Does a food truck need a website?

A food truck needs a website, one page, and it's a different page from the one a plumber needs. Instagram already does the daily part: the story from the window, the special, the line out the door. The website does the three things Instagram can't. It gives Google a schedule to show the person searching "food truck near me" at noon who doesn't follow you. It puts the menu on the internet as text with prices, where a search can read it. And it takes catering requests with a form, which is the job that pays for the winter. Add a photo of the truck and a link to the Google listing and the page is done. Here's what goes on it, and what stays on Instagram.

Instagram is the right place for today: where you are, what's on special, the photo of the plate. Your followers see it, and a food truck lives on its followers. What it can't do is reach the person who doesn't follow you. That person is searching on Google or asking their phone, and Google doesn't read your stories. It can't hold a menu anyone can search. And it can't take a catering booking with a date and a headcount; a DM thread that starts "hey do you do events" is not a booking system. A one-page site handles those three, points at the Instagram for everything else, and never needs a daily post. Whether a Facebook page is enough is the same question with the same answer.

The first thing on the page is where the truck is this week: day, place, hours, in a plain list. Not a map widget, not a calendar embed, a list someone can read on a phone in the sun. Keep it true. A schedule that says Thursday at the brewery when you're at a private event on Thursday costs you a customer who drove over. If you can't keep it current, cut it to the regular spots you're always at and a line that says "this week's stops are on Instagram" with the link. A wrong schedule is worse than no schedule.

• The regular weekly spots: day, location, hours, in the order of the week
• The line that says where the day-to-day updates live, with the Instagram link
• Whether the truck is open in winter, and when the season starts and ends
• The line that says you do private events, pointing at the form

Type the menu. Item, one line describing it, price. A photo of the menu board is what most food truck sites have, and it fails three ways: a search can't read it, a phone in daylight can't show it, and it's wrong the day a price changes. Text costs twenty minutes and it's the most-read thing on the page. Put the specials and the seasonal items in their own short section, or leave them to Instagram if they change every week. Mark what's vegetarian and what has nuts; the person planning a party for forty needs that.

A company lunch, a wedding, a graduation party, a block party. The person planning it wants to know that you do it, roughly what it costs, and how to ask. Give catering its own section: what you bring, how many people you can serve, how far you'll drive, and a starting price or a minimum if you have one. Then a form: name, phone, email, date, headcount, location, and a box for the rest. Put a line above the form that says how fast you reply, and mean it, because a wedding planner with no answer in two days has already booked someone else. Send the form to yourself the day the site goes live and once a month after.

A food truck can have a Google Business Profile, and it should, because "food truck near me" is a search Google answers with the map. The hard part is that the listing wants an address and hours, and a truck has neither in the usual sense. Set it up as a business that serves an area, point the website field at your page, and put the photos, the menu link and the phone on it. Keep the listing's hours honest even if that means "varies" with the schedule on the site. The setup is its own guide, and the same steps apply.

A food truck's logo lives on the side of the truck at forty feet, on a T-shirt, on a sticker, on a paper boat. It has to read across a parking lot and work in one color before it ever works on a screen. If the name on the truck doesn't read from the other side of the lot, the website won't fix it. Get the wrap right first, then the site shows a photo of it. The one-color test is the check, and it applies to a truck more than to any van.

The truck, in daylight, from the side where the name is. The window with a line at it. Three or four plates, shot on the counter in natural light, not under the fluorescent. The crew in the window. That's it. Five or six photos, real ones, taken with a phone. Skip the stock photo of a generic truck at sunset; it tells a customer you don't have a truck.

A food truck site is one page by design: the schedule, the menu, the catering section and form, the photos, the Instagram and Google links, and the phone. A five-page site for a truck is four pages that go stale. The only reason for a second page is a catering business big enough to want its own photos and its own form, and even then it's a section first.

• Read the schedule and ask whether it's true this week
• Check every menu price against the board on the truck
• Send the catering form to yourself and check it lands somewhere you read
• Look at the page on a phone in bright daylight, standing in a parking lot
• Make sure the name on the site matches the name on the truck and the Google listing
• Confirm the domain is registered in your name, not the web company's

A website is $100 a page, and local SEO is $50 a page on top. Ignition, at $375, is the logo, the one-page site with its SEO and the Google Business Profile setup together, which is usually the right buy for a truck that's opening this season with nothing built yet. What each price point buys in general is its own guide; the price sheet has every line, and every line includes the files.

A ONE-PAGE SITE IS $100 ON THE SHEET. IGNITION IS $375 WITH THE LOGO AND THE GOOGLE LISTING.

The name as it's on the truck, the phone number you answer, the regular weekly spots, the menu typed with prices, what you offer for catering and how far you'll go, your Instagram handle, whatever logo you have, and five or six phone photos of the truck and the food. If you'd rather write the copy, send it; if not, we write it from what you send and you approve it before it goes live. It all runs by email, and you get a price and a date back.