A food truck, food trailer or other mobile business is like a free rolling billboard for your company. Take advantage of this free marketing space by installing a custom-designed food truck wrap that builds brand awareness and attracts customers.

What is a vinyl wrap?

Vinyl wraps are made from rolls of flexible, sticky back vinyl sealed with a clear, laminate overlay to prevent UV damage from the sun. While vinyl does come in some standard colors, a custom printed wrap is the industry standard.

Almost any design is possible with a good graphic designer, a roll of printable vinyl, special large-format color printer, vinyl cutter, and laminator. Once the vinyl is printed with your custom design, experienced wrap installers stretch the wrap over the vehicle. Like puzzle pieces, the vinyl sheets must align into a unified design all while eliminating air bubbles and wrinkles.

Voila! With proper maintenance, you have a durable, custom wrap that will look great for years to come.

Custom Food Truck Wrap Design Tips

Now that you know how a custom vinyl wrap is made, what should you put on it? Here are our top 10 tips to give you a leg up on your competition.

1) Design a wrap that’s unique to your business.

A distinctive wrap helps customers recognize and purchase from you again. Make sure to incorporate any brand logos, colors, fonts, tag lines, imagery, etc. to make it consistent with a website or any other branded assets. 

2) Customers should know what you sell immediately.

Don’t make your customers do work. While your design should be attention grabbing, a passerby should be able to identify what you sell (ie. tacos, haircuts, etc.) within three seconds of looking at your truck. The harder you make your customers work, the less likely they are to buy from you. 

3) Don’t put your business name or logo on the serving door.

 A serving door seems like a logical place to put important information. But once the flap is folded up for service, no one will know who you are.

4) If you have a menu, don’t design it into your food truck wrap.

You need the flexibility to change your menu items or pricing as needed. Instead try Firefly’s magnetic menu board or a chalkboard, whiteboard, or butcher paper roll. 

5) Be mindful when using idioms or slang in the food truck wrap design.

Not all potential customers will be fluent in your language or culture. Words customers don’t understand can make them feel confused or excluded. No one is likely to buy when they’re not in on the joke.

6) Leave room for your commissary address.

Made of 1” to 3” high letters, the commissary address typically goes on both cab doors of a truck or in similar locations for a trailer. You can incorporate it into your wrap, but we recommend using separate vinyl letters so you can change commissaries without replacing your entire wrap.

7) Use vector based graphics in your wrap design.

Whenever possible, use vector files that end in .ai, .eps, .pdf, or .svg for your food truck wrap. These can be scaled up without losing resolution which means your wrap won’t look fuzzy or pixelated. A pro graphic designer can convert a hand drawn logo or illustration into a vector file for an extra cost.

8) Any photos should look beautiful.

The fact is that even if your food tastes delicious, no one will choose to eat there if the food looks gross in the photos. If getting good photos of your food is tough, there are options. Consider hiring a professional photographer, downloading royalty-free stock photos, or just skipping the pics altogether.

9) Avoid solid color backgrounds to keep your food truck wrap looking fresh.

Wraps get beat up so plan for it in advance. The human eye picks out disruptions to a consistent surface so a busier background is best to camouflage dings and dirt. Work in a pattern, photo texture, color gradient or background image to help distract the eye. Pay special attention to the passenger-side of the vehicle where damage to your wrap from low-hanging tree branches is unavoidable.  

10) Gloss finish vinyl is the easiest to maintain.

 Wraps with a gloss finish are easier to clean than satin or matte. The smoother the surface, the less elbow grease it will take to wash off dirt at the end of a long day.

Food Truck Wrap-Up

Since the wrap is what customers notice first about your business, it’s critical to your success. Following the food truck wrap best practices above will attract customers and set you apart from your competition. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Need help designing your food truck wrap? Firefly offers in-house wrap design and installation both as a stand-alone service and bundled with your new, food truck build. Contact Firefly today at (323) 524-0078 for your free quote.