Here at Pixel Wraps, we are committed to bringing you the best information about mobile food truck advertising. Whether you are a budding street chef or a seasoned veteran of asphalt eateries, the following seven tips will help illustrate how to design the perfect graphic for your restaurant on wheels.
Factors to Consider While Designing Food Truck Wraps:
Go Big or Go Home
The first thing to decide will be the size of your wrap. In almost all cases, you will be well-served to wrap the entire truck. Think of your truck surface as your own free mobile billboard. Why wouldn’t you want to wrap every possible square inch?
Many savvy food truck designers will even recommend decorating the roof of your vehicle. Why the roof? If you happen to be parked in front of a high-rise office building at lunchtime, the busy people inside simply need peer down from their upper story windows. As soon as they see your roof-top truck graphic, word will spread that the best tacos, burgers, lángos or cappuccinos in town are right outside their doors.
Just Say No to Paint-Wrap Combos
Some entrepreneurs will go with a hybrid of more expensive hand painted graphics along with their wrap. There are several practical reasons not to do this:
- The painted and vinyl printed graphics will not match
While it is possible to get your wrap to complement the glossiness and colors of hand painted logos, it will often be an unnecessary headache — especially when considering how paint can fade and change in appearance over time.
- The wrap will outlive your painted signs
Even if you pull off a perfect combination of digital print and hand painted letters, the summer sun, spring rain and winter road salt will quickly begin to alter their appearance — with the painted surface normally surrendering to the outdoor elements at a quicker pace than the more UV-resistant wrap material. This leads to an unsightly, mismatched combination of media.
- Tedious, time-consuming touch-ups
Using paint on a service vehicle can lead to the hassle of having to touch up your paint annually, or sometimes even seasonally. When factoring in the cost of this, remember it is not just the cost of the paint and labor. Taking your food truck off the road for any amount of time will means losing both street presence and revenue, which translates to reduced income for you. Just like with your cooking appliances, you will want to choose only the best, most durable product possible — in order to avoid unnecessary headaches and stay open for business
Keep it Fun and Mellow
It is important to create a festive and relaxing vibe with your truck. This helps to put people in a better mood and unwind. A bold, easy to read and inviting wrap will get more customers walking up to your window. The pros at Pixel Wraps are ready to collaborate with you on a design that incorporates the perfect text, illustrations and colors — along with a faithful rendering of your logo.
Do not stop there. Bright-colored napkins, kitschy accessories (such as leis for your Hawaiian lūʻau lorry or sombreros for your Mexican fiesta fleet), upbeat music and cheerful staff will all accentuate your wrap design, allowing patrons to let their hair down. Remember, a relaxed customer is always a hungry customer.
Be Menu-centric
While the atmosphere at any business is always a plus, ambiance can only get you so far. At the end of the day, your customers are coming for the food. That is why your food truck design should always focus on the menu. Street food requires a quick, often impulsive decision on what to get. That is why your entrées, daily specials and prices should always be front and center — preferably right next to your service window. This gives people all the info they need to decide while they wait to order.
Look at your wrap design as a stage or painting. You will want the accompanying graphics to properly frame and draw attention to both your logo and menu. The Pixel Wrap team are seasoned experts at making sure your list of tasty offerings will always get top billing.
Use the Right Lighting
If your food truck is a stage and your wrap is the background, then of course you will need the right lighting in order to create a properly dramatic presentation. If your mobile eatery will be catering to late night service workers or the post bar crowd then appropriate lighting will be an essential part of remaining a visible and accessible destination that sticks out on a dark landscape. When choosing the colors for your lights, it is also a good idea to keep in mind the hues present in your wrap design in order to make your truck’s surface “pop”. Whether you will be using mellow blue or a more festive red, matching spotlights will go a long way to complete the overall look and feel of your business.
Remember to Look Good While Your Window is Open
This is a common mistake many rookies in the wrap design game make. Often food truck wraps will look attractive when the service window is closed but opening for business results in missing letters and a mixed message to customers. Frank’s Food Truck can suddenly read like a certain six letter word that leaves potential patrons both confused and offended.
While this may seem funny in certain contexts, you cannot always rely on every passerby to have a good sense of humor — and besides, it is probably not a great idea to make your business the butt of the joke. One solution involves using a smaller logo or a “we’re closed” graphic on your closed window. Thankfully, the graphics department at Pixel Wraps will be able to troubleshoot these kinds of potential issues so that your wrap will look good whether you are open or en route to the next destination.
Always Be Original
So maybe you are not the first hot dog truck in town. That is even more of a reason to be as creative as possible when it comes to your branding effort. Things such as letter font, colors and overall design need to immediately identify your business and establish as its own unique identity. Whether its McDonalds versus Burger King or Coke versus Pepsi, there’s usually room for more competitors in any marketplace.
The key is to create your own brand. Different people will gravitate to each competitor for their own reasons —sometimes even the same person in the mood for something different. While total domination may be optimum, your goal, at least in the short term should be to secure your piece of the pie. One important way to do that is with original graphics on your truck wrap.
At Pixel Wraps, we offer a full array of design, printing and installation services for all vehicle wraps. To learn more about how you can use your company truck, van or car to communicate with customers, feel free to reach out to us anytime.