The 4 Best Roads to Food Truck Profitably

Congrats! You have a food truck or trailer. You have a killer menu and some amazing food that you're eager to amaze the public with. You're a self-contained mobile restaurant! You're totally stocked-up and ready-to-go! But, go where?

In theory, you could set up for business anywhere you can drive to and park the rig. Right?

<sigh> If that were only true. Sorry but, this is the real world and not the movie "Chef". There are a lot of rules to follow if you want to keep food truckin’ and do it successfully.

"So, where DO I go to sell my food?"

Here are the basics. There are four main directions you can take with a food truck/trailer to find work…

1. Lunch Truck: Find a good place to park, fire up your grill/griddle/fryer, open your service window and sell to whoever comes to buy. There is great freedom and flexibility in this type of work, but also much risk until you cultivate a tried-and-true route or latch onto a few primo locations.
2. Food Truck Courts: These are dedicated sites where customers can find a number and variety of food trucks parked for meal service. They can be pop-ups or fixed locations and may have a constant rotation of different trucks vending or they may be more relatively fixed, like a food court at a mall.
3. Catering: Contract-based arrangements between hosts and food truckers for the trucks to provide specified food to a set number of guests for an agreed-upon price.
4. Festivals: Special events like fairs, rodeos, car shows, food truck rallies, etc. Organized by the staff of the organization holding the event or a third-party promoter these are limited-engagement events which may a few hours to several weeks long. Food truckers pay for a spot to set-up (or a percentage of sales, or both) in exchange for the opportunity to offer their foods to the attendees of the event.

Some Truckers find one revenue stream they like and stick with it. Some go after several, or even all, of these types of jobs. What works best, and is most profitable for you will depend on your location, the food truck culture in your area, your tolerance for travel, your menu, your staffing situation, and your own working style.

There are hybrid-type jobs too. For example, a company may want a food truck to come to their business and be available for lunch service with their regular menu to employees (Like a lunch truck) but are also willing to guarantee that the truck will do $XX in sales (so like catering as well). These can be sweet gigs to hook up with!

Regardless of the type of food truck you have or the style of food trucking you want to do, your success will largely come down to LOCATION. The beauty of mobile food businesses is that they are… MOBILE! You can go to where the customers are. If you can consistently find the right places to set up and sell, you are well on your way to success!

I'll be weighing in with more specifics and the pros and cons of each of these four work-type scenarios in future posts.

Why are Food Truck menu prices so high at festivals?

Dear David, Why are food truck menu prices higher at festivals than for catering or at lunch stops?

Good question! 

Everybody complains about how expensive food is at fairs and festivals and most assume that it is the food vendors making a killing at the expense of the "captive audience" attendees.  Well, one of the dirty little secrets about festivals is how much many organizers/promoters charge those food vendors to take part.  Up to a point, it is understandable. T, they have a lot of expenses in securing the venue, marketing, security etc., but some situations become usurious.  

Ready for a little food truck festival economics?

Permits & Licenses
First, let's talk about permits.  Every state is unique, but there are more similarities than differences.  I'm in Arizona. Most Arizona cities and towns require their own business licenses.  Every Arizona County has its own "Environmental Services" (Health) Department and they each require their own permits and, usually, inspections.  That means that if in January a food truck was working a festival in Goodyear AZ, they would need a Goodyear City business license ($75) AND a Maricopa County mobile food service permit ($600). If next month that same truck did an event in Havasu City, it would need a Havasu City Business License ($110), AND a Mohave County temporary food vendor permit ($95).  Next month, Flagstaff? $8 business license, Coconino County Food Service permit $390.  Some of these fees are good for a full year but if you only do one festival a year in a particular city or county a year, you can see how all these fees add up quickly on a per-event basis!

Vending Space Then you need to pay for vending at each event.  It is common for the "space charge" for a 10'x20' food truck/trailer slot at a good festival to be around $300 per day (some are closer to $100/day but many are $500+/day).  At $300 per day space charge, a truck that expects to run a 15% net profit would need to sell over 285 $7 sandwiches a day to break even and not LOSE money.

Percentage Rakes
Some events also charge food vendors a percent of sales (SALES, not profits) of as much as 25%, often on top of a space charge. Few food trucks maintain a 25% profit (exceptions being kettle corn, hot dog, or novelty ice cream vendors).  If you're losing 10% on every sale, you can't just make it up on high volume, so you need to raise menu prices accordingly. In fact, even if the truck from above raised the price of that $7 sandwich to $9 for the festival they would still have to sell 375 of them a day to break even!

Utilities
To put out awesome freshly made hot meals, most food trucks need to have water, propane, and electricity to run their cooking and refrigeration equipment and clean their wares. Lots of us can be fully self- contained but not for an unlimited time period. Generators require frequent fueling, propane tanks need to be refilled, there's only so far you can stretch 40 gallons of water, and let's not forget about properly dumping the waste water either. 

All of this costs money, but festivals may require you to buy power, water and (for very extended events like state fairs) even waste water connections from the site.  It is not unusual to have to pay $100 to $300 for utility hook-ups at a 3-day event.

Beverages & Ice
Coke or Pepsi, or other large companies, sponsor many events.  Often, those events restrict beverage sales to ONLY products from those companies.  Tough but understandable.  

SOME of those events also require that food vendors purchase all beverages sold at the event directly from the sponsor at inflated prices than those available independently off-site.  They may further require that you buy all the branded cups, etc for service from them as well (again at a substantial mark-up).

So... You can see how there is a lot of upward price pressure, just to survive financially at these events.

David's Festival Rant

"Sustainability"
People love to talk about sustainability these days.  We ran our successful 100% off-grid goat cheese dairy for over 15 years and know a few things about sustainability.  One key component to sustainability that people forget to talk about is that if you work so hard and spend so much money being "green", or "organic", or "carbon neutral", or "sustainable" that you burn out and go broke… you weren't being sustainably at all, were you?  

The true measure of the sustainability of a business, whether a dairy or a food truck must be its ability to stay in the game long-term - to sustain the business - and that means paying your bills and making a profit.


And a Call to Action
We at Grillin N Chillin don't mind working hard (obviously!) and we don't mind paying a fair price for a spot at a festival, but do we mind supporting a rigged and unscrupulous system that shoves a never-ending parade of budding, unsuspecting would-be culinary entrepreneurs through the festival grinder with promises of 10s of thousands of hungry  attendees with unlimited cash, just waiting for their food truck to arrive.  We will not support such promoters, organizations or events with our time, money or food.  And we hope you won't either!

What's the dif? Comparing Broiling, Grilling, Griddling, Smoking, and BBQing.

At our food truck Grillin N Chillin we see a lot of folks coming by thinking we're a BBQ truck.  Or a grilled cheese truck.  Or something else that we're not.  Maybe it's my fault for picking an ambiguous name (but you gotta admit, it's catchy!). We're a grill truck serving char-grilled specialties from Chicken Teriyaki to Garlic Steak.

So... Let's try to cut through all the confusion right now and look at the differences between five very different, but often confused, cooking methods.  Broiling, vs Grilling, vs Griddling, vs Smoking, vs BBQing.

Yes there are some similarities between the methods and some crossover between the styles, but each is distinct and have unique attributes that make them special.

Let's start with Grilling (aka char-grilling). Think: high heat, short cooking time, on an open grate, over live flames. 

The heat source for grilling can be gas, although wood and charcoal are usually preferred. Wood chips and pellets may be used as well. Grilling is often thought of as a healthier cooking method as no fats are typically added, and many of those fats naturally present in the food, drains away.

"So, what about grilled cheese sandwiches?", I hear you ask.  Good question! Grilled cheese sandwiches are (obviously) not really "grilled". That would be impractical and incredibly messy.

"Grilled" cheese Sandwiches are generally pan-fried or Griddled (our second cooking method). A griddle is a heavy flat piece of metal, heated from below, usually by gas flames or electric elements, although a camp griddle might be set over hot coals too. The food cooked on a griddle is cooked in some kind of fat (that's what keeps it from sticking to the surface). Some people confuse grilling and griddling or use them interchangeably, but the results are totally different so, PLEASE, keep them straight! And (sorry!), I have no clue why they call them grilled cheese sandwiches.

  

Another cooking method that gets confused with Grilling is BBQ (aka bar-be-que, barbeque, and sometimes just Q. Method #3). This confusion comes from the fact that we mostly call our backyard grills "barbeques" and when we have friends over to cook burgers and dogs on the weekend, we call it "throwing a barbeque".

REAL BBQing is a low temperature, slow cooking method. And by slow, I mean REALLY slow.  6-12 hours for ribs, 12-18 hours for pork butts, and 24 hours or more for whole steers. Pit roasting and Spit roasting are, arguably other types of BBQing.

Now, Smoking (method four) is closely related to BBQ. It is also a low and slow method. Perfect smoking is accomplished with indirect heat and just the right amount of hardwood smoke enveloping the food. Ideal long-smoked foods have a pinkish color, despite being fully cooked, and will show a marvelous "smoke ring", the pride and joy of the pit master.

There are actually two different smoke methods, which are used for different results. Hot smoking is typical for ribs, brisket, pork butts, poultry etc. Cold smoking is used for pork bellies (bacon), smoked salmon, cheeses, and some types of ham. Cold smoked foods are still uncooked when they come out, but are deeply infused with smoke flavor.

One way to think about it is that some BBQ is also smoked (a pit roast pig might be one that is not), and some smoked foods are also BBQ (smoked salmon is not). But not all are both.

What about Broiling? (our last method to talk about today) Well, broiling is another high-heat, short-time cooking method, like grilling. In this case the heat is generally from electric elements, infrared, or gas flames, applied from the top. This is a great method for melting cheese on a gratin, or maybe flash-cooking fragile fish fillets, as it imparts no flavors of its own. That, of course, can also be the downside if you're looking for that unique outdoorsy flavor of grilling, smoking and BBQing.

So, now you know the important differences. Go cook up a storm!

Culinary Napalm

We have now completed our first major event with Grillin N Chillin: The Arizona Balloon Classic (ABC) in Goodyear AZ.

Grillin at ABC

It was a learning experience. We learned that event promoters lie. Sometimes a lot. Like about the number of attendees, about "curating” menus so there aren't multiple vendors selling the same thing, about the number of vendors they are booking, etc. All valuable lessons, to be sure, but the most important lesson we learned at ABC was about Culinary Napalm.

ABC turned out to be one of those events where you sit on your butts for 8 of the 10 hours they require you to be open for the three days in a row you have to be there.  And then get crazy-busy for, maybe, an hour at a time.

This time, the only real rush was on Saturday night when we had an order line 6 or 8 deep. And that's when I set the trailer on fire.

Because it had been so slow, I only had one of the three burners lit on the char-grill. I had my various squeeze bottles of oils and sauces on a sheet pan on the cold side of the grill. 

Little did I know, but at some point during the rush, I must have bumped the burner control knobs, turning them all to "high". My first clue was when I grabbed the teriyaki sauce squeeze bottle and the bottom dropped right out of it. Almost simultaneously, the caramel sauce, cooking oil, and BBQ sauce bottles all collapsed in a puddle, their contents gushing across the pan, over the sides, and down into the grill.

Within seconds, the sticky, volatile goo had ignited. I instantly flipped off all the burners, but the fire already had a head of its own. Flames were shooting two feet above the grill grates and getting perilously close to the fire suppression system components.

Kathryn, who was busy taking orders, didn't notice. I yelled to her (the food truck is noisy enough that yelling is pretty-much the norm) that "I had a situation". She glanced back, her eyes got a little wide, then turned back to taking orders. Later she told me, "Well, what could I do to help you? Might as well just keep working, right?" She had a good point.

The customers didn't even know there was anything wrong. They must have thought it was all part of the show. I mean, it's a char-grill truck and we sauté too. So, there are supposed to be flames, right??

So I did what I could to limit the fuel for the fire and worked to pull the drip pan out to try to douse the fire without resorting to the extinguisher. I'd pull the pan out a few inches, flop a wet towel on it and repeat. It was a moderately successful strategy (if arm and eyebrow hair are unimportant) and eventually the flames were out.

Then all I had to do was fully remove the drip pan, scrape the mass of charred, molten, culinary napalm-soaked towels into the trash. Nothing to it.

Crisis averted, I turned back to the order rack to find 12 new tickets waiting for me. Kathryn had been busy, and I was officially in the weeds.

When we got home, we designed and ordered a set of custom burner knob guards and bought a speed rack for my sauces. Problem solved.  Until the next one.

  

Concept & Design

Finished and installed.

A Small Town Food Truck Grand Opening

Our baby, Grillin N Chillin has now been out on a couple of "soft opening" runs.  We've learned some things, tweaked our menus, and finished the seemingly never-ending "punch list" of little to-dos.  It's time to introduce ourselves to the public.

Grillin Soft Opening #1

When we joined the local Chamber of Commerce a couple of months ago, they were very excited about our new venture.  Most of the folks in the office knew about us from operating the Black Mesa Ranch goat cheese dairy east of town for the past 15 years, but were also thrilled to find out about our new food truck business.  They asked if we would like to participate in the annual Snowflake Harvest Fest and we agreed.

Soft Opening #2

Being such a small town, the opening of a new business is kind of a big deal and the Chamber goes a little overboard with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, pictures in the local paper etc.  It's just so darned cute! We suggested to them that the Harvest Fest might be a fun time to have our official Grand Opening, and do all their hoopla at the same time.  They thought it was a great idea.

Grillin's Official Grand Opening!

Well, it was a hoot, even if the festival wasn't much to write home about.  The promised electric hook-up didn't work, less attendees showed up than expected, more food vendors were there than we had been told, and we were right across from an "underground" (IE no license, no inspections) illegal taco maker under a make-shift tent (all things we sadly would become accustomed to dealing with at festivals). We still made the best of it and had a great time. The ribbon cutting photo-op was flawless, although they wouldn't REALLY let me cut the ribbon because they needed to use it again the next day.

It is official, world... Grillin N Chillin is open for business!

Meet Grillin N Chillin - "The Bureaucracy of Life" stuff

Besides getting our new food truck (trailer, actually) physically ready inside and out, there was a virtual mountain of what Kathryn calls "The Bureaucracy of Life" - paperwork-type stuff that also had to happen.

Trailer insurance, registration (normal vehicle stuff) plus health department permits & inspections, fire department permits & inspections, business name and DBA filings with the secretary of the state's office, installing a POS (point-of-Sale) system and getting the merchants services accounts set to accept credit card sales, (normal new business and restaurant stuff) and on, and on. 

Yada, yada, yada.  Not-cooking stuff is BORING stuff to me, and I just don’t have the temperament to deal with it so, fortunately, Kathryn takes care of most of that, and does an amazing job of it too. But dealing with the health department and fire department... that's my department.

Our county health inspection was simple and easy.  The trailer had been built right and had all the proper equipment, all in functioning order.  It was neat and clean. We had our Serve-Safe certification and knew our food handlers’ stuff. Both the trailer and commissary kitchen passed with flying colors, so we paid our fees and we were done. We expected the same with the fire department. 

WHOA, not so fast, cowboy!

The fire safety inspection required me to bring the trailer to the local firehouse, (easier said than done as it is over 30 minutes away after 6 miles of rural dirt roads) and the fire marshal is a very busy man, but I eventually got it scheduled. THEN I found out he needed our fire suppression system inspection report before he could look at the trailer.  

And, where do I get that inspection done?  From "our choice" of private companies, for a fee. We found out that there was only one area company that could certify our Buckeye system and they were an hour away.  Got a new appointment, and off we went.  Well, it turns out they weren't REALLY a Buckeye dealer or service center, but they had a manual for the system and said could still certify it.

So, the woman looks at the hood, and the extinguishers, and suppression canister, and piping, and nozzles, and the activation pull, and the gas shut-off, and heaven knows what else.  All the time, flipping through the manual for reference.
  

An hour later she says, "Well, it looks pretty good, but there are a couple of things I don't think are right."

"What do you mean "not right"?"

"This pipe here" she says pointing "should have another elbow in it. And that nozzle looks like it's the wrong size.  And then you need another nozzle up there in the ducting, and once you add that, your tank is too small to support another nozzle, so you'll have to replace that too with a bigger one.  Don't think it will fit there either."

"WHAT???"

"Yup.  That's how it looks to me. That will be $200 for the inspection, the work will be a few hundred more.  And, by-the-way - I'm going to file this report with your insurance carrier, so you won't be able to get coverage until it's all fixed and signed-off on."

SON OF A BI#%H!!

We paid them their extortion inspection fee and left to try and figure out where all this left us.

My first call was to Patrick of Stradabella.  He's the guy whose company built the trailer and who I'd been in brief contact with before buying the trailer to check out its provenance.  Nice guy and super helpful.  He said it sounded like she didn't know what she was talking about.  He has built hundreds of systems the same way and never had the design questioned, BUT would call his Buckeye distributor and get the real skinny.

A day or two later Patrick calls and says that the company was less than helpful.  Yes, there should be a nozzle in any ducting, but the problem comes with interpreting "ducting".  On our system, the exhaust fan is mounted directly to the hood so there is no actual ducting (hence no need for a nozzle). This is what the engineers at the company told Patrick.  Unfortunately, they were not willing to put it in writing (their lawyers got involved apparently), so they could not supply the ruling that we needed to get our certification.  We were dead in the water.

"So. What are our options?" I asked.

"I guess you will have to get that nozzle and tank put in.  I can do it for you, if you want to bring the trailer all the way back to Phoenix".  Well, we knew we did not want to go back to the local place, so we agreed on a date and time.

Patrick and his guys are great.  They were working on maybe a dozen new food truck builds and several repairs and upgrades, but they got us right in and began the work.  While we were there, we mentioned a few other things we'd noticed (a flood light not working, a loose bracket, etc) and asked if he could look at them too. "Of course" he said.

Grillin goes under the knife

We hung out and walked the shop while they worked.  I was like a kid in a candy store.  Having never seen a truck under construction, it was fascinating to see so many at different stages of production from bare shells to ones ready to roll out the door and get wrapped.

A small part of the Stradabella shop

It was a difficult job for the guys (some of the the fire suppression stuff is the first to go in place, before there is all that equipment etc in the way) but they did a fantastic job. When all done Patrick had his Buckeye service guy come and sign-off on the repairs and then certify the rest of the trailer. We were ready for our fire marshal inspection finally!

Patrick getting it done RIGHT

New tank & nozzle almost ready to go

 I'm not going to say what the end cost for the upgrade and repairs was, but I will say that Patrick bent over backwards and went WAY out of his way to stand behind his product.  I mean, we didn't even buy the trailer directly from him!  He had no obligation to do all that work for less than market rate PLUS all the little extras we had asked him to look at.  We were amazed and thrilled.  Patrick is a total stand-up guy and his company is The Best.

Back home we made a new appointment with the fire marshal and it all went smooth as silk. Paid them their fees (of course) and we were good to go!