3 Ways To Keep Your Food Truck Employees Motivated

On top of having to worry about sales, gaining and retaining customers, making good art in the kitchen in the form of delicious meals and making sure your food truck business is pleasing each and every customer, mobile kitchen owners also have to worry about satisfying their employees.

Yeah, this job definitely isn’t for the faint of heart, but that tends to be the case for any business owner in any industry.

Now, when it comes to satisfying your employees, you could offer competitive wages, you could give them free food while they are on the job (as opposed to a discounted price), you could offer benefits, you could dish out more responsibilities to make your employees feel like they have a major purpose at your truck and the list could go on and on.

With that in mind, we have come up with three more ways to keep your food truck employees motivated, and these strategies can be found below!

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3 Ways To Keep Your Food Truck Employees Motivated

• Make Every Moment A Teaching Moment
• Respect/Honor Schedule Requests
• Create An Environment That People Actually Want To Work In

Make Every Moment A Teaching Moment

If you make every moment a teaching moment at your mobile kitchen, a couple of different things will likely happen. For starters, your employees will learn the ropes, which will lead to your business running more smoothly. Also, your employees will see the value in working for you.

During your food truck journey, you are going to have employees who just view their job as a job, and you are also going to have employees who want to run their own kitchens in the future. No matter what the case, you are running the show, and if you want to make your business a well-oiled machine, and teach your employees along the way, then you are going to have to actually critique their work.

A good food truck owner isn’t only a mastermind in the kitchen and business savvy. No, a good food truck owner is also a good boss, and everyone loves working for a good boss. You will achieve this feat by actually showing your employees what they are doing right and wrong, and everyone will benefit in the process.

Or you could just yell at your employees and tell them how bad of a job they are doing, and then fire them without warning. Spoiler alert: That is not the way to go!

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Respect/Honor Schedule Requests

This is your business, which means you are going to put more into it than anyone else, and that should be expected. As a result, you shouldn’t get mad when employees call off work out of the blue, or have schedule requests that don’t exactly excite you. You have to honor schedule requests … well, within reason, because if someone is constantly calling off work, or has very demanding schedule requests, then this person might not be a good fit at your business.

Of course, when you are just starting off, you need all the help you can get, and said help might come from family members or friends. These “employees” are helping you get on your feet, and you likely are just happy for the helping hands.

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Here’s the deal: You are clearly in this for the long haul (you dropped a ton of money on a food truck, after all), but your employees might not be. Therefore, you can’t get mad/hurt when your employees request days off to do things that are more enjoyable to them. As long as your workers get their schedule requests in before you make the weekly/monthly schedule (assuming that is how you approach it), you have to try to respect and honor all requests.

That’s how you keep your employees happy. In the eyes of your employees, a flexible job is a great job.

RELATED: 15 Inspiring Quotes That Will Help Mobile Kitchen Owners Conquer The Daily Grind

Create An Environment That People Actually Want To Work In

No matter what the job might be, business owners would be rather wise to create environments that people actually want to work in.

Look back at your favorite class in high school and/or college. Why was it your favorite class? Was it because of the actual material of the class? Was it because your friends were also in the class? Was it because you had an awesome teacher? More likely than not, all of these things rang true, and you need to try to apply as many of them as possible to your business…

No one likes being in a class with a strict teacher who is mean. Likewise, no one likes working for a strict boss who is mean.

Putting this all together, if you are fair to your employees, if you make the environment light-hearted to a certain extent, if you have a positive attitude, if you respect — and take into account — what your employees say and do, if you make the work environment enjoyable and if you also let your passion shine through via amazing results in the kitchen/showing how important your business is, then people will love working for you.

Now, successfully combining all of those things together is not easy — this we know. However, you have to make this job enjoyable for your employees. If not, then you will be going through the hiring process more often than you would like.

A Final Tip: If you have no trouble retaining employees, if your business is thriving and if you have some all-star workers, then make sure to incorporate some form of Employee Appreciation Day!

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