Municipal Bylaw Scan in Canada - Research Project

FTAC is interested in drawing attention to gaps, barriers, and inequities that occur within the business landscape where Canadian Food Trucks operate - chiefly, municipalities. We are undertaking a series of research projects that are truly IDEAL for students to understand the inner workings of how good policy recommendations can have real impacts on the ability for small businesses to thrive and grow. In this project, FTAC is undertaking a cross-country review of various bylaws that impact Food Truck operators. This will be the 2nd year this data will be collected to inform our work. All of the research conducted will be online and can be done from anywhere.

Business Basics: Commercial Insurance Content & Educational Resources

The primary goal of this project is to create comprehensive guidance tools and educational content aimed at helping food truck operators understand the ins and outs of insurance coverage. This should also include content that highlights the risks of being underinsured. To accomplish this, we believe you should focus on: Conducting customer interviews to understand purchase decisions and needs. Defining customer segments that we could target. Brainstorming potential product ideas. Developing marketing messaging and sales strategy for the new product. We hope this new product will increase revenue and grow our customer lifetime value. Students will gain an in-depth understanding of the complexities of insurance in a niche industry. Food truck operators will receive tools and information aimed at improving their insurance coverage and understanding the risks of underinsurance.We want you to help us develop a new product that will appeal to our target customer, which we can offer as an up-sell to our existing product(s).

Cybersecurity Project: Risk Assessment and Mitigation

To conduct a comprehensive cybersecurity risk assessment for food truck operators and develop a set of guidelines and best practices for mitigating identified risks. This project will have specific focus on the collection of payment card data, PCI compliance, and other data collection practices in modern POS systems.

Food Cost Visualizer and Planner

The primary objective of this project is to develop a comprehensive Food Cost Visualizer and Planner for Food Trucks, enabling them to effectively plan their menus and manage food costs during their operating season. Students will work with multiple data sets, including open data sources from Statistics Canada (Wholesale food pricing, Consumer Trends, Consumer Price Index), as well as data from Agriculture Boards. The Association will assist in obtaining data feeds for various datasets from the government where possible.  NOTE: The use of data scrapers to fetch data in the final product is prohibited.