This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
You ever go for lunch or dinner at a food truck, especially like a food truck pod or a food cart pod where they've got a whole bunch of different carts or trucks and you can kind of pick and choose or perhaps combine items. You might've seen these white boards where they post menus and you've got different prices, you've got new items. Maybe it's a handwritten board with some chalk. Well, today's featured side hustler, a freelance videographer who rents space in a big Houston commissary kitchen, thought that there had to be a cleaner way, a better way, a digital way and also a way that is helpful for both her clients and for herself. So one day while she's filming a promo reel, she notices a stack of old Android tablets that are just kind of sitting around and then she starts messing with Canva, mocks up a full screen menu that could sit in a truck service window and update really simply and easily.
So a week after that, she had this whole turnkey package, refurbished tablets, little window mount, preloaded template for Canva and a quick start video. She's gonna talk about how she turned this into a side hustle, actually making money, helping her existing network of food truck operators turn those shaky chalkboards into bright digital upsells. All right, friends, this is part of our first $1,000 series. You get to hear how somebody goes from idea to income. The story is called "Digital Window Menu Boards for Food Trucks." The designer helps food trucks and pop-up restaurants get rid of chalk dust and update to the digital age.
Let's roll up the service window and hear directly from Paula. [Music]
I rent studio time in a commissary kitchen that houses about 30 food trucks. Every day I watch owners wipe rain's battered chalk off their menus and rewrite prices and new menu items while hungry customers line up. One morning, the barbecue guy choked, "Wish I could just hit Control Z instead of carrying five colors of chalk." That line stuck with me. Inside the office, I saw a shelf of Amazon Fire HD 10 tablets the management team had retired after a point of sale upgrade.
I asked if they'd sell a few. They said 25 bucks each. I grabbed four, factory reset them, installed an offline slideshow app, and designed a bold, legible menu in Canva. The slideshow auto-advances every 10 seconds so the tablet can't get stuck on the wrong screen. Mounting was the next hurdle.
After three hardware store trips, I landed on a clear suction cup phone mount plus a strip of industrial Velcro. No drilling, no tools. Total cost per kit was just under $90, including the refurbished tablet, mount, Velcro, and a laminated one-page guide. I priced the bundle at $249, payable via Square, Reader, or good old cash. Then I did something radical.
I walked downstairs, tablet in hand, during the lunch rush. I propped it in the window of my taco truck neighbor, punched up the mock menu, and stepped back. Customers pointed, someone snapped a photo. The owner raised an eyebrow and asked, "How much?" She bought the demo unit on the spot. By the end of the week, three more trucks, ramen, coffee, and vegan wraps, had followed suit.
Subtracting the cost of parts put me at $636 profit. Two additional sales the following week pushed me over $1,000 net. So port turned out to be minimal. I filmed like a three-minute how to swap photos video, uploaded it unlisted on YouTube, and texted the link with every sale. Updates take owners less time than cleaning a chalk eraser.
When one tablet fell during a bumpy drive, the Velcro held, crisis averted. Today, I keep five kits in a plastic tub near my camera gear. Whenever a new truck joins the commissary, I introduce myself, hand over a business card that's really a miniature sample menu, and wait for the inevitable, "Can you make ours look that good?" Two sales a month cover my rent on the studio space. More importantly, I haven't touched a dusty chalkboard since. If you got spare tech and a knack for simple design, remember small businesses will pay for any fix that saves them time and looks professional from five feet away.
Sometimes the path to your first $1,000 is as clear as the window of a food truck. [Music]
Hey, thanks so much, Paula. I really appreciate you sharing the story. Listeners, if you have a question and update about your hustle, go check outsidehustleschool.com, or even if you don't have an update, go check out the website. This was episode 3,250.
You can access every single episode from the beginning of time, or at least the beginning of 2017 when we started the podcast. They're all accessible, completely free for download or streaming. And of course, new episodes out every day, seven days a week, wherever you like to listen. I always hope that you find a helpful and actionable idea, something to guide you along with your own quest to make money without quitting your job. That's it for now.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
