Starting a Food Truck Business is Expensive

I started seriously considering starting a Craft BBQ food truck after cooking for some charity events hosted by Sugar Leaf Co during the summer and fall of 2023.  The Croptober event on October 14th really accelerated the decision making process.  I had a blast.  It was so much fun and a rewarding experience.  I started developing a business plan and researching startup costs.  Then through a series of serendipitous events the ideal truck appeared on the side of the road with a “For Sale” sign in the window.  That was the day I made the decision to jump into this.  I’m learning my projections for the truck build were fairly accurate, but the non-truck expenses have been significantly more than I expected.

I formed Smoked Food Truck LLC near the end of October 2023.  Purchased the Morgan Olson W24 step van on November 1st.  Four and a half months later I’m almost $40K into the process of getting this business started and I’m guessing I have another $7k to $8k in expenses to go before I’m ready to apply for the various permits required in Maine.  My original projections were for the whole startup process including building the truck, forming the business, insurance, licenses, fees, etc. would total around $40k.  Why am I 20% over what I thought the budget would be?  I’ll dig into that a bit here.

There are tons of resources online to help plan a mobile food business.  Most of them recommend planning to spend 50% more than you initially budgeted on unforeseen expenses.  With that as a yardstick I’m not doing to bad but it certainly feels like I’m not doing something right.

Truck Build Costs (thus far)

As of today I’ve spent almost $23k on the truck.  This includes the cost of the vehicle, some repairs and most of the major equipment.  I’m just now getting around to starting the construction process.  There’s going to be another $5k to $6k of pieces parts before I’m done.  This is in-line with my business plan guesstimate of $30k total for the truck build.  I still need to buy the holding tanks (both grey water and fresh), wiring, some plumbing components, fire extinguishers, required signage (health code and life satefy), shelving and other odds and ends.  I’ve been able to source the vast majority of the cooking equipment used and relatively inexpensive through Facebook Marketplace.  The only new equipment includes the 9500 watt generator, on-demand water heater, 8kw off-grid inverter, a couple 200AH AGM batteries, fire suppression ventilation hood, hand wash sink and a True sandwich prep fridge.  (Couldn’t find a bottom/front venting prep fridge used.)  If I had the budget to buy everything new I would be into the truck for at least $12k more at this point.

Here’s a snapshot of the truck related expenses so far:

I did make a significant design/functionality change to the truck vs. my original business plan goals: I’m including an 48VDC off-grid battery system with an 8KW inverter.  This adds about $4k to the cost of the truck.   I’m using old-school AGM lead acid batteries because they’re significantly cheaper than lithium ION and I don’t have to worry about -25F winter temperatures destroying the batteries.  (If I used lithium ion batteries they would and another $2k.  I may upgrade someday if there’s a need.)  The inverter system will keep all of the refrigeration equipment powered while I’m driving.  The 48v 200AH (~5kWh usable) battery bank should be able to run everything for at least 2 hours while staying within reasonable depth-of-discharge levels for the AGMs.   At some point I plan to add an additional 48v alternator to the engine so I can charge the 48V battery bank while the engine is running.  (The 48v alternator doesn’t fit in the budget at this time and may not be necessary anyway.)  I think the extra cost of the inverter system is well worth the benefits.  Your needs may vary.

Non-Truck Costs

This is where my estimates were way off.  If I’m already close to $40k total spent in starting Smoked Food Truck but I’ve only spent ~$23k on the truck, what’s the remaining $17k been spent on? It all adds up fast.  I won’t itemize it all here.  Some costs include: logo design, trademark application filing fees, LLC formation fees, insurance, ServSafe training, water testing, mileage and tolls (buying equipment all over New England), website costs (WordPress plugins, themes, backups, etc.), business checks/cards/printing, etc.  I’ve also started acquiring the components and a trailer to build a much larger offset smoker.  I can only handle a limited amount of daily business with my current 275 gal reverse-flow offset smoker setup.  I suppose I could lump the new smoker build in with the truck costs as “equipment” but that doesn’t feel right to me.  The new smoker trailer is currently ~$3800 of the $17k non-truck costs.  Back that out and I’ve spent $13k on “other stuff” thus far.  I had budgeted $10k on non-truck startup expenses so I’m 30% over budget in this area.

I’ve also started acquiring gear to go in the truck.  Things like large Yeti coolers, WiFi/Bluetooth temp monitoring probes, trays, pans, etc.  All these little items add up quite quickly.

Gotta keep my eye on the prize…

If you have questions about my build leave them in the comments below.

Be sure to follow my Instagram page because I’ll soon be posting progress updates on the truck build.