Food Truck Economics: Locations, Ticket Size, Food Cost, Events & Break-even

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Cost every plate from grams, price per kg, other ingredients and packaging, work out the food cost %, price each item to a 30 % target and find last week's weighted food cost %.
• Average a month of services by location with AVERAGEIF and AVERAGEIFS, work out the average ticket per spot and let a formula name the best spot.
• Turn seconds per order into window capacity, model the lunch queue half hour by half hour, estimate the wait and chart demand against capacity.
• Turn flat and percentage event fees into dollars, work out the profit of every event after food and crew, decide Go or Skip against a normal street day and find where a flat fee beats a share of sales.
• Convert weekly, monthly and yearly costs into one monthly figure with a lookup, price the fuel for driving and the generator per service day and work out what every service day has to cover.
• Turn a week of shifts into paid hours and labour cost with payroll on-costs, compare it with sales shift by shift and for the week, and count the shifts above the labour target.
• Build a monthly sales plan from service days, a season index and the share of rainy days, test a wet-year scenario and chart the season.
• Work out the contribution per meal, the meals per service day that cover crew and monthly costs, the monthly profit at different volumes and how many months it takes to earn back the owner's cash.