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Short answer: a food truck cook earns $16-$24 per hour in 2026, plus tips. A line cook helping during service runs $14-$19 per hour, plus tips. A part-time order taker or window helper runs $13-$17 per hour, plus tips. Tip pools typically add another $4-$10 per hour during busy services. Most single-truck operations pay 22-28 […]

Short answer: a food truck health inspection covers four areas: equipment certification (NSF and UL), food safety (temperatures, hand washing, prep procedures), water and waste handling, and documentation. Pass rate on the first inspection is about 75 percent for first-time operators, 95 percent for operators with build documentation packets in order. Here is exactly what

Short answer: there are five reliable ways to find a commissary kitchen near you. Start with The Food Corridor (an online directory that lists most U.S. shared kitchens), then check your county health department’s list of permitted commercial kitchens, then ask local food truck operators in city Facebook groups, then cold-call restaurants with slow morning

Short answer: about 60 percent of food trucks fail within 5 years, but the failures cluster around the same five mistakes. Most are avoidable. Underspending on the build, picking the wrong location, having no marketing engine, running too many menu items, and skipping a financial cushion together account for 80 percent of the failures we

Short answer: food truck marketing has three legs that have to work together: location-based discovery (so people walking by find you), social media (so existing customers know where you’ll be next), and recurring location partnerships (so you have built-in customer base from venues that promote you). Spend $200-$500 a month on tools and content, and

Short answer: a typical 16ft food truck has about 22 pieces of equipment, ranging from a 24″ griddle to a Class K extinguisher. The specific list depends on your menu. Here is the complete equipment list we install on a standard cook-line build, what each piece does, and what it costs. The standard 16ft cook-line

Short answer: a food truck business plan should be 12-18 pages, written in plain English, and structured around six sections: executive summary, concept, market analysis, operations, financial projections, and funding request. The version you write for SBA lending is more detailed than the one you write for personal planning, but both share the same bones.

Short answer: a great food truck menu has 6-12 items, takes under 90 seconds per order to plate, uses 4-6 base ingredients across most items, and includes 2-3 high-margin add-ons. Designing the menu BEFORE the kitchen build is what separates the trucks doing $400/hour from the trucks doing $1,200/hour. The throughput math A food truck

Short answer: pick a builder based on five things in this order: their build portfolio, their willingness to share customer references, the kitchen layout they recommend (do they understand your menu?), the warranty and post-delivery support, and price. Price is last on the list because the cheapest builder is almost always the most expensive choice

Short answer: most food truck operators run on Square or Toast in 2026. Square is the right choice for trucks doing under $400,000 a year and prioritizing simplicity. Toast is the better choice for higher-volume trucks with multiple staff and integrated inventory needs. Clover is a budget alternative but the integrations are weaker. Here is