How to Launch a Farm-to-Fork Vegan Food Truck: From Research to Reality (Guest Brooke Sieg - Nature's Plate) Ep. 9

🚛 Want to launch a successful vegan food truck? 🌱 It all starts with planning, partnerships, and passion!

In this episode of the Vegan Food Truck Business Podcast, I sit down with Brooke Sieg, founder of Nature’s Plate Vegan Food Truck, to uncover how she built a thriving plant-based business using smart planning, local partnerships, and farm-to-truck sourcing.

💡 Whether you're just starting or looking to grow your food truck, Brooke’s insights into business planning, pricing, sourcing fresh ingredients, and securing event partnerships will give you the blueprint to success.

🔑 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✅ How a solid business plan led to funding & food truck success
✅ Building relationships with local farmers for fresh, seasonal ingredients
✅ The key to creating a profitable menu with sustainable pricing
✅ Food truck logistics & operations: permits, inspections, & equipment
✅ The best POS system for food truck efficiency & data insights
✅ How community partnerships helped her land recurring events

💡 Plus, Brooke shares her biggest startup challenges, how she overcame them, and why focusing on community and sustainability makes all the difference.

🎧 Hit play now to learn how to turn your food truck vision into reality!

🔗 Connect with Brooke & Nature’s Plate:

🌱 Instagram: @NaturesPlateVFT
🌱 Facebook: Nature’s Plate Vegan Food Truck
🌱 Website: naturesplate.com

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Transcript

Heather: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome to the Vegan Food Truck Business podcast. I'm your host, Heather Zeitzwolfe, Savvy Frugal Vegan, and the Vegan CPA. 

today I am thrilled to introduce Brooke Sieg from Nature's Plate. Brooke is really young, but brings a dedication to her business that. Is very mature and very innovative, and I don't even see that in entrepreneurs twice her age Part of this comes from her impressive decade of experience in the food industry, and she worked at local organic produce farms, literally in the dirt,So she understands the whole farm to table process 

She's on a mission

crafting high quality vegan dishes using locally sourced ingredients straight from the farm,

but doing it at affordable prices. This is part of her philosophy. She wants to offer delicious and healthy food for her [00:01:00] community while also supporting the local farmers.

Alright, here is my interview with Brooke from Nature's Plate.

​

Heather: how long have you had your food truck? 

Brooke Sieg: I've had the food truck all completed, built, wrap on it for about six to seven months we and had our grand opening in December.

very newbie, 

Heather: people out there interested in starting a food truck the runway can be a long process because first they have to get the truck. rehaul it, do repairs. Do the wrap, let's start from, you got an idea, you want to do a food truck how did that come 

about?

Brooke Sieg: a little background on me. I've been in the restaurant industry for 10 years. literally my whole working career has been in the restaurant industry. I love every aspect about it. I was mostly front of house and then I got my first kitchen job a few years ago and was like. Oh my gosh, what have I been doing serving this whole time?

This is where the fun is at, and I love serving and bartending But I got my hands in the kitchen and I was like, Oh, okay this is where I'm supposed to be. I've always cooked at home, and since becoming vegan and living in Indiana, there's nowhere to eat.

We're cooking three [00:02:00] meals a day, seven days a week. And it just got exhausting. I was like, I want there to be somewhere to eat. I've always thought that it'd be super cool to own a restaurant as well But a brick and mortar need employees, overhead costs, kind of thing.

I was like, let me dip my toe in this for the food truck and just see how it goes and how well it's received. that was the beginning idea. there's this great organization out of Terre Haute, Indiana that offers business advisors for free for starting entrepreneurs.

I got with one of their guys. Dave. He's great. He was insurmountable to the success of the beginning of this. I wrote a business plan that took about a year. it was more than I thought it was financial forecasts and how do you pitch this to a bank and how do you get people to give you money it was a lot but I learned so much and I'm so grateful for that process.

Heather: there's places like the small business association that has free resources. Oftentimes they have workshops and stuff.with the business plan,people need a business plan if they want to get a loan or a grant.

It's not like you have to have a business plan, but I always recommend at least to think about those pieces [00:03:00] because even though it takes a lot of time 

there's things people never even consider when starting a business. when you go through that process, it forces you to think about Oh yeah, my competition. Oh wait, the target market. How am 

I 

going to do marketing? 

Brooke Sieg: How much is it all going to 

cost? Yes. That's the main thing. If I would've just jumped in and bought a truck there's no way that we would be. out and doing events There's so much to be thought about beforehand.

Heather: did you use software to make the business plan? 

Brooke Sieg: my business advisor, he had a software. I just gave him all of the numbers for everything. I did all the research, gave him all the numbers and he plugged them into the software and it made this.

Beautiful financial forecast thing that was great. I didn't have to learn anything like that. Cause I'm not very tech savvy. the rest of it was just the word doc, just writing paragraphs and paragraphs. that's pretty accessible to everybody.

Heather: did you have to use this business plan to get a loan 

Brooke Sieg: Yeah I got two separate loans, one through a traditional bank set up for the truck itself and the whole kitchen in it, and then one through the small business.

they provided the rest of the funding for the more [00:04:00] non tangible items of the business. 

Heather: was that a grant that you received? 

Brooke Sieg: Not a grant. I have to pay it back. It's still like a traditional loan. they call it a revolving loan fund.

a certain amount of money is set aside each year for small businesses and you go to the committee and pitch to their whole board. they choose, three to five businesses each year to divvy the money up too. 

Heather: That is so cool.You have a plan then 

How did you get the truck? 

Brooke Sieg: At first we were looking at used. It's more cost effective. Where I am, there was nothing around. I was going to have to drive at least two states away to find a used truck. then it brings up the thing of, so what it's to code in Oregon, let's say, is it to Indiana's code?

what if I buy this 60, 000 truck bring it back home and it's not even to code and a whole bunch of things need fixed and redone anyway, also with the body of the truck a lot of the used ones have just not been taken care of very well. I decided to get it custom built from scratch, brand new.

Heather: was that from a company in Indiana or where did it come from? 

Brooke Sieg: Ohio. 

shout out to Titan Trucks in 

Ohio. They do amazing work. he worked with me because a lot of [00:05:00] people cook at their commissary and bring everything pretty much pre made warm it up, and we do that to a certain point.

there's not a facility here that is like a commercial kitchen. I have a commissary, but it's not always ideal for me to be cooking in that building. I needed an oven, which a lot of trucks don't have. I needed only two fryers instead of like six because we don't do a whole lot of fried things.

There was a lot of things too that I was finding with these used trucks that just weren't really fitting the specs that I needed. they built it Totally to code for me and all the things. 

Heather: it was really great.when you approach this company, did you havethe specs you needed from Indiana to make it to code?

And they did it for you. 

Brooke Sieg: Yes. they're also very knowledgeable they do trucks for Indiana, all the time. Ohio and Indiana's laws are pretty similar. There's really only two differences. they were well versed in what I needed 

Heather: Wow. 

You get the truck it's all outfitted Tell me about the wrap. did you have a marketing budget from this business plan? How did that work out? 

Brooke Sieg: I originally 

thought doing paint getting, a mural done on it or You can't leave it Like a white box truck what do you do? go [00:06:00] through some decal company and get some big decals I don't know why I went the wrap route. I had people recommend it to me. it's more durable, long lasting.

It looks like a better finish,I got with a companylocally, they did amazing work. They let me come and sit in, because I'm pretty picky. he sent me the first rough draft and I was like, that's not really what I'm looking for.

Could I come sit in? And he was like, yeah, you could do that. And I was like, okay, great. I literally just designed it right there with him. We had like two sessions designed it from top to bottom. and I get many compliments on the truck. People think it's gorgeous.


Heather: it's got flowers on the bottom. And thena sort script font that says nature's plate towards the back. It's really cute. you mentioned a commissary kitchen. Tell me about that. 

Did you have connections to get this commissary kitchen? How did that come about? 

Brooke Sieg: Yeah, I did. It's actually with my current employer for my corporate job. I approached them, they have several sister restaurants in the area. And I was like, 

The state of Indiana requires it. The health department requires it. And they recently downsized their menu. So they had all of these coolers and shelves [00:07:00] that were just empty. And I was like, can I pay you? However much a month and utilize this space. And they were like let me get with liability insurance and 

they made it happen. It's really nice because in my small town, there's no Big commercial commissary kitchen I would have to be driving an hour and a half to get to that. it's like, how do you drive an hour and a half then prep drive the truck back an hour and a half sell then go back that's not feasible I'm really grateful that somebody local in my town was willing to work with me and it's been going really well so far

Heather: then you hadinspections, how did that go 

Brooke Sieg: We had the health department inspection. Of course, we also had to have the building inspector and the local fire marshal come out.

We had to have Corson. I don't know if you're familiar with that company. they do fire suppression systems, extinguishers, that kind of thing. There was a lot of inspections that had to be done beforehand and the health department was the scariest one, even though it's a brand new truck and it's never been cooked in, 

we tried to get inspected in the middle of winter because I wanted to open in the winter because I'm new at this and have no idea what that really means opening in Indiana's 20 degree weather. When we got [00:08:00] there in the morning, we had to put a buddy heater on the pipes because they were frozen.

obviously they're not going to check you off if you don't have running water and hot water and our pump was frozen. she came in and we were like, we're so sorry, we can't get this working right now. she was like I have another one to go to.

I'll be back in two hours. If you want to stay here and keep trying to fix it. I'll just come back when I'm done. We got a fix and she came back and we were good to go. just a little frozen water in an elbow of a pipe was all it was, who would have thought that you would need 

to put a buddy heater on this, 

Heather: when you decided, okay, this is what I want to have in the kitchen, thinking about your menu items and what you would need? Tell me about your choices of what you were going to put on the menu 

Brooke Sieg: part of the business plan was determining the menu. I wanted to know the menu before. Anything else startedfor like cost breakdowns and stuff because that all factors into how much money you need to start this, but also because we are farm to fork.

So I wrote four seasonal menus spring, summer, fall and winter to reflect what the farmers locally can provide to me. That was really interesting we [00:09:00] have not just five items for the whole year. We have seven items. that rotate four times a year. was a lot 

do you have relationships with these farmers? How did you know exactly what you'd have access to? Were you going to farmers markets talking to them? How did that come about? 


I got tired of allthe corporate job things. I was like, I need to go do something else.

I grew up rural in the country. I'm a country girl at heart. I went to work on a produce farm for eight months. I had been in the kitchen and in restaurants for so long, it just dinged one day and I was like, you need to go figure out the backend of this. 

How are they grown? How do they get to the kitchen? that was an amazing experience. I miss it every single day. It was the hardest job I've ever had. It was the most manual labor job I've ever had. I was the strongest I've ever been

it was just so fun to get your hands in the dirt. after that, I realized how many more farms there are locally to me than I had originally realized.

I didn't realize that we had so many produce farms within a 10 minute drive from where I live.I just started reaching out before business plan was done Hey, is this something you would be interested in doing?

I'm [00:10:00] trying to do this and this. When you have this idea, to you it's reality, to you it's already happened and it's done, to everyone else they just see a bunch of what ifs, and what's the date for thisit was hard to convince people at the beginning to listen and to give me a chance, but once, they see the physical truck and that this is a thing, they're like, oh yeah we'd love to be a part of that it's not as easy as I thought, but, Still easy for sure, because my whole thing is about fostering community and keeping the money in the community.

so the local farmers are like, yes, we would love to do that with you. 

It's been really exciting.

Heather: This in itself is part of your unique selling proposition you're going to use local farmers, building this local community that gives people a reason not only for the food, but to support the local community by supporting your truck.

Tell me about the other menu items. You've got seasonal things. You have this restaurant background. 

was there inspiration from your past work? Were you just talking with the farmers? how did the menu items come about? 

Brooke Sieg: That's a really good question. I knew 

I wanted to 

have elevated dishes using fresh produce, I want to utilize that. I don't want to [00:11:00] cover it up by, deep frying everything. Which is great. have nothing against deep fried food. I love deep fried food, but that wasn't fitting with what I wanted.

I Started piecing togetheryou need an entree. You need probably a soup and a salad. You need some small plate appetizer things. Just within those confines wrote a very rough draft and sent it to my family and friends and was like, how does this sound?

What would you think about this? cooking in a kitchen is far different than cooking in a food truck. You have to think what is feasible to make, especially if we're going to go with a cook to order model versus a bring everything from the commissary model.

What can you actually do? I had to really look at the menu Take the experience that I had and visualize, can we make 300 portions of this with two people in a truck, that was a big factor too, because there isa lot of things that I would still really love to do.

That just aren't quite feasible yet. then once we had the set menu, I made everything from top to bottom and had a big party and had a lot of people try it and get feedback from them. That was how the menu was born. 

Heather: Food costs are something unpredictable, it can go up and down. if there's some crazy thing that [00:12:00] happens with crops, the price of something might skyrocket. having tariffs 

you just never know. Menu prices, you can change but wereyou looking at certain stable items that you knew you'd be able to get, or were they more unique to your area and thattime of season, how are you building the menu.

Brooke Sieg: A little bit of both. I was thinking about what can grow in a hoop house, if you're familiar with that term, it's basically an unheated greenhouse. it'slike steel beams with tarp, over it. it lets the sunlight in, but it's not technically a greenhouse because it's not heated, What can grow in there, almost year round? Lettuces, almost your whole brassica family. Things like carrots I got my last round of carrots from my farmers in December. What can grow year round while I'm trying to find farmers who have greenhouses that can actually grow tomatoes year round.

And then like you said, with the specialty items, I do want to introduce the people in my community to foods that they've not really seen before. We use a salad turnip which is white delicious in the turnip family but doesn't taste anything like it 

It's sweet, it's crisp. we put that on our salads. people have been like, I've never heard of this [00:13:00] thing. It's amazing. Like,where can I get it? And I'm like, your local farmer right down there, I wanted to do a mix of both. Introduce people to new things while also, being conscious of what is readily available, what grows well here.

We're doing a corn chowder in the summer because Indiana is corn galore, most of it's feed corn, but sweet corn grows really well here. thinking about things likewhere we're based, 

the pricingwith the farmers, is that something that you've worked out? Is it standard pricing? How does that work? 

them They offer me a wholesale price. Except for some of those specialty things I've specifically requested them to grow.

another cool thing. A lot of the farms They're just small mom and pop, not big corporations, they're like, we have an extra bed over here is there anything you want us to grow?

And I'm like, Oh, absolutely. Here's a whole list. Could you make two more beds actually?that's been really cool too. I get a wholesale price on most things. it's cheaper than those places where restaurants get their things from Cisco, GFS, Piazza. I'm getting a better product,

It's right on par if not sometimes cheaper than they are. 

Heather: do you have to go out to the farms to get it or do they deliver? How does that work? 

Brooke Sieg: Both. I go out to most of the farms to get [00:14:00] it. One of the farms, I pick it myself.

It's really, really fun. I love it. We just go out there and get what we need and I text her how much I got of what and she sends me an invoice and,I work with a mushroom growing company.

out of Indianapolis. they use Market Wagon. a third party delivery service for food. they send it to me in a refrigerated truck and it arrives to my commissary. So there's a little bit of both.

Heather: How exciting. And you are picking it from the ground. that is, literally from the earth to the fork. Wow. That's very cool. So you've had some experience using your truck 

where you're at in Indiana.

how's the food truck scene what are the, local things you have to deal with? 

Brooke Sieg: In Indianapolis, they have a bunch of food trucks, They park in the same spots open at the same time, they have their set locations.

where I am at,the smaller towns of Indy, there is nothing like that. I am one of two food trucks in my whole city. not a lot of competition, which is great, but also not a lot of people getting togetherwe are doing some street selling. I've built a good reputation with our local hospital.

we've gone out there every second Friday of the month to [00:15:00] serve lunch. I have a good relationship with our local museum as well. They have a huge parking lot. That's where we did our soft opening. We went and just parked in a corner there, I'm really trying to be event based more so than street selling based.

Or just have those like the hospital. Where people just know that's where we're going to be every single month. I'm working with a local brewery right now trying to get in there on some Tuesdays. They've offered to close their kitchen and open their bar because they brew their own beer.

People will be able to get food from me and then a drink from them. So just trying to build those community relationships. And have things that are a lot more reliable Street selling I found is not very reliable especially in the winter to get everything ready and prepped and on the truck 

And then you have 10 people come out. You're like shouldn't we have done that?but I'm really trying to be event based, catering based. We booked wedding in Lafayette for September. I'd love to get into more weddings. That's my favorite. I love those.

Heather: Yeah. Weddings pay really well. Oftentimes the price doubles when it's for a wedding. So you don't have a lot of competition in your area, 

the hospital that's an interesting [00:16:00] combination because you've got healthy food. Hospitals are notorious for not having very good food Not only does it not taste good, but a lot of times not the healthiest options.

For parking in their parking lot, do you need a permit for that? Or is this something that they rent you a spot? How does that work So since 

Brooke Sieg: we're inspected by county health department, I am permitted to be wherever I would like, since there aren't a lot of food trucks, there aren't a lot of laws in my town regarding them. They're working on that and I'm trying to help them That way it's easier for the next person that wants to do this because it was not easy for me. Andthe city if you're not blocking anything and nobody is complaining,don't care where you are.

with those two things combined, I can basically just message any business owner that, owns the lot and say, Hey, can I come out and park here? My mom and my sister work at the hospital. I had an in there. They hooked me up with the email for their events coordinator. I corresponded with her for a little bit.

She thought it was a really cool idea. We said, let's try it out and see how it goes. And it went really well. We came back out for a second time and we'll be out 

Heather: next month again as [00:17:00] well. Having this captive audience is so important. I remember I was working at this one office years ago where there wasn't.

whole lot of places around, but there was a tamale cart that would come around they would blast out to all the different offices and let them know, like on Tuesday, we're going to be in the area. would have 

likea line around the block because people get bored with their options, 

it was like get over there before they're out of the vegan tamales. 

Brooke Sieg: She did that for me too. She did likean email blast. they employ like, over 400 people. there's a lot of opportunity 

Heather: conferences, 

any place where there's, people stuck in a location there's opportunities.

thinking outside the box on what you can do. not having a whole lot of competition in your town is awesome. and. the fact you're going to be able to have some major input on how food trucks are. Handled in the future in your community. When it comes to, the menu, you've got all this farm fresh stuff 

Brooke Sieg: How did you decide on your pricing? I'm sure you worked that out as part of your business plan, how did you figure that out? Were you looking at the proportions I broke everything down like you're saying [00:18:00] portion wise at first, you buy one head of cabbage at this price.

How many portions do you get out of this head of cabbage? that was the first step. next step was to figure out. Once you have the portion of the one item, then the portion of all of the items in that dish. Then how many portions are you getting from that dish? That's the second step.

And then once you figure that out, you just do your typical three percent markup for the restaurant industry and you want to make sure the number looks nice too, you can't just be, that's the three percent markup so that's what it is.

You want to aim for that, but if the three percent markup on your hummus is 12 who's paying 12 for a cup of hummus,especially in my town, like in Colorado, maybe you could get away with that, not here. it's about looking at how does the number look? if I was the customer.

How would I feel when I saw that and do I feel like the portions we're giving is equal to match the price? Cause you don't want to feel like you're shorting people or not giving them what they paid for. we're pretty much the typical 3 percent markup, but some of the numbers I've gone a little up or a little down, depending on how much labor needs to go into this, or, is this an easier thing that I [00:19:00] can charge less for and it'll be okay.

Heather: you mentioned the cabbage are you at. Integrating like, can I utilize this cabbage in two other recipes how does that work when you're building this menu? 

Brooke Sieg: I definitely build the menu with that in mind. What can you use across multiple dishes?

Some are like this is only for this dish but it's definitely easier, like you're saying, the numbers stretch further when you have the one head of cabbage going into three different things. that's important, but it wasn't on the forefront of my mind. I wanted the menu to be what I wanted the menu to be, and I didn't care if we were only using strawberries for one item.

Heather: Strawberries are something that at least you can take home and eat. 

yeah, 

Brooke Sieg: Okay, you have the menuwhat is the turnaround time to make this stuff? have you found some surprises like, oh, maybe we shouldn't be doing this because this takes a lot longer than I expected?



For our grand opening, our ticket times were pretty long because we did a ribbon cutting ceremony and everybody was there all at once. We had 40 people lined up at the same time. those tickets were not as good as I was hoping for the volume at once. We learned We can't be as [00:20:00] cooked to order as I would like We are not a brick and mortar restaurant, we are on wheels. And it is small and there two of us. what can alleviate that? Having somebody run the register is crucial because there's no way I can be cooking and running the register, especially at a time when it's just Person after person in line.

If it was sporadic here and there, sure, maybe I could do it. somebody running the register, I realized was going to be crucial. I wasn't planning on hiring anybody for the first year, at least. we did our first event and I was like, Oh, That's not going to work. 

That was a learning curve. Some items. like a Tempe Ruben Trying to cook all of those on the flat top at once then store them hot Not as ideal as cooking three orders at a time and storing them hot So 

we thought oh, we'll be on the ball and pre prep all this stuff And then it's no actually it's just drying out in the warmer and we're having to spoon more broth over it 

kind of 

backwards Learning

Like maybe you don't need to cook as much right off the bat. the more you go out, you learn something new every single time. There are challenges with the water pipes, freezing that I thought we had handled and figured out. we went out the last time and were not handled and figured out.

some mistakes [00:21:00] you have to make twice. I don't like to make a mistakebut if it'stwice, it won't be three times. you don't know until you try it, there's no amount of preparing and researching that will prepare you for when you're actually in the weeds.

it's just a matter of being willing to learn from the experience and go with the flow. 

Heather: What about your payment system? 

how did you make the decision of which POS to use? 



Brooke Sieg: We're using 

toast, 

Which is a pretty big investment when you compare it to like square or Clover, or obviously just your old school, writing it down on a ticket and handing it to the kitchen I decided to go with toast from my experience in the restaurant industry.

If your POS system works smoothly and you can have 24, seven customer support, There's no amount of money. that will give you that peace of mind. I don't care that I'm spending more on this versus square square goes down all the time and people are always complaining about it.

They have a lot of really cool back, of house stuff too. I can do my to go ordering on my website through them. They run analytics. and tell me the busiest days are, the busiest hours, how much were credit card sales, and break it down by Visa, MasterCard, they keep a concise list that's easy for my accountant, I can [00:22:00] just send and not worry about it, that's why we decided to go with toast. I really like their small terminals. we have the big kiosk in the truck my person takes the order on, and thena smaller terminal outside of the truck with a tap to pay People can look as she's ringing it up and make sure things are right. It has our logo on it. the truck is so high people are really low. 

They can tap to pay There's no need for trying to reach your cart up to the window and then reach it back down. been really efficient. There are kitchen printers and ticket printers as well.

We have them set up once directly to the kitchen. We hangthe ticket up on the line. One is for the register if they need their receipt printed orfor drinks. I send all of the drinks to that printer instead of the kitchen printer so it doesn't clutter that one. They're just really flexible and really customizable.

Heather: what excites me is the analytics, you can look at that quickly and know all of details that are important 

a piece of software like that is amazing. 

Before we wrap up, tell us,how people can find you on Instagram, on Facebook, what you have in the future,tell us [00:23:00] all the thingswhere they can locate you. 

Brooke Sieg: Instagram, Nature's Plate LLC, Facebook, Nature's Plate Vegan Food Truck. website, nature's play dot com. You'll see the truck. You'll know it's us. We have some exciting things planned for the summer. local farmers markets, some local first Fridays 

Every first Friday of the month, we close down the courthouse square and they bring bands out and we'll be there. Doing the wedding in September, local fairgrounds the Indy Tattoo Expo in Hendricks County.

we're going to be everywhere. 

Heather: are you going out and finding these events or are they coming to you? 

Brooke Sieg: a lot of them have come to me, which has been surprising and really nice because it's a lot less work on my end, I've just made some really good connections and people in my town have been sharing my stuff like crazy they have really good connections. I've been approached by The last four events that's super exciting. 

Heather: Congratulations. you've got a wonderful business and you started with a business plan, which I think made all the difference

Brooke Sieg: Thank you for having me. This was super fun.