Food Truck Marketing

How to Post Your Food Truck Schedule

The 5 best channels for announcing your location — ranked by what actually gets customers to show up.

Why It Matters

Customers don't show up if they don't know where you are.

Food trucks live and die on one thing that brick-and-mortar restaurants never have to think about: whether their customers know where they are this week. A restaurant at the same address every day can rely on habit and Google Maps alone. A food truck needs to actively communicate its weekly schedule.

The operators who nail this run a multi-channel system. Some channels are passive (Google, apps) and handle new discovery. One channel — SMS — handles the job that actually drives revenue: getting your existing best customers to show up.

Ranked by Effectiveness

The 5 channels — and what each is actually good for.

1

SMS Text List

Best for: Weekly schedule sent to regulars

Send one text on Sunday or Monday covering your full week's stops — location, hours, and any specials. Open rate: 98%, read within 3 minutes. Use occasional extra texts for big events or noteworthy pop-ups.

Best for driving reliable, repeat revenue from your existing customer base.

2

Google Business Profile

Best for: Passive discovery + schedule posts

Keep your profile updated with hours and location. Use the 'Posts' feature to announce your weekly schedule. Customers searching 'food truck near me' find you here.

Critical for new customer discovery. Set it up once and maintain weekly.

3

Instagram Stories

Best for: Day-of updates for followers

Stories are ephemeral and get higher reach than feed posts. Post a simple 'We're open at [location] today' story — it takes 30 seconds.

Good supplement to SMS. Algorithm limits reach, but Stories perform better than feed posts.

4

Facebook Local Groups

Best for: Community discovery in specific neighborhoods

Join local neighborhood Facebook groups and post your schedule when you're in their area. Many communities have dedicated 'food in [city]' groups.

Solid for specific neighborhoods. Time-consuming to manage across many groups.

5

Roaming Hunger & Food Truck Apps

Best for: Passive discovery for app users

Create a profile and update your location. Customers specifically looking for food trucks find you here.

Worth setting up. Audience is smaller than Google or Instagram but high-intent.

SMS Templates

Sample text message templates for location announcements.

Keep texts short (under 160 characters is one SMS segment), specific, and action-oriented:

Standard location announcement

Hi {name}! Taco Fuego is at Riverside Park today, 11am–2pm. Come see us! 🌮

Brewery / event location

Hi {name}! We're at Copper Barrel Brewing tonight 5–9pm. Best spot in town tonight 👊

Last-minute / change of location

Quick update — we moved to Oak Street Lot today (not downtown). Same hours: noon–3pm!

Weekend schedule

This weekend: Sat at Eastside Market 9am–1pm, Sun at Highland Brewing 4–8pm. See you out there!

Pro Tip

Your schedule means nothing if your customers aren't receiving it.

Social posts reach maybe 10% of your followers. A text message reaches 100% of your subscribers — and gets read in minutes. VendorLoop makes it simple: set your week's schedule, send one text on Sunday or Monday, and your regulars know exactly where to find you all week.

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Build the list that fills your truck.

QR signup, SMS schedule announcements, and a customer list — all in one place.

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