers.
Easier Loading
Getting equipment and inventory into and out of the truck every day is a constant hassle when you’re dealing with the limited space and higher deck of your average food truck.
Here’s one area where Good Concession Trailers really shines.
Our hydraulic drop deck system lets you bring the trailer right to the ground. A short, low-angle ramp gets you up onto the deck itself, which sits just 5’2” off the ground (which is the amount of space between the bottom of the trailer and the walkable deck).
The ramp folds up and down and walking up it is as easy as walking across the average front stoop of the average home. This reduces the likelihood of loading injuries while speeding the loading process.
Plus, you can leave the deck down while you serve. Flip up the lift panels and enjoy reaching out to hand customers their food and take your payment, rather than down. You’ll put less strain on your body. You’ll also build stronger, better relationships with your customers: a face-to-face smile can make a world of difference, increasing the likelihood of repeat business and vital word-of-mouth advertising.
Make Ultra-Fast Adjustments
Some foods do best in the spring and summer. Some do better in the fall and winter. When you have a fully wrapped food truck it can be difficult to make a pivot if you need or want to. But what if you’re using a thoroughly modern food trailer instead?
When your signage relies on LED light signage instead of wraps, you can change out the cover panels and change your branding in a snap. When you use our fold-up programmable LED screen signs you can alter your menu or your advertising at the touch of a button.
Be an ice cream shop in July and turn into a cocoa and cookie stand when the first snowflakes fall. Deliver beignets in the morning and advertise funnel cake in the afternoon. The possibilities are endless. Better technology helps you pivot, and that makes you more resilient against tariffs, changing tastes, pandemics, shortages, and other uncontrollable events, too.
Comfort
Food trucks get hot.
They get hot even if you’re doing most of the actual cooking in your local commissary kitchen. The food usually needs to be hot, which means sooner or later you have to run some sort of equipment to heat it. That means increasing the heat in the trailer.
In some states, external temperatures are already exceeding the 100° mark for part of the year. So even if you really are scooping up ice cream, heat and comfort are a concern.
Fortunately, our concession trailers bring three advantages to the table to help you beat the heat.
The first is that every trailer is built with our patent-pending composite aluminum panels. These are insulated with R-4.5 insulation (on the walls) and R-5.45 insulation (on the roofing) so you aren’t a sweaty mess when you serve up your food.
Second, lift panels on three sides create a sort of breezeway that help you keep air flowing through the trailer. Not only does this keep you cooler, but it offers a primal source of effective advertising by carrying delicious food smells all the way down the street!
Third, it is possible to add climate control to your trailer. All of our food trailers come with multiple outlets, which means you have a place to plug in a fan. It’s also possible to add a hidden mini-split AC. How many trucks can run the AC the whole time you’re serving food?
While you’ll never control the temperature in a food trailer as well as you could indoors, with Good Concession Trailers you can enjoy a more comfortable serving experience…and withstand temperatures that might inspire competitors to pack it in and go home for the day.
Explore Food Trailers
Ready to take a closer look at Good Concession Trailers? Visit this link to view specs and options.
Then contact us to reserve your food trailer today!
See also:
How to Create an Incredible Concession Trailer with GoodMFG®
