Why Your Best Customers Can't Find You Again
The po' boy we never found again
A couple of summers before we moved to LA, my girlfriend and I went to a food truck festival at a brewery. Most of the trucks were vegan. I had fried oyster mushrooms on a waffle, a "chicken and waffles" I still think about.
The truck next to it was purple and green. It served the best po' boy I've ever had: fried mushrooms, a New Orleans style sauce, gone in about four bites. We talked about it the whole drive home.
Then we moved to LA, and neither of us could remember the truck's name. We've looked. We still haven't found it, and we don't know if it's still around.
That truck did everything right. It won two customers for life. And it lost us anyway, because once we walked away, there was nothing connecting us to it.
First visits are easy. Second visits are the hard part.
If you run a food truck, a pop-up or a farmers market stall, you already know how to win someone over. The food does that. What's hard is getting them back.
A restaurant has an address. People drive past it, and they find it on a map months later. You don't get that. You're in Culver City on Tuesday, a brewery on Friday and a market on Sunday, and next month it's different spots again.
So every great first experience comes with a clock on it. The customer loved you today. Unless something reminds them where you'll be next, that memory fades into "that purple truck, what was it called?"
Why the usual fixes fall short
Most owners already try to stay in touch. Each method helps a little, and each has a catch.
- Instagram. You post where you'll be, and the algorithm decides who sees it. A customer who followed you once may never see the post about this weekend.
- Email lists. Signing up at the window takes effort, and the email arrives in an inbox full of promotions. Most of it never gets opened.
- Text messages. Texts get read, but they arrive whenever you send them. Text someone about a stop two hours away, or at the wrong moment, a few times, and they reply STOP.
- Business cards. They end up in a drawer, or in the wash.
The common problem: each of these asks your customer to keep checking, or interrupts them with things that don't apply to them.
What works: your schedule on their calendar
There's one app almost everyone checks every day and trusts completely: their calendar. If your next stop is on it, they don't have to remember you. Their phone does it for them.
That's the idea behind a calendar subscription. Instead of one event, the customer follows your whole schedule.
- They subscribe once. One scan at your window, and your upcoming stops land in the calendar they already use: Apple, Google, Outlook or SoKal. No app to download.
- Changes follow them. Move a stop, change your hours or cancel because of rain, and every saved copy updates. Nobody shows up to an empty lot.
- SoKal followers get a reminder before you open. Not a promo they scroll past, a heads-up on the phone they already check.
- Your brand grows on them. Each new sale, event or pop-up that shows up is another reminder of that first great meal.
Followers on the SoKal app hear about what's near them. When you add a new stop, followers within about 25 miles of it get a "New near you" heads-up. A follower in Santa Monica hears about your Santa Monica stop, not the one in Sacramento.
How to set it up
- Post your schedule once. Add your upcoming stops, pop-ups and sales to your SoKal for Business page. Regular spots, like a weekly market, repeat on their own.
- Put your QR code where people wait. Print the card from your dashboard and tape it to the window, the counter or the tip jar. An NFC tag works too.
- Customers scan and follow. They pick their calendar, and your schedule is there. It takes a few seconds while they wait for their order.
- Update as plans change. Change a stop in one place, and every follower's calendar catches up.
Your dashboard shows how many people follow you and how many saved each event, so you can see it working.
Don't be the truck they can't find
Somewhere out there, a purple and green truck is still making the best po' boy in LA, and two people who would drive across town for it have no way to know where it is.
You've already done the hard part. You made someone love your food. Make sure they can find you again.
Start your free month of SoKal for Business
It's $12 a month after that, and you can cancel anytime.