Food Trucks and Mini Kegs

If you’re running a food truck or thinking about starting your own, at some point you’ve thought about beverages and how you’re going to serve them. Are you planning on having fridges full of bottles and cans or maybe you’ve even thought about using kegs? So let's take a look at your options, and whyour kegs might be the answer you’ve been looking for!

So why would you choose to use kegs over bottles or cans? Let's take a look at a few reasons including, environmental, cost efficiency, space, style and choice.

Environmental:

We’ve written about the environmental benefits of using kegsbefore, but did you know that 80% of all bottles and cans end up in landfill rather than being recycled? That’s a wildly high number no matter how you try to look at it, and stocking your shelves with single use plastic bottles and aluminum cans adds to that. 

So why not consider using kegs? They are refillable and are built to last, however of course you have to think about what you’re going to serve your beverages in. You could use glasses with a deposit that the customer will get back when they return the glass, or even recyclable paper cups.

Not only from a recycling standpoint, the production cycle of manufacturing kegs uses fewer resources than the single use alternative of bottles and cans. So less energy is consumed and few materials, which means their carbon footprint is also smaller! Like everything, kegs still have a carbon footprint, but as they can hold a larger quantity of liquid, more can be transported at once than in a single bottle or can, resulting in lower emissions in the long run.

Cost Efficiency:

The next categories all play into each other, but let's start with cost efficiency. Although mini kegs have a higher upfront cost than bottles or cans, due to the fact that they’re refillable and built to last in the long run the operating costs for using them becomes lower than buying cases of bottles and cans. 

However with kegs you need co2 or nitro to dispense them, although single use cartridges are an option (we've written about cartridges vs SodaStream bottles before) if you're planning on dispensing a lot of beverages it might be worth considering using larger bottles. When using larger co2 or nitrogen tanks you'll also need anadapter, but even with those additional costs, with the amount of beverages you'll dispense vs the same amount with SodaStream bottles or tanks, the costs even out to be considerably lower. You’ll also need to factor in the additional costs of cups or glasses but recyclable cups when bought in bulk are very cost effective.

Keeping your beverages cold is one of the largest costs to combat as refrigeration units are expensive to buy, use and maintain. When dealing with bottles and cans to keep cold they have to stay in the fridge, otherwise they get warm quickly, and no one wants to be drinking a warm beer! Whereas our kegs stay cold all day long, even if they’re outside of a fridge. This is due to the double wall insulation, even our uninsulated kegs will stay cold for hours, so as long as the keg is cold and filled with a cold beverage it’ll stay cold for a long time, saving you money on refrigeration costs.

Space:

Both bottles and kegs take up space, however the amount of space they take up can change drastically. If you’re using bottles or cans, you’ve got the physical stock you have in your food truck, as well as the refrigeration unit, but you’ve also got any overflow stock you might have, as we know buying in bulk can reduce costs, but if you’re having to store them elsewhere that’s potentially extra additional costs.

A single keg obviously takes up more space than a single bottle, but they also hold a lot more liquid, and when not in use can be stacked nicely on top of each other. Depending on your needs you might have kegs ranging from 2L all the way up to 19L, so the amount of space they take up can vastly change.

However, it's not just the keg itself that you need to take into account, it’s also the taps, regulators, gas bottles and connections, as well as the refrigeration unit that you need to take into account. As well as this, depending on how you’re planning on serving your beverages could change how much space your kegs will take up.

Style and Choice:

When using kegs there’s a couple of things to consider, you’ll probably have a smaller selection of beverages than if you were buying in conventional single use bottles and cans, but by using kegs you can make partnerships with local breweries or cafes, bolstering your local community. Otherwise of course you’re filling the kegs with your own brews then using kegs is not only saving you money it’s also saving you time instead of having to deal with all those bottles!

local brewery filling iKegger kegs

There’s a couple of options when using kegs for serving, you can connect the taps directly onto the kegs, keeping the kegs on a bench top for everyone to see, which looks very cool and fun. Otherwise with some extra equipment, like ourkegerator kit, you can build the kegs into a space, like you’d see in a bar, with just external taps visible on a wall or fridge unit.

show style and creativity by mounting the taps for your food truck in a fun way!

So be it beer, seltzer, nitro coffee, cocktails, sodas, kombucha, all of the above or something completely different, there is a strong argument for why using kegs over single use bottles or cans. Whether it's environmental concerns you're trying to address, like trying to find ways to reduce waste, or even just cutting back on costs and saving space. Investing in an iKegger mini keg system can help you do all that and take your food truck game to the next level.