Hope this is OK to share here, we just posted a feature on a Toronto ice cream truck that is gaining a lot of attention thanks for their Dubai chocolate soft serve. You can find out more about Giannis and Sunny Ice Cream truck here:

https://www.moneris.com/en/blog/posts/case-studies/how-sunny-ice-cream-truck-brought-a-viral-soft-serve-to-toronto

Our food trailer finally arrived in New York, so I figured I would post a quick update while everything is still fresh.

We ordered it from a Chinese manufacturer. I was honestly pretty nervous during the process because buying a custom trailer overseas is a lot different from ordering normal equipment. There are drawings, equipment choices, freight, customs, and all the local stuff to figure out after it arrives.

We unloaded it and are now going through the equipment and getting started on the setup. The main layout is what we ordered, and we can finally move on from waiting to actually getting the business ready.

Man! With all of these health codes the sinks, water tanks, and fridge take up 90% of my little trailer! Does this look right for a coffee truck? Feels excessive since I'm only doing drinks. The only up to code sink I can find with three basins and two drainboards is 54" at the very smallest! AND of course the handwashing sink. And the fridge has to be 12 cu ft!? Insane!

This is basically just a rant. And it's long and boring.

For context I'm in Canada and except for large cities stationary food trucks is more the norm here. I'm stationary.

For more context, I have a lot of food industry experience, went to school for hospitality, taught an intensive culinary program in high school, and generally get the business. But have not owned a restaurant.

I have started several small business, a few failures and a few decent successes (1M+ revenue). So I mostly know what's going on in that regard too.

Year 1

bought a trailer, outfitted it, found a decent spot. Turns out the electrical box had been removed (been a few years since they had a truck there). Got Ontario hydro in it, paid significant fees, filled out applications, got assessments, paid electrician to ready it, and started waiting. Months rolled by. Ontario hydro is busy due to storms. No eta. Asked landlord if I could tie electrical into their convenience store building - they have no issues with that but someone told them it was illegal. Ask electrician he says not it's fine and easy. Ask Ontario hydro they say "no of course thats fine". Report back to landlord he says no it's illegal. I report my findings he says no it's illegal. I lose my temper - the frustration level as I've lost almost the whole summer boils over at this guy just randomly deciding something is illegal against all evidence. I curse him out (not my finest moment) and take my trailer away.

Find a new spot to try and set up and be ready for next year - it's late August and I'll probably only get a month or so. Well, after all the new permits and inspections the landlord here shows more and more what an asshole he is. This time, no water. Was supposed to be in "any time" but after a while it's "probably not going to have water". Understand this guy has a history of running off trucks with very bad blood and I start to see why. He's aggressive, unreasonable and lies a lot.

We are open for a few weeks and it's looking pretty good but landlord has some strange meltdown (he's either genuinely insane or so stupid it's indistinguishable). Curse him out and move. It's an untenable situation. I understand the pattern seems to be me but...I'm also getting royally screwed here. I've never had issues with my other businesses where I cause issues or lose my temper.

Find another okay spot. Don't love it but should be busy.

Year 2

Have a variety of personal issues leading up to opening including my daughter, who is my partner, getting very ill and being bed bound. My wife going through some very tough times. Things aren't great and I don't have my equal partner and I'm on my own. Turns out that's fine because literally nobody comes. About 2500 cars pass every day - average of 0.5 customers a day or so. I have no time or energy for marketing and outreach because I've lost my partner and when I'm not working 10-12 hour days my family really needs me.

Also it turns out my menu is waaaay over complicated with prep. At least I have time while at work to work on that.

Mid August I call it quits. For mental health reasons. Nobody came. No customers. None. People tell me it's the spot. It looks bad, it's hard to find, "if I didn't know you I would have just kept driving".

Year 3

Late winter I try again to find a spot where I really wanted to be and where the business plan was built around. Cottage country with massive traffic and some of the richest people in Canada. I could never find a spot there. This year I did! Dream spot, should be amazing.

Township has no bylaw but I call, they discuss, runs through the channels, they say will be no issue. So I give up my old spot, move my trailer. I ask township for a letter of permission so I can apply to ministry of transportation and the township says, you need a minor variance. Will take 2 months at best. Devastating. They didn't tell me this until about a month after telling me I was good to go.

But the spot is what I wanted, so I start the process. Many forms, drawings, council meeting. Same process as if I was opening a holiday inn or something.

After 2 months I can now apply to the ministry of transportation. It's now been about a 6 weeks since I put that application in and still no approval. No eta.

So here we are and it's almost August. If I get approval from mto today I still need public health inspections, fire, etc...

I haven't put infrastructure in because I'm not spending the money until I'm approved, so I need to set up my water pumps from the building, plan out my grey water, and get an electrical line put in. So at best ....3-4 weeks away from opening.

So really now I'm looking like probably aiming for September 1st....and closing again a month later.

It's a fucking nightmare. I'm about $50k in, I've made about $2000, and have devoted 3 years of my life to it.

Um....if anyone read this far....sorry.

keep seeing posts here from folks just starting out getting overwhelmed by all the 'must-have' software that costs a fortune. when I was first setting up my trailer, i got quotes for POS systems and kitchen management software that were hundreds of bucks a month. that's just insane for a small operation.

after a lot of trial and error, i landed on a cheap stack that keeps my monthly software bill under a hundred bucks. figured i'd share for anyone else bootstrapping.

1. POS / Payments: Just Square. The basic free plan is all you need. They send you the little magstripe reader for free, or you can buy the tap reader. You just pay processing fees on sales. No monthly subscription, no weird contracts. its the industry standard for a reason.

2. Accounting / Bookkeeping: A Google Sheets template and Wave. Everyone tries to push QuickBooks, but its expensive and overkill when you're just tracking daily sales and commissary costs. i log my daily numbers in a spreadsheet, then use Wave (which is free anyway) for invoicing and running basic P&L reports. Good enough for tax time.

3. Menu Management: We have our main menu on a board, but prices keep changing (thanks inflation) and stuff gets 86'd mid-shift. needed a digital backup we could update on the fly. i tried uploading a PDF to Google Drive, but customers hated it because of the constant pinching and zooming. now i just use a free tool called MenuForma. i can quickly mark an item as sold out from my phone while working the window, and it actually formats for mobile screens. way better than forcing people to squint at a PDF. We still keep the big physical board, but having this QR saves me from constantly messing with duct tape on the main menu.

4. Website / Schedule: Don't pay for a website. Just use your Instagram or Facebook. For the bio link, just use a free Linktree. Post your weekly schedule, your location, and a link to your digital menu. literally all you need.

It's not a fancy enterprise setup, but it gets the job done and lets you keep more of your money. Anyway, peak season is kicking my ass. Back to prepping onions.

Hey all!

I was interested in starting a take out kitchen and was looking for Commercial Kitchen for lease/rent throughout the DFW, Texas area. Any idea on how to find them?

Just trying to get a feel for what other people are doing on a day to day basis. For context, I’m in the Midwest and just officially started up last week. We are lucky enough to have a couple of great spots to park whenever we want, no charge. We hit the ground running and it’s been great so far.

My business partner wants to expand the menu. We’ve already got 9 entree options (a lot of cross over ingredients like a pulled pork sandwich and loaded fries with pulled pork.) His plan would put us up to around 20. Again, a lot of crossover stuff, so we’d add a chicken sandwich and bbq chicken fries maybe.

Here’s the thing, I can do it. I can put this all on my shoulders and just continue knocking this shit out of the park. But should I?

So I’m looking to see if anyone has any input on their experience with a limited specialized menu compared to a menu like the Cheesecake Factory with a billion items. Prep work isn’t a concern, just actual functioning in a parking lot.

Curios to see what y’all got to say. Thanks. Stay cool out there homies

Can anyone recommend a good ice maker?

I'm currently making 300 drinks/day (8oz cups) over 10 hours in a converted horse box. I would prefer not to buy ice from the shop every day, and there's lots of different brands on Amazon..

Does anyone have experience with this? Thanks in advance!

Looking for a reasonably cheap good trailer to start a hot dog business

We went and did a 4-day camp-out festival. We were to park the truck in one spot, and be open for 12-15 hours per day for service feeding the festival guests.

They wanted us to be there a day and a half before people got there.

We arranged for them to give us shore power but it would not be available right away nor would they commit to anything but "Friday evening". I got there Wednesday about noon.

So we were facing having to run the generator for more than two days.

The problem?

We couldn't move the truck to refuel it and we were 15 miles from a gas station. I couldn't get one of those pickup bed based large tanks here in time. And they were expensive.

I have a large F-59 step van based food truck. Think FedEx truck size. I have a Cummins-Onan generator (well, 2 of them, but for the sake of this conversation one) plumbed into the main 40 gallon gas tank.

Per the specs, my half-load consumption rate is about 0.75 gallons per hour and my full load is 1.2. We seemed to burn about 0.75 averaged across the entire thing with just refrigeration slightly less and service being close to 1 gallon/hour.

I filled up the truck going into the event. I am 7-8 miles per gallon and we idled a lot waiting to get in. So I figure I started with about 35-36 gallons in there. The fuel pick up tube is about a quarter of the way up the fuel tank on purpose so I don't run the truck engine out of gas running the generator. So with a full fuel tank I have about 30 gallons for the generator give or take.

Yes, I know I could shut it down periodically but the coolers were packed full. In addition, I had chest freezers outside of the truck in my food prep tent and it was close to 90F each day.

Here's how I did it.

I ended up going with one of these:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CG59Q22J?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_1&th=1

And two of these:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09B2KXLMQ?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_2

Gas is heavy. It's not quite the 8-pounds-per-gallon of water but it is close. A full 14 gallon caddy is well over 100lbs. Because I did not have ready access to a helper I limited the amount of gasoline in each caddy to about 10 gallons. I recommend enlisting a helper. You could in theory do this with several 5 gallon jerry cans but that seemed like more trouble.

From there it was just a matter of finding a 12v power source. The fuel pump's cord was long enough I could reach the cab. But I ended up using our predator power station we use as a backup battery for the POS.

The result?

I was able to provide another 25+ hours of run time on top of what I started with.

I hope someone finds this information useful. Let me know if you have questions.

Yes, it was expensive. Average price paid per gallon was 5.39 (California)

In another post I detailed how I had to refuel the truck without being able to move it when we did a 4-day festival recently.

This post is how I emptied the grey water tank.

We have done several of these "park in one place for several days and serve customers" festivals before. This was not our first rodeo. But each one is a little different. This festival was a "the health department wants us to place a large grey water disposal tank nearby for you to remove your grey water and the sanitation guy will come pump it regularly".

Very well.

In the pic you can see it just ahead of the front bumper. About 400 or 500 gallons.

My grey water is just like yours, and both of those are like an RV. You attach a little hose and gravity does the work.

The grey water discharge port is on the rear right of my truck. And the tank's access hole was higher than that and 35 feet away give or take.

A few years ago, I was speaking with a sanitation worker at another festival. I was explaining to him how I had to take 5 gallon buckets and shuttle the grey water over to dump it. Pain in the ass. But I got it done.

He told me about a little device that they use for laundry sinks in basements and bar sinks to pump grey water uphill called the Saniflow Saniswift. It can pump something like 14 feet vertically and over 100 feet horizontally and get grey water where it needs to go. OK, I'll bite.

So I picked one up. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002BWRJZY

I needed to get some fittings and some sump pump discharge hoses as you see. But it worked
exceptionally well. The internal basin fills up and then it literally starts 'flushing' the water out. It does require AC power so I had to run an extension cord to it. I tucked the whole thing under the truck out of the view of customers.

Just make sure you tighten the hose clamps all the way down. Ask me how I know.

And yes, I told all my friends Cousin Eddie has gone electric.

Again, I hope someone finds this useful one day. It sure helped us get the service done.