Food Truck Economics: Profit per Pitch-Day, Not per Portion

Food truck economics look simple. A burger sells for 180 and the ingredients cost 63 — a 65% margin, which in a restaurant would be excellent. Multiply by portions sold and the business appears to work.

It usually does not work quite like that, because a food truck does not sell portions. It sells days in a place, and the place is the variable that decides everything. Two identical trucks selling the same burger at the same price can have completely different economics depending on where they stood.

What a pitch-day actually costs

A day of trading has costs that do not depend on how many burgers leave the window:

• The pitch — the fee for the spot, the festival entry, or the percentage of turnover the organiser takes.
• Staff — two people for the shift plus the hours of prep before and cleaning after, which are rarely counted.
• The truck — depreciation, insurance, the generator's fuel, the diesel to get there and back, gas, maintenance.
• Waste — the prep that did not sell. On a weak day this is not a rounding error; it is often the difference between profit and loss.

Add these and you get the cost of standing somewhere for a day. Say it comes to 6,400 for an ordinary city pitch. That number is what every portion sold that day has to climb over before it earns anything.

The same burger, two very different days

Day one, a regular city spot. Pitch 800, staff 3,200, truck and fuel 1,600, waste 800 — total 6,400. The truck sells 90 burgers: 90 × 117 of contribution (180 − 63) = 10,530. Profit for the day: 4,130.

Day two, a large festival. Takings are triple: 270 burgers, contribution 31,590. But the pitch fee is 18,000 plus 10% of turnover (4,860), staff are four people for a longer day at 9,600, the truck and fuel 2,600, waste 2,400. Total costs 37,460 against 31,590 — a loss of 5,870 on the day with the best takings of the month.

This is the trap of judging by revenue. The festival felt like the best day of the season and was the only loss-making one.

Decide about a pitch before you take it

The calculation is easy to do in advance, and that is the point. For any offer, work out three numbers: what the day costs in total, what you contribute per portion, and therefore how many portions you must sell just to break even.

In the festival above, 37,460 ÷ 117 = 320 portions before the first hryvnia of profit. If the queue realistically supports 270, the answer is either a higher price for that day, a cheaper agreement with the organiser, or no.

Organisers who charge both a fee and a percentage deserve particular attention: the percentage grows exactly when the day goes well, so a good day is less good than it looks.

Waste is a pricing decision, not an accident

Prep is committed before the day starts, and on a slow day it becomes loss. Most food truck owners treat this as bad luck rather than as a cost of the pitch choice.

Two practical moves. Prep to the realistic worst case rather than the hoped-for best, and let the menu run out rather than throw away — a sold-out truck at six o'clock earns more than a full one at nine. And track waste per pitch: a location that consistently generates 20% waste is more expensive than its fee suggests. The underlying logic is the same as real food cost margin in a restaurant.

Your season is a fixed number of days

A truck has a limited number of trading days in a year — weather, permits, staff and your own stamina all cap it. Once you accept that, choosing a pitch stops being «is this day profitable?» and becomes «is this the best use of one of my 180 days?»

That question rules out a lot of marginal events that would pass the first test. It is the same capacity logic that applies to any business selling time rather than stock — see profit per event and utilisation.

Where to start

Take your last ten trading days. For each, write down total takings, contribution per portion, and everything the day cost — pitch, staff including prep, truck, fuel, waste. Sort by profit per day, not by takings. The ranking is usually not the one you remember.

In Finmap you see income and costs by day and by location, so a pitch that only looks busy stops being a mystery. Try it free for 7 days.