Food Truck Design: Vinyl Wrap vs. Painting

When it comes to designing your food truck, you have two choices: doing a vinyl food truck wrap or painting your food truck. Each method has advantages and disadvantages.

Option #1: Vinyl Food Truck Wraps

Food truck wraps are the most common practice for food truck design. Wraps allow you to create bright, colorful, eye-catching food truck designs.

Vinyl vehicle wraps aren’t cheap – they’ll set you back a few grand easily. However, they’re usually worth the big bucks. In fact, vehicle wraps are so effective that some studies have shown them to be the most memorable and effective forms of advertising (except for TV ads).

Learn more about vehicle wraps in our complete guide to food truck wraps, where we show examples of popular wrap designs, discuss costs, go over installation issues, and provide some info about recommended wrap merchants.

Pros:

Bright, stunning designs

Most wraps come with at least a 3 year warranty

Powerful for building brand identity

Many vinyl wrap companies also offer design services to help you develop a killer truck design

Cons:

Can be quite expensive

Difficult to install – you’ll definitely want to hire a pro

Option #2: Paint Your Food Truck Design

Painting is another option, although it’s less common. Painting your food truck design is definitely cheaper than getting a wrap (we’re talking around half the cost).

Pros:

Cheaper than a vinyl wrap

Can be done DIY (team building power)

Cons:

You may still need to hire a professional painter

DIY can be dangerous – you certainly don’t want to screw it up

No graphic design assistance

Whichever route you go, you can achieve some incredible results.

Finding Your Perfect Food Truck Design

For a killer looking food truck, you’ll need a spectacular standout design. There are several different options when it comes to creating that killer food truck design.

1. Look for Wraps With Graphic Help

If you plan on getting a food truck wrap anyway, you might as well look for wrap companies that provide graphic design assistance. Some wrap companies will even help you develop a logo and brand graphics from scratch.

2. Crowdsource Designs

If you’re not sure what your truck’s design should look like, why not ask for some suggestions and choose from the best?

99 Designs is an online site that lets you do just that. Crowdsource your truck graphics by hosting an online food truck design contest, with graphic designers competing to win your business. Just say how much you’re willing to pay and what you’re looking for. When the designs come in, you get to pick your favorite.

99 Designs just recently started offering a program specifically for food truck wrap designs and vehicle wraps! Consider giving them a shot and seeing what truck designs you can crowd source.

With 99 Designs, you can pay as little as $199 for a custom food truck wrap! Here’s how the pricing works with 99 Designs:

Note: With 99 Designs, you pay for the food truck design. You will NOT receive a physical food truck wrap – you must use the food truck design from 99 Designs and get the vinyl wrap printed elsewhere.

3. Hire a Professional Graphic Designer

Hiring a professional graphic designer to help you with your food truck design can yield some very creative results. Some of the coolest, most creative food truck designs in our list above came from private graphic designers. The only issue is that they can also be quite expensive.

Consider checking out local artists and contacting them to see if they’d be interested in working with you. Some artists may be willing to lower their price if you let them sign the truck someplace, or if you give them substantial credit on your website. Having a local artist’s name connected to one of the coolest food truck designs in the area is good publicity for them too!

Food Truck Design Ideas & Examples

Let’s check out some stylish trucks to get those food truck design ideas flowing! Take a look at these 20 food truck design examples!

The now retired Go Fish food truck of Boston has a bright and eye-catching truck that makes it difficult to ignore.

P.A. & Gargantua is a food truck from Edmonton, Alberta specializing in grilled cheeses. Their unique monster design came from designer Caserne Studio.

The Orale Arepa food truck comes from Mexico City! This truck uses its physical vehicle design as a feature of the food truck’s brand.

Image comes from Paste Magazine

The Tutto Food Company of Johannesburg, South Africa, is another truck that makes use of their vehicle’s style to draw attention.

The Mei Mei Street Kitchen team painted their food truck themselves with vinyl stencils and auto paint, and it came out great! Weather is another thing to keep in mind – the Mei Mei team noted that they painted their truck during the winter, making it quite a cold endeavor.

Paris Creperie’s Eiffel Tourer is another fantastic example of excellent food truck design – this truck has even won design awards! Way to go Paris Creperie!

The Del Popolo of San Francisco, California is a truly unique pizza food truck. This food truck build combines a semi-truck with a shipping container, plus 1,500lbs of glass with doors that open wide, allowing customers to see the huge wood burning oven with their own eyes.

Off the Rez is a funky food truck from Seattle, serving up Native American dishes with a food truck design to match.

image from Thrillist

Dos Chinos is pan-Asian food truck with a bright, loud, and irresistible Dia De Los Muertos-esque design.

image from Thrillist

image from Thrillist My personal favorite food truck design has to be the Grillenium Falcon of Fayetteville, Arkansas. The force is strong in this one.

Boston’s own Bacon Truck serves as another impressive example of great food truck design. The piggy-themed truck was designed by artist Aaron Meshon. It’s fun style is sure to capture the heart of pork lovers everywhere.

Ludo Food Truck serves delicious fried chicken in LA, with a powerful food truck graphic that stands out from the crowd.

Schnitzel & Things is a NYC food truck dishing up schnitzel and other tasty bits!

Image from 1 Design Per Day

The Dough Truck serves up donuts in San Jose, California. Sadly, they no longer operate, but their inspirational design lives on in our memories.

Image from 1 Design Per Day

The Happy Eating food truck of Nashville, TN serves up Japanese cuisine and treats, with a stylish anime truck design that matches the meals.

Image from 1 Design Per Day

Artist Dyanna Csaposs’s design was chosen as the 2014 RDA-winning design for the Tunein festival, which was used in a variety of promotional material for the event, including the Tunein Taco Truck design wrap.

Tacofino Cantina is a Mexican taco truck in Vancouver, British Columbia. Their stunning food truck wrap reflects their Mexico roots with colorful style.

Falasophy is a falafel food truck from Orange County, California. Falasophy boasts a stunning food truck design created by Design Womb. Design Womb also helped Falasophy with their entire brand strategy, designing a logo, graphic icons, illustrations, and the bright and vibrant food truck wrap.

Curry Up Now is an Indian fusion street food truck from Northern California, with a loud, colorful food truck design that is sure to catch the eyes of hungry foodies. The Curry Up Now food truck wrap was also created by Design Womb, who also helped Curry Up Now with branding, menu designs, and more.

Do you have any of your own favorite food truck designs you think are impressive? Share your favorites in the comments below!