How to Name Your Food Truck Business
Hi! I’m Carlos at BrandNewName. I’m here to help you to find a great name for your food truck business.
Preparation
What tools can you gather together to help you choose the best name for your food truck business? Your most valuable asset is to know yourself and your business - to have a clear idea of your food truck’s goals for both today and the future.
This might sound intimidating, but I’ll walk you through creating two simple but vital documents - your mission statement, and your brand brief.
Write down the questions and answers and keep them in a safe place. It will be a tremendous way to focus and move forward with confidence.
For illustration purposes, I’m going to use a fictional food truck business to take you through the step-by-step process.
My Business: A Vegan Potato with Toppings Food Truck.
My Mission Statement:
Your mission statement spells out what your business is, both today and in the future. It should be specific enough to separate you from the pack, but broad enough to encompass your dreams for the future.
My Mission Statement: To create hearty and delicious Vegan Food trucks, which focus on potatoes, with various vegan sauces and toppings.
Brand Brief
A brand brief fleshes out your mission statement, by answering more specific questions about your products and your goals.
What is my product?
My answer: Vegan Potato and Toppings Food Truck
Who is my customer?
My answer: Breakfast and lunch customers who love potatoes.
How will my customer feel while and after eating my food?
My answer: Happy, satisfied, warm & comfy.
What is the big dream for the future of your business?
My answer: A chain of delicious Vegan food trucks.
What’s special about your food truck?
My answer: Vegan focused on potatoes with delicious toppings.
What will your customers say about your product?
My answer: Delicious, hearty, plant-based.
There you go. Your food truck business brand brief. A simple tool that will guide your focus today and tomorrow.
Interested in Personalized Name Ideas for Your Brand Brief?
Competitive Brand Names in Your Industry
There are almost 30,000 food trucks in the US alone. Just when it seems every food type and niche are covered, someone puts up the awning on a brand new set of flavors. The beauty of food trucks is their ability to narrow the focus of their menu to offer mouth-watering food combinations and flavors.
The name you choose for your food truck business can make the difference between success and failure. Names that are easy to read and easy to spell are usually the easiest to remember, and word-of-mouth advertising is usually essential in the food truck business.
Let’s take a look at a few Food Truck names around the US and see how their name helped them be food truck success stories.
STREET-ZA PIZZA
This St. Paul, Minnesota pizza food truck with the alliterative invented name is consistently voted one of the top food trucks in the US. It has become so successful at sports events and other catering venues that it now posts its limited street schedule on its website. It’s a friendly, clever name that appeals to the ear and thus to the memory.
OINK & MOO BBQ
A descriptive name with a little poetic license, Oink & Moo bills itself as “the best barbeque you’ll ever have.” Located in Somerville, New Jersey, Oink & Moo’s popularity only increased during the pandemic, and it has expanded to in-house venues as well as a top catering choice. It’s a brilliantly memorable name.
CINNAMON SNAIL
Kosher, Organic, and Vegan, Cinnamon Snail’s evocative name points to its mission statement of “Food to Inspire Peace and Bliss.” They also want to share how delicious vegan food can be and appear to be succeeding. Cinnamon Snail has won countless food truck awards since its opening in 2010.
BASIC KNEADS PIZZA
Cute and clever and easy to remember (especially for those of us who consider pizza one the most important food groups) Basic Kneads Pizza plays on the expression ‘basic needs’ with its Colorado food trucks, now catering at four locations around the state.
Find Your Brainstorming Group
Look for a little variety in your brainstorming group. Include different backgrounds, professions, and age groups. If you have contacts within the food truck business, ask them to be a part of your group - they will have unique, experience-based knowledge that may prove invaluable.
Rinse and Repeat
It would be wonderful if you came out of your very first brainstorming session with the perfect name for your food truck business. As you know, most things take a little bit longer.
Don’t lose heart. The names you choose in your first session, while not perfect, make a perfect jumping-off spot for the next session.
You can also try broadening your brainstorming group through a naming contest!
Want to Know More?
Brainstorming
Fantastic! You are prepared. You understand who and what your business is. You’ve taken a look at the competition, and you’ve gathered a great group of brainstorming associates to help you find the perfect name for your food truck.
Instead of a free-for-all, let’s control the chaos with some tried and true brainstorming techniques to enhance the name selection process.
Style - It’s a good idea to experiment with different styles and tones of names so that you get a wide variety of options to choose from later.
Note: For my food truck business, I’ve come up with 3 name ideas for each type, but of course you are free to come up with more for your own list.
Descriptive Names
Descriptive names describe your product or service. Oink & Moo BBQ is an example of a descriptive name.
My descriptive name ideas:
- Potato Pantry
- Tater Tops
- Spud Buds
Invented Names
Street-Za Pizza is an invented name. It can’t be found in any dictionary, but just like Google and Etsy, the name rolls of your tongue. Invented names are totally made up. That allows you tremendous freedom and creativity. In the case of Street-Za Pizza, they used alliteration to make their name even easier to remember.
My invented name ideas:
- Tatotopia
- Otatops
- Rallies
Evocative Names
Cinnamon Snail is an example of an evocative name. Evocative names use memory, emotion, instinct, and color to take your senses on a small journey and allow you to feel, or in this case, smell, what their product offers. Other examples are Red Bull and Honey.
My evocative name ideas:
- Tasty Taters
- Potato Garden
- Hearth Harvest
Expression-Based Names
Expression-based names are names that are easy to remember because we hear some form of them in day-to-day living. Basic Kneads Pizza is a very clever expression-based name.
My expression-based name ideas:
- Potato a Day
- See Ya Tater
- Coach Potato
Put All Your Name Ideas in One List
All the name ideas I came up with during the brainstorming stage:
- Potato Pantry
- Tater Tops
- Spud Buds
- Tatotopia
- Otatops
- Rallies
- Tasty Taters
- Potato Garden
- Hearth Harvest
- Potato a Day
- See Ya Tater
- Coach Potato
THE CUTTING BOARD
Great! You have a list. Let’s start trimming it.
Cut the Weakest Links
Some of your names just don’t work. Get rid of them.
These names are my weakest links:
- Spud Buds - Could easily be confused with another product.
- Hearth Harvest - Warm & comfy but not descriptive enough.
Check Against Best Practices
There are some widely accepted parameters to finding the right name, that it’s a good idea to check. Maybe the name you love doesn’t fit and that’s okay, but let’s take a look at them as we curate our lists.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself during this process:
- Is the name simple and easy to remember?
- Is the name easy to comprehend, pronounce, and spell?
- Is there differentiation from your competitors?
- Does the name mean something or convey a relevant vibe?
- Is the name flexible enough to grow with my business?
Best Practices Cuts:
- Otatops - It’s cute because it’s ‘potato’ backward with an ‘s’ but...no.
- Coach Potato - It’s confusing.
Go Back to Your Brief
You have great names right in front of you. Are they great names for you though? This is when your brand brief goes to work. Check each of these names against your brand brief. How do they hold up?
- What matches your goals?
- Which name complements your current product or service without limiting your future dreams for your food truck business?
- How does each name make you feel? Don’t dismiss those feelings.
Names that aren’t a good fit for my brand:
- Rallies - It doesn’t connect with my product at all.
- Potato Garden - I just don’t care for it.
- Tasty Taters - It has the wrong vibe.
Make a Shortlist:
You’ve cut your names down, and you finally have a shortlist. All of the names left on this list should have real potential.
Here is my shortlist:
- Potato Pantry
- Tater Tops
- Tatotopia
- Potato a Day
- See Ya Tater
Check if It’s Available
Time to check each of your shortlist names against a domain name registrar like Godaddy. Is the .com of your favorite available? Having a .com name can cost a little more, but it’s the most widely accepted and reputable domain and makes it easiest for your customers to find you.
These two names weren’t available to register in my chosen TLDs (Top Level Domains):
- Potato Pantry
- Tater Tops
Now I have three finalists to choose from.
- Tatotopia
- Potato a Day
- See Ya Tater
Get Feedback
Give your finalists another look by getting outside feedback. It might help to use a different group than your initial brainstorming session who will come at the names with fresh eyes.
After my feedback, I’m eliminating:
Tatotopia - Too hard to pronounce and remember.
Make Your Final Choice:
There are only two names left on my final list:
Potato a Day
See Ya Tater
Hopefully, you now have two or three names you love. Walk away from your list for a couple of hours, or even better, overnight.
When you look at your list again, go with your gut to pick the perfect name for your food truck business.
My final choice is See Ya Tater!!!
What If It Didn’t Work?
So, just didn’t love any of the names you came up with? Try not to panic, it’s a process, and just like any other important business process, it may take a little more time.
You are not, by the way, back at square one. Any brainstorming session is likely to come up with a least a few names you like more than the rest, but they just aren’t right. Use those names, though, as a baseline for another session. Eventually, you will find the perfect name for your business.
Start a Naming Contest
No time? Try another option. Start a naming contest that will give you a list of highly personalized names for your food truck business.