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Concession trailers have come a long way from selling prepackaged ice cream sandwiches, hot dogs, and lukewarm cans of soda. Today, concession trailers have become an important part of a city or town’s overall “food scene”, providing consumers with quick, fun, and healthy dining alternatives to fast food, brown bag or takeout breakfasts, lunches, or dinners. For budding chefs and restaurateurs, food concession trailers offer a cost effective way to open a restaurant.
Concession trailers have significantly less overhead. While opening a traditional restaurant requires years of planning, significant seed money, a concession trailer requires less start up investment. Finding and leasing (or buying) restaurant space, outfitting a kitchen with the appropriate appliances, purchasing or leasing linens, glass ware, place settings, and silver ware can add up fast. Most experts agree that opening a restaurant can run anywhere between $50.00 and $225.00 a square foot, making it close to $300,000 for a standard 1500 square foot restaurant. This cost doesn’t include hiring a staff, developing a marketing plan, or buying food.
Before beginning a search for a new or used trailer, a potential owner should determine what kind of food he or she will offer. The kitchen needs of a barbeque trailer will differ greatly from those of a kabob stand, taco truck, or cupcake trailer. Will the food be prepared and cooked on site, or will the food be mainly cooked at an offsite kitchen and just sold from the trailer? This will not only impact the kind and cost of a food trailer, but also the licensing and insurance fees.
The price for a new, customer designed food concession trailer begins at a relatively inexpensive price and moves into the more expensive range for a larger, more sophisticated trailer and full service kitchen or barbeque pit. Many concession trailer owners begin by purchasing a used trailer. While not designed specifically for their needs, pre-owned trailers provide a good alternative for beginning mobile restaurateurs.
Mobile concession trailers also have lower overhead costs. More than 80% of this business has less than 4 employees. The nature of the business does not require servers, bartenders, bus boys, or dishwashers. Once the trailer is purchased or leased, mobile concession stand operators can expect to spend about 25% of their operating budget on food, 25% on labor, and 5% on power. Other costs include licensing and insurance fees, marketing budgets and miscellaneous costs.
Most concession trailer owners spend about 10 hours a day working directly with food. This includes early morning shopping for food and supplies, preparing any food that cannot be cooked on site, stocking the trailer with supplies (like plates, napkins, and condiments), and driving to the destination. Concession trailer operators also manage their own marketing campaigns. By leveraging social media, like Facebook, Twitter, and Four Square, concession trailers can get the word out about their menu, their specials, and their location without buying print advertising or direct mail pieces. In fact, using social media significantly ups the “cool” factor for many concession trailer businesses.
For many budding restaurateurs, a mobile concession trailer offers a cost effective- and exciting solution to fulfilling their culinary dreams.
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