Break-Even Calculator for Food Trucks
Built by Najeeb · last updated August 13, 2026 · checked against our testing process
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Food Truck Break-Even: What to Enter
- Fixed costs: truck payment or lease, commissary kitchen fees, permits, insurance.
- Selling price: average order value per customer.
- Variable cost — food cost per order (target 28–35% of price), packaging, POS fee.
If you sell a $12 meal with $4 food cost, your contribution margin is $8. With $5,000/month in fixed costs, you need 625 meals to break even: roughly 21 meals per day on a 30-day schedule.
Last reviewed: July 25, 2026. Benchmarks sourced from Street Food Institute data.
Related: all finance calculators
How to use the food truck break-even calculator
- Enter monthly fixed costs: truck payment, commissary kitchen rent, permits and licenses, insurance, propane contract.
- Enter your average order value: total daily sales ÷ number of orders. Combos and drinks pull this up.
- Enter cost per order: ingredients, container, napkins, card processing. Food trucks typically run $3.50–$6.
- Set a target profit: your take-home goal after all costs.
- Divide by service days: if you run 20 service days a month, your real daily target is the monthly figure ÷ 20, not 30.
How many orders a day does a food truck need?
A truck carrying $5,500 in monthly fixed costs (payment, commissary, permits, insurance) with a $12 average ticket and $4.50 food cost per order breaks even at about 734 orders a month: 37 orders per service day on a 20-day schedule. That's an achievable lunch rush for a good location, which is why the food truck model works: the fixed-cost base is a fraction of a restaurant's.
Food truck costs that catch owners off guard
Beyond the obvious truck payment: commissary kitchen rent (legally required in most cities, $400–$1,200/mo), permit stacking across multiple municipalities, event pitch fees, generator fuel, and POS fees. Pitch fees deserve care: a flat $150 event fee is effectively a fixed cost for that day, while a 10%-of-sales pitch is variable. Put recurring flat fees in fixed; percentage-of-sales fees belong in cost per order.
Average ticket is your biggest lever
At a $12 ticket the example truck needs 37 orders a day; push the average to $15 with combos, drinks, and a signature side, and break-even falls to 27. Serving 40 customers instead of finding 10 more is usually easier: attach rate beats foot traffic. Model it above: raise the price field and watch the daily target drop.
Seasonal reality
If weather limits you to 8 strong months, your 12 months of fixed costs must be covered by those active months. Enter annual fixed costs ÷ active months in the fixed-cost field for the honest number.
A truck that won't start earns nothing that day
Fixed costs above cover the payment, the commissary, permits, insurance. What's missing is the one risk that's unique to running the business out of a vehicle rather than a building: mechanical failure takes you completely offline, not just inconvenienced.
A restaurant with a broken walk-in still opens the doors. A truck with a dead alternator, a failed generator, or a transmission problem sits in the lot earning zero, and repairs on commercial kitchen equipment bolted into a moving vehicle tend to run higher than the equivalent fix in a fixed kitchen, both in parts and in the specialized labor to access them.
Building a small maintenance reserve into fixed costs, even just $150 to $300 a month set aside rather than spent, turns an occasional four-figure repair bill from a cash-flow emergency into a line item you already budgeted for. Trucks that skip this tend to find out the hard way during their first major breakdown, usually at the worst possible time in the season.
Related tools
Weighing a bricks-and-mortar move? Compare with the restaurant break-even calculator: the fixed-cost jump is eye-opening. Coffee-focused trucks should see the coffee shop version. The main break-even calculator covers the formula in depth. Event fees, pitch rents and paid social all count as customer acquisition; the marketing ROI calculator shows what each order really costs to win.
Check your inputs before you trust the number
Trucks fail on the fixed-cost line far more often than on the food line, because the fixed costs arrive from several directions at once.
Service days. A realistic month is 20 to 24 service days, not 30. Weather, maintenance, restock and travel take the rest. Entering 26 or more quietly understates what each day has to earn.
Pitch and event fees. Classify these carefully, because the two forms behave differently. A flat day rate, commonly $100 to $300, is fixed for that day and belongs in fixed costs. A percentage of sales, commonly 10% to 20%, is variable and belongs in cost per order. Mixing them up moves your break-even in the wrong direction on exactly the days that matter most.
Food cost. Expect 28% to 35% of ticket. Trucks with a narrow menu often run lower, but only if waste is genuinely controlled, and waste on a truck is harder to control than in a kitchen with a walk-in.
What the calculator does not account for
Break-even math assumes a static cost structure. It does not model commissary kitchen fees, which run $400–$1,200/month in most metro markets and are mandatory in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York where overnight parking and self-contained prep are prohibited. It also excludes health permit renewals ($100–$600/year depending on county), fire suppression inspections (typically $150–$300 annually), and event permit fees that some cities charge per-appearance - San Francisco charges $1,000+ for a 30-day mobile food facility permit. Factor these into your fixed costs before running the calculator or your break-even order count will be understated.
Food cost percentage benchmarks by concept
Industry operators target 28–32% food cost for full-menu trucks. Specialty protein concepts (lobster rolls, brisket) routinely hit 38–42%, which shifts break-even significantly. A truck grossing $800/day at 40% food cost needs $320 in raw ingredients alone before labor or fuel. Beverage-heavy concepts (agua fresca, smoothies) can hold food cost to 18–22%, dropping break-even order counts by 15–20% compared to a comparable protein concept at the same ticket price. Run the restaurant break-even calculator alongside this one if you operate both a brick-and-mortar and a truck under the same entity.
Fuel and generator cost as a variable expense
Propane consumption averages 1–2 gallons per hour of cooking operation. At $3.50–$4.50/gallon, a 6-hour service day costs $21–$54 in propane alone. Diesel generator trucks add $8–$15/day in fuel. These are variable costs tied directly to service hours, not revenue - plug them into your variable cost per unit field using your average daily service hours divided by average daily orders to get a per-order fuel figure. Ignoring generator and propane costs typically understates per-unit variable cost by $0.30–$0.90, which moves break-even by 8–15 orders per day on a $10 average ticket.
Treat this as a starting point. These figures are an estimate to help you plan. Your real numbers depend on your own costs, rates and terms, so check them against your actual books before you price anything on the result.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much profit does a food truck make per order?
Contribution margin is typically 55–70% of the ticket: a $12 order with $4.50 in food and packaging costs contributes $7.50. After fixed costs, successful trucks net 6–15% of revenue.
Is a food truck cheaper to break even than a restaurant?
Dramatically. A truck's fixed base ($4,000–$8,000/mo) breaks even at 30–50 orders a day; a full-service restaurant often needs 10× the revenue. The tradeoff is capacity: a truck caps out at what one window can serve.
Are event pitch fees fixed or variable costs?
Flat fees (e.g., $150 per event) are fixed for planning purposes: average them into monthly fixed costs. Percentage-of-sales fees (e.g., 10% to the event) are variable: add them to cost per order for those events.
What food cost percentage should a truck target?
28–35% of the ticket for ingredients plus ~5% for packaging and card fees. If your cost per order exceeds 40% of average ticket, re-engineer the menu before chasing volume.
How do I count the commissary kitchen?
Monthly commissary rent is a fixed cost. Prep labor is fixed if you (or salaried staff) do it; per-event hired prep is variable.