A restaurant guest reads a menu sitting down, warm, with a drink. A truck customer reads it standing in a queue in the wind with people behind them, deciding in about fifteen seconds. Almost every menu rule changes.

Six things, maybe eight

The best trucks sell four or five things and do them properly. Every extra line slows the queue, adds prep, and takes space you do not have. A long menu on a truck reads as a truck that is not sure what it is.

The queue is your menu board

The single biggest gain on a truck is people deciding before they reach the hatch. Every customer who arrives already knowing takes fifteen seconds instead of ninety, and on a busy lunch that is the difference between eighty covers and a hundred and twenty.

A code on the side of the truck, halfway down the queue, does that for nothing. People read while they wait, which is the only thing they wanted to do anyway.

Say where you are

• Today’s pitch and today’s hours, at the top.
• Whether cards are taken, before somebody reaches the front.
• Which days you are where, if you have a rota.

Half of a truck’s customers are looking for you rather than stumbling on you, and every one of them has the same three questions.

Running out is normal, so say so early

A truck sells what it brought. Marking a thing off the moment it goes means the back of the queue finds out at the back of the queue, which is where people can still change their mind without feeling cheated.

Prices that work in a wind

Round numbers. A truck takes money standing up, often in coins, often in a hurry. Pricing at nine rather than eight ninety-five costs you nothing and speeds every transaction on a busy day.

One menu, several pitches

Most trucks do a market on Saturday, an office park on Wednesday, and events in between. Those are three different menus and three different prices, and the truck that keeps them apart makes more at all three.

The queue is reading something while it waits. It may as well be your menu.