How Much Does a Food Truck Make?

What “makes” actually means here

Owner income for a business this size is quoted as SDE — seller’s discretionary earnings: revenue minus all real operating costs, with the owner’s own salary, personal expenses run through the business, and genuine one-time items added back. Listing sites call it “cash flow.” It is not take-home pay. Truck loan or lease payments, income tax, and the reserve you need for the next transmission all come out of SDE first.

The add-back matters more on a food truck than almost anywhere else, because on most trucks the owner is the labor. If a seller adds back a $45,000 owner salary to reach a $75,000 SDE figure, you are not buying a $75,000 income — you are buying a job that pays $75,000 and requires you at the window six days a week. Price it accordingly. The mechanics of converting SDE into a defensible price are covered in how to value a business.

Earnings by service model

“Food truck” describes at least three revenue models with materially different economics. Identify which one you are looking at before you read a single line of the P&L.

• Street and lunch-rotation service. Gross of roughly $120,000–$250,000 and SDE of $25,000–$55,000. Highest volatility: weather, permit changes, and losing a single office-park slot can move the year by 20%. Tickets are small and volume-dependent.
• Event, festival, and brewery routes. Gross of roughly $180,000–$350,000 and SDE of $40,000–$75,000. Better per-day revenue, but fee structures vary wildly — some venues take a flat booth fee, others 15–20% of gross, which changes the margin completely.
• Catering and private-contract weighted. Gross of roughly $200,000–$400,000 and SDE of $55,000–$90,000+. Booked in advance, priced per head, and largely weather-proof. The most valuable model and the one most dependent on relationships that may leave with the seller.

The cost structure

Food truck costs look like a restaurant’s with the rent line replaced by a set of smaller, easier-to-forget ones. As a share of revenue, a healthy single truck runs roughly:

• Food and paper cost: 28–33%. Above 35% and either portioning is loose or the menu is priced for a market that has moved. Paper and packaging alone are 3–5% and are frequently buried inside “supplies.”
• Labor: 25–30%, including the owner at market rate. A truck showing 12% labor is a truck where the owner and a family member work unpaid. Restate it before comparing to anything.
• Commissary rent: $500–$1,500 a month. Required in most jurisdictions for prep, cold storage, and grey-water disposal. The single most commonly omitted line in the category.
• Fuel, propane, and generator: 4–7%. Generator hours are the hidden one — a unit running eight hours a service day is a consumable with a rebuild schedule, not a fixed asset.
• Insurance, permits, and licensing: $4,000–$12,000 a year. Commercial auto plus general liability plus a health permit in every county the truck serves. Multi-county operators stack these fast.
• Truck maintenance and repair: 3–6%. Two vehicles in one — a commercial kitchen and a medium-duty truck — both aging. A P&L showing under 2% is deferring.

Worked example: a catering-weighted truck

A truck runs 190 service days: 120 street and brewery days averaging $1,150, and 70 catering days averaging $2,400. That is $138,000 plus $168,000, or about $306,000 of revenue. Food and paper take $95,000 (31%), crew labor $61,000 (20%), commissary $12,000, fuel and propane $17,000, insurance and permits $9,000, truck repairs $14,000, and card fees, marketing, and admin another $22,000. That leaves roughly $76,000 — but the owner worked every one of those 190 days and paid themselves nothing. Insert a $40,000 market wage for that labor and the business itself earns about $36,000. Both numbers are true; only one of them tells you what you are buying.

The earnings claims to discount

Food truck listings are among the most cash-heavy and least documented in small business M&A, which makes verification the whole job.

• Revenue built from a peak-season stretch. A truck quoted from June–September numbers annualizes to a figure it will never hit. Demand month-by-month deposits for three full years.
• Cash sales asserted without card-processor backup. Reconcile the processor statements to the deposits. Cash claimed above the documented card mix is not financeable and should not be paid for.
• No commissary, no permit renewals, no owner wage. Any of the three missing means the SDE figure is overstated — usually by $15,000–$50,000 once all three are restored.
• Catering revenue tied to the seller personally. Ask which contracts are in writing, which renew automatically, and which are a friendship. Unwritten relationships transfer poorly and are the top reason a truck underperforms in year one.
• Vending slots and event bookings assumed to transfer. Many venue agreements and municipal permits are issued to a named operator and require reapplication. Confirm transferability in writing before closing.

Before you accept any earnings figure, reconcile it to three years of filed tax returns and to a record the seller does not control — processor statements, event contracts, and the commissary’s own invoices. Our due diligence checklist sets out which documents to request and in what order, and how to verify business financials covers the reconciliation itself.

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