r/foodtrucks

It's not "you're fired". It's absolutely harder to have the "you need to start bathing more often and wear deodorant".

I like this guy's personality, but he's... Gross. He's fine in all other ways (and exemplary in some). But here's what I have so far:

"(Name), I noticed a few of the last events you were staffed you were wearing a dirty (company name) shirt. I take personal presentation really seriously for customer facing employees, so we need to make sure we always look our best."

But I don't know how to bring up the deodorant and the body odor aspect. It's hot in the trailer, and I can't stand the smell of the dude! How do I nicely tell him he reeks!?!

I was invited to a grand opening at a flower farm with 5 other trucks. So with me included, that's 4 savory trucks and 2 other (one ice cream, one drink). I serve brats.

The fee is $300 and they are estimating a 1000+ people. 50 minute drive for me, two day event. 8 hours each day I believe.

I have nothing going on that weekend but also it sounds like too many food options with a high fee. What would you do?

Reposting again as per Mod instruction, I used AI to generate a mock up image of my idea before, sorry guys. OK:

I am meeting with a conversion company on Saturday with the intention of agreeing final vehicle and set up choice. Had a good truck as an idea since I sold my restaurant a few years back, life has made it so now is a good of a time as any to actually go do it!

Currently undecided between a small van where I stand outside and the kitchen set up is at the rear doors. Think Jiffy Sandwich van style. I will be doing some trading in Central London so this small van would be ideal and give me more options for places to trade than a large van. It would basically be a moving pizza oven with prep table, sink and storage etc. Downside obviously being exposed to the UK weather.

Large van with usual internal kitchen set up. Wouldn't be able to trade where I intended, which are first choice locations, but I would be in a nice big inside kitchen and that itself would give more options for menu and trading in bad weather. Budget wise for a large van it would likely need to be an EV.

Anyone here with a small truck that they operate from outside of the vehicle to trade? How do you find it, what does your set up look like?

I would just love to go to the meeting on Saturday with a little bit more behind my ideas for set up.

Hey guys, I’m starting a food truck and I’ve been stuck on the name for way too long, so I figured I’d ask here.

The main thing I’ll be doing is vanilla soft serve, but not in a basic way. More like interesting combos like miso caramel, coffee Oreo, fruit curds, crunchy toppings, etc. Still simple at the base, just a bit more elevated and fun.

I’ll also have drinks, mainly iced with cream tops and coffee. I care a lot about making things from scratch, so Im still working on the recipes.

I’m planning to add a small savory/snack option too thats not heavy or fried, just something that pairs really well with cold drinks.

The vibe I’m going for:

I’m on the west coast (BC), so I want it to feel a bit coastal, but not like a cheesy beach theme. More clean, minimal, a little elevated but still easy and approachable. Like something that feels calm, thoughtful, and intentional.

I don’t want the name to lock me into one thing (like just ice cream or just drinks). I’d rather it feel like a place or a concept.

I liked “the melt coast” but it locks me in to something that melts and reminds people of grilled cheesr.

Open to anything that feels simple, memorable, and not too gimmicky.

Appreciate any ideas 🙏

There seems two be two major groups in this sub:

1. The starry eyed first time aspiring food truck owner who are interested and want to know more

2. The ones have gone through the motions for years and responding to newcomer's posts with a more bleak, yet realistic outlook.

The biggest problem with many of your struggles and stresses is because you're doing too much for this small business with so many risks and factors outside of your control and you don't get paid enough for working 50-70 hours every week, not including the 30-40 additional hours on your time "off" overthinking about the business.

In the US, most sole food truck/cart businesses alone is not going to pay a business owner's salary after all is paid out, UNLESS you are working the cart yourself and receiving tips or you have a very efficient operation. But how can you be working 5-7 days a week on the floor, setting up, prep, driving to location, working all day, breaking down, cleaning.. and then do inventory, payroll/taxes, social media, etc?

The fact is there is just too much for a single person to be doing. However, you need to learn to be able to scale your business where your truck earns enough revenue to be able to allocate many of the tasks onto some other person OR system.

There's no one way defining how to scale a mobile food business, and it's much easier said than done. It involves big risks, but if you've already established your business then congrats you've already gone through the difficult parts and you've put in your time. As a business owner, the responsible thing to be doing is to be making your business more money and hiring employees to take care of the day to day operations so you can focus on the bigger picture.

Scaling can involve the following:

- Hiring additional staff

- Having a second truck/trailer

- Purchasing a brick and mortar location to expand your concept/ become your own commissary

- Going to bigger events/ doing catering

- Reducing your costs by being able to bulk order. This includes spending less on branded packaging than you would on plain ones.

You really have to sit down and think about your business. If you are the only person that can do what you do, then you are holding yourself back from growing.

Let me illustrate a basic example:

Say you have $50k loan to build out a food truck that is to be paid off within 3 years. What concept do you have in mind? With $50k you can probably have a 20ft truck with two fryers, griddle, burners, oven, and all other equipment. The ideas seem endless with burgers, fried chicken, pizza, etc.

An experienced food truck owner would probably know you can't do every one of these items. You never know how much sales one day could bring so you need to consider not having any waste, which means each item you put on your menu could increase your risk for the amount of waste involved (pizza/ burger toppings).

So instead, it's a much smarter idea to stick to a simplified concept. But then lies the issue of "will there be enough revenue in this $50k truck for a simple food concept?" If you have the experience then sure, you could probably figure it out.

But here's the alternative: Who says you need to have one truck? Have you considered maybe having 2 trailers instead serving a simplified menu, or even 3 trailers that only serve beverages/desserts?

Having multiple mobile businesses mean you have the ability to expand your reach, rather than focusing on location. Because really, the biggest factor in this line of work is LOCATION. The amount of times I committed to an average location because it was consistent rather than do the work of reaching out to other places to see if I could potentially increase my sales was holding me back. If this one location is at least bringing in consistent revenue, even if it's not much, then great. However, now I can allocate another trailer for another location that could possibly do better.

And this allows better efficiency in both businesses. Less waste since you're selling more of the same product that can be split, buying items in bigger quantities, one staff to prep for both trailers, and shared cost of commissary/permit/business license/banking/etc.

And since you cannot operate both yourself, this forces you to realize you have to give up your responsibilities of being on the floor and you need to allocate responsibility to employees. It means figuring out systems where your staff has to follow specific protocols so that you know they are helping run your business the right way.

It's a very convoluted subject but I just wanted to stress the importance of always needing to think about the big picture of why you're doing this and the necessary steps to make this sustainable for yourself and your team.

I am not in this space, though I do plan to be by the end of the year, and I’d just like to hear some of what you guys have had to deal with and how you’ve overcame said challenge

Planning to build a trailer but want to stay away from deep fryers and all the ventilation and fire suspression costs. Besides deep fried food is every truck around.

So i came to the idea of hot dogs, i like hot dogs and other then a cart or two, there are none. But i wanted something better then a bag of chips for a side.

So what goes good with a hot dog, mac and cheese. So im trying to figure out if this concept will work and how i would set it up.

Any advice? Plan is an enclosed trailer, to stay out of the weather and be able to lock it all up.

One-man show. Gozney oven. Pop-up, guerrilla style. Am in Ontario.

name ideas so far:

Char Bello

The Lazzarone (exists in Kansas tho)

The Pythagorean Pie (would mean no meat tho)

The Philosopher's Pie

The Firekeeper

I have a small food trailer currently just serving lemonade until I have a generator. What would be an affordable option and should I go with gas and/or propane? I have about 5 led light strips, a mini fridge, a Hawaiian ice shaver, and small deep fryer that needs to be powered.

Been seeing more small pop-up food spots around Brisbane recently, especially on weekends. Some are actually pretty good and cheaper than restaurants. Curious if this is becoming a trend or just seasonal? Anyone found a hidden gem worth trying?

I’ve been digging deeper into my numbers lately and realized I was way off on some of my product costs, especially packaging and yield.

Once I actually broke everything down per item, it completely changed how I look at pricing. A few things I thought were profitable really weren’t. I think I was pricing more on what felt right instead of actual numbers.

Curious how others here approached this:

• When did it click for you that your pricing was off?
• What were you missing at first?
• Did you fully cost everything out or just adjust as you went?

Feels like one of those things you don’t really see until you sit down and do the math 🙄

Hey everyone!

We just got accepted into a local farmers market with our wood-fired pizza trailer and we’re super excited. The market gets really busy during the summer, which is great.

The only thing we’re unsure about is the hours. it runs from 8am to 2pm. Do you think pizza sells well that early? I’m wondering if people will actually want pizza in the morning?

For anyone who’s done farmers markets before how did it go?

Food truck owners, where do you lose the most time and money?

My wife and I own a small dessert truck. I still work full time making decent money ($110k), but I'm tired of the job. My wife does the food truck full time and picks up some serving shifts during the winter to keep herself busy.

We're going into Year 4 and she's averages about $50-55k a year on the food truck. This is largely for a few reasons:

1. We only operate April - October (winter exists here and half our product is ice cream)

We average around $1500-1800 on Friday/Saturday events and then pickup whatever we can during the week.

The goal this whole time is to expand to brick and mortar. We definitely have the following, and we'd expand the menu to offer more winter-acclimated items when it's cold.

I'm curious for anyone's who's taken that jump, either failure or success and in hindsight, what made you feel ready? When were you confident it would be a success?

I guess I feel like we're in a weird spot because there's a lot of good indicators we have going for us (i.e. capping out on orders) but we also just don't have the means to throw ourselves into this full time unless I quit my job, so the total gross/profit numbers don't translate and I'm trying to figure out if that's an excuse or a valid reason.

Quick question… So I recently bought a wood fired pizza trailer that I will have parked in food truck lot that serves alcohol, has live music three nights a week as well as bingo and other things to draw customers in throughout our the week. I am wanting to run it remotely while hiring a manager and supporting staff to facilitate the business being a success. I will be personally working in the truck running the show in order to get it going until I can make the move. My question is how long is a realistic time frame to be able to leave the business in the hands of others and walk away feeling comfortable that it will be a success? I understand that this is a loaded question with a lot of unknown variables. I would also like to hear any experiences or feedback you may have if have been in similar situations. Ideally I would like to be able to be onsite 1 week a month or as need be to put out any fires as they present themselves. The other trucks in the same lot typically generate about $25-30k per month and even more during the high season for reference. Thanks for reading and please let me know what you’ve learned and experienced over time. Cheers

I work alone in a food truck, I've been doing this for the past six years, running in the red for the first three and breaking even and making a little of profit every month now, roughly 3k on a good month after expenses.

The thing is my lease ends at the end of April and to resign the landlord is asking for 1750/mo, now I pay 1650. It seems like a safe choice, an increase of 100 isn't that much, and I have everything set up here, equipment and customer base.

An opportunity that doesn't come around often appeared recently, to lease a pod that has all the infrastructure already installed, water, electric, trash, oil, etc for 5000/mo. Its smaller and has less traffic, but it would be my challenge to spruce up the place and bring customers in, which I plan to do by focusing on late night dining/delivery orders. Id be moving my trailer in with the 3 other carts there currently, which is a big headache of taking everything out and putting it back in and hiring a moving truck. With me and the current trucks there, there's still space for another 3 to fit. Each one's rent is about 1500/mo, but the pods had trouble keeping trucks in since there isn't so much attraction there yet, just the bare bones of meeting inspection standards and minimal offerings. Also need to mention the opportunity to take over the lease is also 18,000, which I was planning on taking the money out of an investment account I have for education and put towards building something now since I have no intention on going back to school.

Long winded, but don't have many people to talk to and wanted some initial thoughts. Ultimately I'm leaning towards the challenge and risk, but parts of me are also asking to avoid big changes. Thanks for reading.