Taking food trucks B2B
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes 42 seconds
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My local gym has an area where they serve smoothies, drinks and protein bars. It’s just a little nook, and there usually aren’t that many workers there.
One day I saw a little minivan parked near the entrance that was wrapped in bright colors. The branding was “Smoothies as a Service”.
The smoothie company was providing the gym with its own different smoothies, and likely all the other elements of the snack bar as well.
This is one of those rare, beautiful moments in business where 1 + 1 = 4.
I stole this from Nathan Berry.
What? That doesn’t make sense. Actually, yes it does. Let me explain.
The gym has a need. They want to provide their customers with the option for healthy snacks to increase revenue and improve customer experience.
It’s a headache to set up your own food court or snack bar, especially without the proper facilities for making and serving smoothies.
Have you ever seen a jamba juice? There are sinks and blenders everywhere.
The Smoothie as a Service company comes in and provides a turnkey solution, making it so easy for the gym to sell these snacks that they don’t have to think about processes, overhead, or extra time spent on it.
Turnkey: of or involving the provision of a complete product or service that is ready for immediate use.
It’s a win win for everyone.
Other reasons we like this smoothie business:
You don’t have the hassle of a food truck. It’s not an expensive rig to get started. Most states have licensing where you can even prepare food for sale from your own home.
High customer lifetime value(LTV). With a food truck LTV is very low. If you are lucky you’ll sell to one person 5 times. With a business to business sale like this, you make one sale that will provide you with thousands of dollars of revenue for the next year.
It’s a sticky business model. Once you are in with a particular gym, their employees know your products, methods, delivery times, etc. It makes it hard for them to move onto another supplier without retraining their whole staff.
I’m calling this the B2B of DTC.
Some products are sold directly to the consumer(DTC). Think about buying a Tesla. You go to a website, place your order, and only interact with the business that makes the car.
Other products are sold business to business(B2B). Think about buying a Toyota. You go to a dealership and buy a car that Toyota sold to your local dealer.
Arguably, Tesla has innovated the car buying market for the better.
Let’s flip it around. Maybe there are some things that are traditionally sold DTC that would be better sold B2B.
For example, our smoothie van took a business that is traditionally DTC, and turned it B2B.
Here are some other ideas:
Construction site cleanup(screw removal)
Bookkeeping
Cleaning(commercial cleaning)
HVAC recycling(watch for next Monday’s post on this one)
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