From an assets perspective you typically own your food truck or trailer, leaving you with something significant to sell should you decide to get out of the business.  Conversely, most restaurant owners do not own real estate. 

Inventory is usually less complicated than inventory in a restaurant and you typically hire a smaller team than you would in a restaurant.  In a restaurant you might have dozens of entrees to choose from, which means more ingredients to stock, while on a food truck a focused high volume menu might produce just as much revenue per hour while creating a situation where you have fewer purchases of which to keep track.  Additionally, a restaurant can easily have ten or more people working in it at any one point in time, while it is rare to see a food truck with more than three people working at once.  This empowers you to have a lower payroll and allows you to be more selective in who you hire.  Many food trucks exclusively use close relatives as staff, and in this situation 100% of income stays within a family.

If you are not already in the service industry, but want to transition into it, food trucks are an ideal way to get started.  They generally cost less than restaurants and, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, give you an asset to sell if and when you decide you want to leave the industry. Having said that, the service industry is more challenging than work in many other fields and you should keep your eyes wide open as you consider making a career transition.  The work is physically rigorous and if you are not comfortable standing for long periods, lifting heavy objects, and performing under pressure while in a hot environment you will not enjoy your food truck experience.  Unlike some physical jobs, there is also significant intellectual work that comes with the territory.  It is imperative that you have a handle on core accounting principles, are on top of all your costs, understand how to leverage marketing and social media, and possess impeccable soft skills in the field of communication.  FoodTruckInsight.com can help you grow in all these areas.

In terms of quality of life, a food truck operator has the freedom to make their own schedule and often brings their truck to fun parties and events. If you enjoy an ever changing and stimulating work environment this can be a huge positive!  Many people dream about “life on the open road” and operating a food truck business is a way to achieve that goal, although realistically you are likely to be operating largely within a specific radius of your commissary. Even so, with a food truck you will be going to new places on a regular basis and spending large portions of your life outside.  If the drudgery of a conventional workspace is not for you, a food truck can be a fantastic way to escape stereotypical office life without going off the grid.  

In my decades of food trucking I have countless treasured stories and experiences that would not have happened had I pursued a more traditional work path after college.  I have served internationally acclaimed celebrities on movie sets, fed doctors working in a mobile cadaver lab, participated as a vendor in exciting playoff runs for professional sports teams, served food at weddings in settings I never would have envisioned, donated meals to frontline workers during the pandemic, donated profits to animal shelters that introduced me to my own pets, and had the opportunity to speak to students about the business of food on multiple continents, among other things.  None of this would have happened without my food truck. 

The two most special experiences I can recount that I owe to my life as a food truck operator are having private time with the Stanley Cup and briefly conversing with Emma Watson.  In both cases I had been hired to work a private event.  I happen to be both a massive hockey fan and a huge fan of Harry Potter.  When I started my food truck I had no idea either of these opportunities would come my way and they were both outstanding experiences. While I cannot promise something like this will happen to you, I am confident that I would have been far less likely to have either of these encounters if I had worked virtually any other job or had not been self-employed.  When you start your own food truck rather than work on someone else’s there is more responsibility, but you also have the perk of being guaranteed to work every shift you want.  If the Stanley Cup or Emma Watson happens to be where your truck is going, you get first dibs on being there, too!

One of the most beautiful things about the service industry is that all human beings need to eat, so when you work in food you are exposed to people from all walks of life.  If you are interested in expanding your perspective a food truck can bring you to worlds you never knew existed overlaid within your very own community.  They are not always glamorous like the instances I just recounted in the previous paragraph, but they are always worthwhile as you continue to be reminded that the world is far more than just you and other people who live similarly to you.  

Another thing that can be hugely satisfying for some people who choose to operate a food truck is the autonomy it creates.  If you are someone who is self-motivated and does not like having a boss, the food truck lifestyle may be a good fit for you. Many food truck operators have the luxury of taking winters off and very much enjoy doing so.  The service industry is famously known for requiring people to work on nights and weekends, but a peer of mine does well enough on weekdays that she never works weekends.  She set a goal for herself and achieved it, and no one is there to tell her she has to do otherwise.

Most importantly, it is possible to earn a comfortable living on a food truck, but doing so requires attention to detail and discipline.  It is crucial that you are comfortable with budgeting both on the business side of things and in your personal life.  The work tends to be seasonal and revenue can follow a feast or famine pattern.  Especially when you are starting out you cannot assume that one good or bad week means that the next week will follow the same pattern.  As you establish yourself and attend the same events on an annual basis or establish a set weekly schedule that works for you it is reasonable to use past sales results as a guideline for future outcomes.  This is especially true when you look at revenue on a year-over-year and month-to-month basis. 

Even as revenue becomes more predictable, you will always be faced with situations where unexpected expenses arise.  The transmission on your truck may need work, your generator may need to be serviced, you may have popped a tire, your fryer may be down, your refrigerator may have stopped refrigerating.  These are all common issues that food truckers face, but the real challenge is that you never know when you are going to face them.  Regularly performing maintenance on all of your equipment can help catch small problems before they become big problems and reduce the chance any of these things will cripple your operation.  Of course, even the most seasoned and wise food trucker in the universe cannot foresee and prevent every problem they end up having to confront. Rather than becoming frustrated, it is best to use challenges no one saw coming as learning experiences and keep in mind that someday they will make for a good story.  However, as for right now the key thing to understand is that if you budget well and work hard you will likely be able to cover any unforeseen expenses, earn the income you aspire to make, AND live the lifestyle of freedom you dream about..

When someone asks me whether starting a food truck is worth it, I turn the question around and ask that person what they hope to get out of their work.  I cannot imagine a more fulfilling way to have devoted two decades of my life.  The combination of exercising my brain to constantly solve problems, exercising my body to keep my truck running smoothly, expanding my social skills by constantly interacting with new and different people, and engaging my spirit by being involved and aware of the sacred circle of life that is an inevitable part of every meal, all while earning a living is an experience I cherish and would not trade for any other profession.  Except maybe two decades as goaltender for the New York Rangers.  If presented with that option, it would be a tough call.

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