Food Truck Profit Calculator

A food truck's costs split cleanly into two kinds: food cost, which rises and falls with sales, and everything else — the pitch fee, fuel, staff wages, the rest — which is fixed for the trading day whether you sell out or sell nothing. This calculator keeps the two apart, the same way a fixed-site restaurant's break-even math does.

The formula, in the open

• Food cost = daily sales × food-cost %.
• Fixed daily costs = pitch/site fee + fuel and vehicle running cost + staff wages + any other fixed cost for the day.
• Daily profit = daily sales − food cost − fixed daily costs.
• Monthly profit = daily profit × trading days per month.
• Break-even daily sales = fixed daily costs ÷ (100% − food-cost %) — the sales level at which what's left after food cost exactly covers the fixed costs, rounded UP. At a 100%-or-higher food-cost input, no volume breaks even, and the calculator says so rather than guessing.

A worked example

₹18,000 of daily sales at 35% food cost: food cost is ₹6,300. A ₹1,500 pitch fee, ₹800 fuel, ₹3,000 staff wages and ₹700 of other fixed costs add up to ₹6,000 in fixed daily costs. Daily profit is 18,000 − 6,300 − 6,000 = ₹5,700, and trading 24 days a month that's ₹1,36,800 a month. Break-even daily sales are 6,000 ÷ 0.65 ≈ ₹9,231.

What moves the number

Food-cost % is the lever that changes the break-even point fastest, because it changes how much of EVERY future rupee of sales is left to cover fixed costs, not just today's. Trading more days a month multiplies a thin daily profit into a real monthly one — and multiplies a daily loss just as fast, which is why the break-even sales figure matters more than the average for a truck with an inconsistent pitch schedule.

Try it

Enter your own numbers below. The defaults are the worked example — replace them with yours.