Figured I would share some of my food truck wedding plans. I have spent a lot of time researching the goods and bads of having a food truck wedding and I feel we have a fairly good game plan. It might be a little jumbled but I'm going to try and keep it as clear as possible and I am open for questions, comments, and advice.
Wedding details:
Engagement date: May 2019- We did not start planning until about mid July. I wanted to take some time to enjoy our engagement before planning. We also took some of this time to fantasies about wedding day dreams
Wedding Date: June 27, 2020
Location/Venue: Northern New Jersey. A barn located in the Watchung Reservation. It is part of the Union County parks system so it is a public venue & not a traditional wedding venue. Ceremony and reception will be held in the same location. Send me a message if you are looking for further details. It is really a hidden gem but completely DIY they just provide tables and chairs
Budget: Max is $20,000 trying to stay around 10-15k
Guest List: 91 including bride and groom
When we decided on food trucks I went to the internet. I read success stories, horror stories, blog posts, professional articles, guests comments, tips, advice, you name it I probably read it! I called and emailed a few food trucks to get a feel for the process and professional opinions. With all of this knowledge I set to developing a plan. Here is our overall plan for the day, some issues food trucks could present and how we are dealing with them as well as some questions we have asked food truck owners and other things to consider.
Guest will have to wait a long time/ it will take awhile to serve the food: With 91 guests we decided on 2 food trucks. I don’t think it is 100% needed, but I feel more comfortable having 2 and it provides more options. We also considered the type of food we wanted and how intricate/how quickly it could be made. We decided on tacos, BBQ, or pizza. In most cases BBQ meats are pre-cooked and smoked the day before the event so it basically turns into an assembly operation. Tacos can kind of be the same depending on the fillings and also fillings are sometimes fried which means quick cooking. Pizza trucks are brick oven pizza which is typically cooked in 5 minutes. Also most pizza trucks set up a “buffet” in front of the truck where they display all the pizzas and guests can just walk up and take what they want.
Guest will have to wait online/ older guests who don’t want to stand or walk to get food: We decided to hire some servers, either 2 or 3 but we are leaning more towards 2. The servers will help clean tables and can help serve. We will provide a menu or 2 on each table which guests can order off of if they want. We are also going to have “escort cards” that can serve as food identifiers. I am going to have guests names and table numbers on like little picks/skewers. If the guest doesn’t want to wait at the food truck they will hand their pick to the food truck. When the food is ready the FT operator will put their pick in the food and a server will deliver the food to the table which is on the flag. If someone doesn’t want to get up they can just tell the server what they want and hand the server their pick/flag. It seems complicated, but i don’t really see people doing this. I will write a little faq on the menus explaining this option.
Rain: Well I have been praying for no rain for like 5 months now and will keep up the prayers. But the real plan if it rains, see above with the pick process and we will have 3 servers not just 2. We will also put up some pop-up tents luckily I already own some that either me or my mom picked up when they were on sale (we are an active couple so we have used them in our backyard). This isn’t really ideal, but it will do. Also we will provide a bucket with some umbrellas. We asked the food trucks how they deal with rain and many of them said they have pop-up tents.
The flow: So future in-laws were not really on board with the food truck idea. They were worried their guests would not be taken care of properly and they just kept thinking about how a “normal/venue wedding” flows and kept asking what about cocktail hour? We are not having a cocktail hour. They said cocktail hour is a time for people to mingle and an opportunity for the older guests to chat with the younger guests. Well the entire reception will be like a cocktail hour. We made a wedding website with a FAQ section and pretty much stated cocktail like reception. However food trucks need time to set up and I don’t want them to be setting up during our ceremony since they will be right behind the ceremony spot. So we decided to do a kind of reverse cocktail hour. Our center pieces are going to be charcuterie boards. After the ceremony, guests will be directed to make their way to their seats. They can stop at the food truck bar (yes that is a thing!) and grab a drink or grab a glass of pre-poured wine. We will take a little break to ourselves as husband and wife and once everyone is seated we will be introduced, go right into first dance, do mother son, mother daughter (my father is not in the picture) dances, a quick thank you speech from us, and cake cutting. The dance floor will then open up and the food trucks will start serving. The trucks will serve for about 2.5/3 hours then the gelato truck will come for about an hour.
Price: The pizza trucks are pretty nice because they serve unlimited pizza for a set time and typically have a pricing structure of 25-50 people=x price, 50-75 people=y price, 75-100=z price. We are paying $28/person for unlimited pizza, unlimited salad and unlimited gelato. Our taco truck price structure is - 85 serverings for x price and every serving after is like $12 per person. We are paying for like 95 taco servings up front and will deal with extra cost that day if needed. I am sure we could have worked something out because not every guest will eat at both trucks, but at this point it doesn’t matter and we do not want anyone to be without food. So for dinner for 3 hours and dessert for an hour price per person is coming out to about 40/person. Again we probably could have worked out something different with the taco truck but I am not a good negotiator and I think it is a fair price. The bar food truck is a set price for the truck, 2 bartenders, glassware, and garnishes and some other stuff. We have to provide all the alcohol and mixers.
Some questions we asked food truck operators.
How quickly can you serve guests and how do you deal with lines.
Have you ever done a wedding before?
What type of insurance do you have?
What will you do if it rains?
What type of set up do you require/how much space do you need?
How will we be in contact before and during the event?
How long do you need to set up?
How do you serve the food and are you willing to use plates provided by us?
General things to consider:
We are dealing with a lot of different vendors - 2 food trucks, a bar truck, servers, venue, ect- which requires a lot of coordination. Luckily the pizza truck owner also owns the gelato truck and can do the charcuterie boards, so try and find trucks that can provide more than one service if that is what you are looking for. We hired a day of coordinator to help with the coordination. I do not want to be bothered on wedding day with logistics. We have to tip a lot of different vendors and just generally have a lot more moving parts and workers to worry about. We want to use our own plates and silverware since food truck plates aren’t that nice so that is an added expense. We have to figure out coffee service (although it looks like the bar food truck is adding this service). We had to check with permits and legal requirements and make sure we meet those standards. We have to coordinate and provide alcohol.
So if you made it this far congrats! That was a long post, but hopefully helpful to anyone considering food trucks.
