Food truck CRM
A truck’s book of business is two books.
People who hire you
- Brightside Co — 4 events$18,400 · last Jun
- Hannah Carter — 1 event$5,400 · last Jun
People who let you trade
- Wharf Rd marketsfrom an application
- Northcote twilightfrom an application
One list, and it knows which is which
A truck’s book of business is two books. Keeping them in one place is how you notice that the corporate client worth eighteen thousand has not been contacted since June.
prisma/schema.prisma, Contact — where a contact came from is a stored field, and what they have spent, how many events and when you last worked for them are kept up to date from the work itself. ⚠️ Drawn only as far as what you have applied for: whether an organiser's decision returns automatically is still unverified, so nothing here shows it.
What actually goes wrong
Three ways a truck loses a customer it already had
None of these are failures of effort. They are failures of the list.
- 01
The corporate client who booked twice and then did not
They were good for eighteen thousand across two years, and nobody noticed the second year did not happen. A list that shows what a contact has spent and when you last worked for them makes that visible in a glance rather than in hindsight.
- 02
The organiser you have applied to four times
Four applications, two accepted, and no record of any of it beyond an email thread. When their next round opens you are starting from nothing, and so are they.
- 03
The quote nobody followed up
Sent on a Tuesday, forgotten by Friday. Not because you did not care — because there was no list to fall off, so there was nothing to notice.
What a contact carries
Enough to know who is worth a call
Kept up to date from the work itself rather than maintained by hand, which is the only version anybody actually keeps.
What they have spent
Rolled up from their quotes and invoices, so a list can be sorted by value without you tallying anything.
How many times
One event is a customer. Four is a relationship, and the difference should not be something you have to remember.
When you last worked for them
The single most useful field on a catering contact, and the one almost no spreadsheet has.
Where they came from
Form, referral, ad, import, typed in, or an event application. Which tells you where your work actually comes from, as opposed to where you assume it does.
Who it is not for
Where this is the wrong tool
You want a sales team pipeline
There are no deal owners, no territories and no forecast dashboards. It is built for a business where the person quoting is also the person cooking.
You want to buy a list and blast it
Sequences chase people who have asked you for something. Cold outbound is not what this is, and we are not going to add it.
Your customers are all walk-ups
If nobody books you in advance, there is nobody to keep a record of, and the whole idea does not apply.
Questions
What operators ask about the contact list
- Is this a CRM, or a booking system with a contacts tab?
- Both, and they are the same records. A contact carries what they have spent with you, how many events, and when you last worked for them — kept up to date from the quotes and invoices rather than typed in, so the list can be sorted by who is actually worth a call.
- Where do contacts come from?
- Your enquiry form, a referral, an ad, a spreadsheet import, typed in by hand — or an event application, which is stored as its own source. The last one matters for a truck: the market organiser is a relationship, not a transaction.
- Does it chase people for me?
- It can chase a quote. A quote that has gone quiet gets followed up on a schedule you set, and it stops the moment they reply or accept. What it does not do is invent a reason to email somebody who never asked you for anything.
- Can I see everything one customer has ever done?
- Yes — every event, quote, invoice and message against the one record, in order. That is the thing a spreadsheet of bookings cannot give you and the reason repeat corporate work quietly falls through.
- Will it tell me when a market is open for applications again?
- It shows the application window on the gig, including when the close date is only an estimate because the organiser wrote a season rather than a date. What it does not do is decide for you whether last year’s organiser wants you back.