A restaurant on wheels with a restaurant's costs
A food truck replaces rent with a vehicle payment, but the rest of a restaurant's costs come along. There are ingredients, labor, fuel, a generator, insurance and, in most places, permits. There is also a commissary, a licensed kitchen where food is prepared and stored and where the truck is cleaned and serviced. That monthly fee is easy to overlook when a truck is being planned.
Mobile operators work in Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County, the Bay Area and the Inland Empire, and each place has its own permit rules, parking rules and event calendars. The owner has to keep up with all of them, and each carries a cost.
The cost stack
| Item | Nature of the cost |
|---|---|
| Truck or trailer | Purchase or payment, plus conversion and fit-out |
| Permits and health inspections | Renewals on a schedule, sometimes per location |
| Commissary | Recurring monthly fee |
| Fuel and generator | Variable with how many days you run |
| Ingredients and packaging | Bought daily or weekly |
| Insurance | Required, due on a schedule |
Weather, events and breakdowns
A food truck's revenue depends on where it parks and when. A rainy day cuts foot traffic. A slow festival leaves a truck with stock and no sales. A mechanical problem takes the truck off the street entirely, and unlike a restaurant, there is no second dining room to open. An engine, transmission or generator repair can be as large as the truck's profit for several months.
Owners with a good cash cushion absorb these swings. Owners without one often have to borrow from the next week's ingredients budget.
Growing to a second truck or a brick-and-mortar
- A second truck doubles the vehicle, permit and commissary costs before it doubles revenue.
- A catering contract may require buying ingredients in volume for an event weeks ahead of payment.
- A storefront adds a lease, a build-out and staff, which is a different business model with different cash needs.
Each step needs money before the new revenue does, which is the usual reason owners look for working capital.
Permits and the paperwork calendar
Mobile food businesses live with a calendar of renewals that a fixed restaurant sometimes does not: vehicle registration, health permits, fire inspections on the propane and generator setup, business licenses and event vendor fees. None of them is huge on its own, but they cluster, and missing one can idle the truck. Owners who plan around the renewal dates avoid the scramble, and those who treat them as a monthly set-aside rarely get caught short. When a bundle of renewals lands in the same slow month, working capital can carry it.
Getting started
You complete a five-minute application and provide roughly three months of business bank statements. We use a soft credit pull, no tax returns are required, and FICO 500 and above is considered. Funding ranges from $25,000 to $5,000,000, with money possible in as little as 24 hours. Sole proprietors, which includes most owner-operated trucks, can apply. Apply now.