How much does a food truck make
what is the highest profit margin for a food truck? So in this video, I'm going to give you five things that you can do to increase your profitability for your food truck. And I'm going to explain to you a little bit about how much they actually make nationwide. We're getting you that right now on food truck free.
All right, so welcome back to food truck freaks. Damien Roberti is the founder and CEO of Markety Food Online, as well as food truck enthusiasts.I am not new to the two. We actually have a bunch of great channels here on YouTube dedicated to food entrepreneurship. Definitely check out those links down below. If you are interested in other forms of food entrepreneurship, you'll definitely want to check out our over a thousand videos on our other channels and definitely hit the subscribe button and the bell notification. So in this video, I wanted to cover five specific things that you can do to actually increase the profitability of your food truck. If you're new to the food truck industry, and you're trying to figure out how you can make the most of what you've got and make the most of the type of menu that you're offering. These five things are going to be extremely important to understand and implement in order for you to make more money. Now, by the end of this video, stay with us. We're going to be here for a few minutes. At the end of the video, I'm going to give you some numbers as to the averages of how much a food truck actually makes in a month. And you can definitely check out those additional resources. I've got three other free videos that'll pop up on the screen. You definitely should check those out. There will be even more additional resources to help you get started. So, at number five,
How much does a food truck make
Check the events and traffic. What does that mean? Exactly. Okay, so you want to start a food truck business, and obviously you're going to attend different food truck rallies or different food truck events locally. There might be some type of music festival, or crafts festival, or any type of event that you can park your truck at and basically sell your product. But before you do, contact whoever it is that's in charge of the event and ask them, "Hey, what kind of traffic do you have every year at this event?" What I mean by traffic is foot traffic. How many customers or how many people actually attend this carnival? How many people actually attend this farmer's market? Or how many people actually come to this music festival? This is a great way to gauge how many customers you could potentially have at your food truck window before you even enter the event, because you've got to keep this in mind too.
Most of these events are going to cost you money up front. And sometimes they're going to charge you a flat fee. They say, "Hey, Damien, if you want to park your food truck, our event is like 250 or a few hundred dollars a day, or it's going to be for the weekend." It's going to be $800, or it's going to be a percentage. They may not charge you a flat fee amount, but they may say, Hey, Damien, it's gon na be our, what we do is charge you 10% of whatever your gross sales are. However, it might work out. It's still going to cost you money, obviously, right? Plus, it's going to cost you money to have an employee on your truck. You're going to have your generators running. So you're going to run through gas and propane or whatever it is. However, you're generating your electricity. All of these factors need to be thought about before you actually go to that event.
How much does a food truck make
So number five on our list is to find out what kind of traffic they're going to have, because this will give you a good idea of how many customers you can potentially get. Now, if you have an event that has 50, 60, or 70,000 people that show up, well, there can be a good potential for you to make more money. If you are one of the few food vendors that are there, There are some events that may have a lot of people, but they may also have a lot of food trucks. You know, if you've got 10, 15, or even 20 food trucks at one event, it's going to be really hard to try to pull some customers into your food truck to actually purchase your food product. So that may be a bit of a challenge, even though there are a lot of people. So keep that in mind too.
So, and now also, if the event staff or whoever's running it, it lets you know, "Hey, I want to come to your event, but how many food trucks do you normally have?" Oh, we've only got about five or six, but we get about 30,000 people on a weekend. That's going to be potentially a profitable weekend for you to be there. So check the traffic next up. Number four, a lot of food truck entrepreneurs don't think about this because they're always simply just wanting to attend as many events as they can locally and, as such try to pair your event with your menu. Now, what I mean by this is that not every type of food truck menu goes over very well with a certain event. Okay? You might go to a jazz festival. It might be a certain type of cuisine that really those types of people may enjoy more than yours, because you can take your truck there and you can maybe have, let's say, barbecue.
How much does a food truck make
And you've got a huge, huge variety of barbecue items, and you've got coleslaw, and you've got potatoes, things that are kind of country barbecue, kind of Backwood type of thing that people enjoy at certain events, but it might be a jazz festival, and that may not necessarily be something that they would enjoy so much. So try to find out exactly what kind of food really pairs well with the clientele. Just because you show up and you open your window and you want to sell food, doesn't necessarily mean that that event's gon na work really well. Some events work fantastic for barbecue. Some events work fantastic for taco trucks. If you've got a pizza or an ice cream truck, other events may work better for those as well. If you go to an event and sell pizza or ice cream, there's a good chance that if there are a lot of families and kids there, you'll sell like crazy, but to be honest, there aren't a lot of kids who end up eating barbecue, or tacos, or other types of burritos, or Mexican style food, or Spanish or Latino food, that may go over better.
If you actually add an event where the people attending are Latino, or maybe Spanish, or something to that effect, So always think, and kind of keep in mind your menu and where you're actually going this way. You don't waste your time. You're going to be more effective and more profitable at an event where the food may be enjoyed by more clients and customers. Number three. Now this is kind of like a no-brainer. And I know you're probably thinking, well, duh, of course, but there are a lot of menus that are very expensive to produce. What I mean by that is, a lot of the protein meats, like beef, chicken, poultry, fish, even shrimp, the seafood, those costs are really, really high, but you want to try to cut your costs for your ingredients as much as possible without compromising the quality of your food.
How much does a food truck make
Of course, any really good chef wants to maintain the good quality of food that they present to their customers. But if your product is costing you, you know, four or five or six dollars to produce, and you've got a very small margin, you're making a couple dollars off each product, each transaction, you're not going to stay in business very long. So try to cut your costs as much as possible, of course, without cutting the quality of your food. Number two, create a fast menu. Now, what exactly is a fast menu? Well, let me break this down for you. There are some food items that when you put them together, you can literally create a lunch or a to-go item or dinner or something to that effect, a serving of food in a matter of less than a minute or two. Yes, there are some that you can pre-make a lot of the ingredients for specific types of foods.
You can put that and assemble it together and give it to your customer through the window in less than two minutes. If you're creating something that a customer has to wait on for three to five minutes or more, that's not going to be profitable for you. Why? Well, I can tell you you're going to have a long line. And if people are waiting in line in excess of 10, 15, or even 20 minutes because the item that you're making is consuming your time more so than anything else, you're not going to have a line. People are going to go somewhere else. So the key to creating a fast menu is to try to come up with something that you can either prepare the majority of your ingredients prior to going to the event. So you're simply assembling them as opposed to cooking them from scratch, making them from scratch, and doing everything on the truck, which a lot of states actually don't even allow you to do.
How much does a food truck make
But the bulk of what you actually put together and make is pre-done at your commissary kitchen or commercial kitchen, creating a fast menu. I'm not talking about fast food. I'm not a fast menu. It's the assembling of those ingredients. That's the key to turning over more plates and making more money. Fast food is just junk food. If you want to serve junk. Well, then that means you can do that as well. There's nothing wrong with hamburgers and fries. But what I'm talking about is creating really good food and figuring out how to assemble it in a fast way. That's creating a fast menu now down to number one. So you probably wonder what the best thing I can do. What's the most profitable thing I could do, Damian, to attract people to my truck and to make more money and make it profitable? Well, number one is something for free.
Yes. The word "free" on a menu board in front of a food truck is a psychological trick. If anyone sees the word "free," they are more likely to not only come over to your truck and read your menu board and find out what is free, but they're more likely to actually buy something from you because they want to get something for free. I worked in retail for over 25 years, and I can tell you the same psychology can work in the food and truck industries. And it does work at the retail level. We always had something like you get your buy and get one's free. You can always put those items at the front of the store. You make a big sign. When you buy two, you get one free.Or if you spend $20 or more today, You get something free. I don't care what it is. It could be a free bottle of water with every single meal.
How much does a food truck make
If you're at a hot summer event in the middle of someplace where it's extremely hot and you say, "Hey, buy lunch." And your beverage is on us.You are going to sell way more products than anybody else at the event, because it's just a psychological thing. If you're going to an event, a lot of families and kids are coming, and you have a small cup of ice cream, and every kid's lunch gets a free ice cream cup. The mummies and daddies are going to bring their kids to your truck. Most likely, you're going to get more business. It doesn't matter what it is for free. And of course, I know it costs you something. So you find something that's inexpensive that you can give away or every single menu item. If it costs you 25 cents for a bottle of water and you charge five bucks for a meal, and you say, "Hey, get our $5 meal and you're going to get a free drink and go up 25 cents.""
Whatever it is that you need to do, you need to just put the word free on your menu board, make sure people can see it, put it on your truck, wherever it may be, that can get the attention of people at that event. Because in all likelihood, you're going to get an experiment with this. If you've already got a food truck, do this and tell us in the comments. If it worked, give something away for free. Now you're probably wondering how much a food truck makes in a month. Now, we did some research online and found some great resources, but the average food truck in this country, in the United States, is in a city, urban setting, not in a slower, smaller town area, and there is nothing wrong with that.But some of the higher, bigger places, such as Miami, you go to LA, you're talking to New York, other places where there's a lot of high traffic areas.
How much does a food truck make
The average is between $20 and $50,000 a month in gross sales. Okay? That's not your profit, that's your net. Of course, as I know, you've got expenses, but 20 to $50,000 a month is a pretty good amount of money in sales for any business. But again, maintain those top five things to try to figure out how to cut your costs so that 20 or $50,000 becomes more profitable now in smaller areas of the country in not necessarily urban areas, but more rural areas, or smaller towns, or slower traffic areas, or even slower traffic events, anywhere from about 5,000 to about $15,000 a month and growing sales is the norm, that's normal. So if you can make it again, make your product, reducing the cost and making it more profitably, 10 to 10 to 15, or even $20,000 a month below, that is a good amount of margin for your product.
So thanks for watching. Definitely give us a big thumbs up, check out these videos right here. You've got three more additional resources for you to check out if you're starting a food truck business, if you're new to our channel, this is the first video. Definitely has a subscribe button, the bell notification. And if you've got questions or comments, always let us know down below, we are building out this channel. So we've got a lot of new content coming, but we'll use a lot of your comments to create that type of video as well. So I'll see you guys on the.