Staal Foodtrucks runs multiple trucks, trailers, and other sales points at festivals and events across the Netherlands. Max & Max (the founders) handle most of the scheduling for events and staff themselves, along with the admin and hours processing that goes with it.
In peak season, that looks roughly like this:
- 25 trucks/sales points available
- 200+ people in the pool
- 420 event days
- 10 trucks out the door on a typical weekend
This case study shows how Staal Foodtrucks used to work, and how their operation changed after implementing Flooptimize.
How it worked before
Collecting availability
Availability used to be collected through two Google Forms: one for seniors, one for juniors. Results were exported to Google Sheets. Then the file still had to be formatted before you could actually use it.
Scheduling
Scheduling also happened in Excel (Google Spreadsheets). Setting up that file alone took four hours every month. Creating a layout, gathering event names, looking up and filling in days and times, defining shifts, adding concepts, and deciding on products. The layout was a big manual job.
It was also hard to hand this off to someone else. Others couldn't just pick up those Forms and that Excel structure. That was exactly why Max wanted to set things up differently: so someone else could take over scheduling, and so less time was lost retyping and looking things up.
Communication
Communication ran entirely through WhatsApp. Chats became hard to follow, and things were easily missed. WhatsApp stopped working as a channel to move quickly and became the place where all information lived too. WhatsApp is still an important channel for them. After all, it's how you reach people. Staal still uses WhatsApp to communicate with everyone ad hoc and to notify people at the last minute.
What runs differently now
Events and scheduling
Events and sales points now live in the Flooptimize backoffice. You attach shifts to them, instead of rebuilding everything in a monthly spreadsheet. The old Excel layout is gone. You create an event once and build on it from there. They no longer set up every shift by hand like that. Patterns that repeat (crew per truck, shifts, briefing) don't need to be built from scratch each time.
Availability
They still ask for availability via WhatsApp, with reminders. People now submit that availability in the portal. No more creating a Google Form and exporting to Sheets. That saves mainly the formatting and the back-and-forth with files.
Informing crew
Staff see in the employee portal which truck they're on, what time, and what they need to know. When the schedule is ready, Max & Max still send a message that everyone can check the portal. A few days before the event, a group chat follows. Last-minute changes stay on WhatsApp; Max adjusts the shift itself in the backoffice.
Flooptimize plays into the value of WhatsApp. It offers ways to send messages to your staff quickly via WhatsApp, and the other way around. WhatsApp stays the channel to reach people fast, without planning, briefing, and hours also having to disappear into it as an archive.
Pick a shift
Burgerbus · Burgers
- Sales point
- Burgerbus
- Concept
- Burgers
- Date & time
- Sat 18 Oct · 16:00–00:00
- Address
- Festival grounds, Utrecht
- Staff instructions
- Check in at the truck. Black polo. Cashless only.
- Assortment
- Contacts
- Colleagues at this stand
Hours
People enter hours on their shift in the portal. Max approves them. Freelancer invoices are much more accurate now, they say. For big discrepancies they still message on WhatsApp. NMBRS remains its own headache. They still want tighter control via seniors and credit invoicing instead of a separate freelancer sheet. Flooptimize fixes the chain; not every edge process in one go.
What it concretely saves
Not everything is a hard difference in minutes. This is:
Overview
They used to work with about thirteen separate files and tools. Now the core sits in Flooptimize, with five things alongside it: WhatsApp, driver scheduling, freelancer sheet, Exact, and NMBRS. Gone are the scheduling Excel, the availability files, the profit-and-loss files per concept, and the whole Forms export chain. Fewer places where the same information can drift apart.
Scheduling pace
Shifts for a typical festival weekend are set up in about sixty minutes. In sheets that took about three hundred and twenty minutes (estimate). The old monthly layout job of four hours is largely gone, because events already sit in the system and the layout no longer has to be built by hand.
Office time
Per peak weekend they save about four hours on scheduling and admin, by their own estimate. The office is still busy: about eight hours a week on this work, sometimes double that with all the week-to-week changes. But the office load hasn't grown as fast as trucks, events, or people.
Crew and questions
People see truck, time, and briefing in the portal. Questions about "where, what time, which truck" dropped from about ten on a busy weekend to about five (estimate). "Where is it?" and crew parking remain. Most questions now are about NMBRS, not the shift itself.
Hours after the event
Hours come in through the portal. Preparing them for payout takes about as long as before (about an hour). We don't claim time savings there. What you do get: you're not piecing everything together from files anymore. They approve more often monthly now than after every weekend. Better control via seniors is still on the list; that remains an open point.
In their words
Planning is clear, and after a busy festival weekend I can quickly and easily check and approve all worked hours.
What the system brought them concretely, in their own words: automation, a central database, and ease of use. Especially for staff. Scheduling doesn't feel radically different to Max than before. The difference is how much easier it is for workers, and less double entry.
They confirmed the following:
- The operation lives in the system, not in someone's head.
- The office load hasn't grown as fast as the number of trucks, events, or people.
- Staff see in the portal which truck they're on, what time, and what they need to know.
- We get clearly fewer questions about "where / what time / which truck" than before.
- What you enter once, you use again: event, schedule, briefing, hours.
- This is built for how a food truck company works, not for an office rota.
If they had to go back to sheets and WhatsApp only tomorrow: "Lots of information to look up and retype many times over. Error-prone and a waste of time." Going back would be possible in principle, they say. Ideal it is not.
What Flooptimize is and isn't here
Flooptimize doesn't replace Exact, NMBRS, or WhatsApp at Staal. It's where event, sales points, shifts, portal, and hours connect, so you're not typing the same information three times. Generic scheduling apps missed something simple but crucial for them: protection against double-booking.
The support around it (setup, adjustments, being reachable) they describe as good and engaged. That's how we work with food truck operations: not dumping an empty environment, but walking alongside you.
More on the chain: from event to payout, employee portal, reviewing hours. On the status quo they knew: Excel scheduling and WhatsApp.
Which company this is worth it for
Max would recommend Flooptimize to a food truck company that's growing and still on Excel and WhatsApp: to save time and make it easier for staff. More broadly it fits companies with a substantial field operation where products are sold: multiple sales points, flex crew, events.
When not: if you operate from one location and do everything there. Then the pain of separate files and festival weekends often isn't big enough yet.
Next step
Recognise the Forms export, the monthly Excel setup, or the messages about "where do I need to be?"? Plan a demo. We'll show you how this fits your trucks, stands, or trailers. Or read scheduling and hours for food truck caterers first.
Curious about the possibilities?
See in a short demo whether Flooptimize fits how you schedule, brief, and process hours.