How many orders a day does a food truck need? (And can your window keep up?)

The steps

1. Add up your monthly bills. These are fixed costs: what you pay each month even on days you don't sell. The SBA lists rent, salaries, insurance and interest as examples [1]. For a truck, that means the commissary (a licensed kitchen you rent to prep food and, often, park the truck), fuel and propane, insurance, the truck payment, scheduled crew pay and your own pay. For a bill you pay once a year, use its monthly share.
2. Work out your average order. This is what one customer pays, on average, before sales tax and tips. Price a typical order from your menu.
3. Subtract what each order costs you. Food and packaging go out with every order, and so does the card fee. What's left pays the bills.
4. Divide. Monthly bills ÷ what each order leaves you = orders a month. Divide by your service days to get orders a day, and by the hours you serve to get orders an hour. Round up each time, since you can't sell part of an order.

The SBA writes the same idea as fixed costs ÷ (price − variable costs) [1].

A worked example

Step 1: monthly bills

For what each of these bills really costs, and what to ask before you sign, see food truck monthly costs.

Step 2: average order. A typical order is a $14 plate of dumplings with a drink. We found no reliable published average for food trucks, so price your own menu.

Step 3: what each order leaves

DoorDash puts food truck ingredients at 28%–35% of sales [4], and limited-service restaurants reported a median of 32.4% for food and non-alcohol drinks in 2024 [10]. We used 33% to leave a little room for packaging, since nearly every order goes out to go. The card fee is Square's in-person rate on its free plan [11]. Card fees are charged on the whole payment, including sales tax and tips, so the real fee per order is a little higher than shown. We assumed every customer pays by card.

Step 4: divide

• Orders a month: $10,460 ÷ $8.87 = 1,179.3, so 1,180.
• Orders each day you serve: 1,180 ÷ 20 = 59.
• That's about $830 in sales each day you serve (1,180 × $14 = $16,520 a month; $16,520 ÷ 20 = $826).
• Orders an hour: 59 ÷ 3 hours = 19.7, so 20 an hour, about one order every three minutes.

Planning an opening? Our Simple Food Truck Opening Planner is a spreadsheet for Excel or Google Sheets. See the planner

Can your window keep up?

There's no published standard for how many orders a food truck window can serve in an hour. It depends on your menu, your setup and how many people are working. So time your own:

1. Run a practice service with your real menu, crew and truck.
2. Count the orders you hand out in 30 minutes, and double it to get orders an hour.
3. Compare that with the orders an hour your break-even needs.

If Sidecar Dumplings times 15 orders an hour, its three-hour lunch tops out at 45 orders, 14 short of the 59 it needs. The fix is a shorter menu, more hours, another person on the window, or a higher average order, not hoping the line moves faster.

For context, the Minnesota Food Truck Association tells event organizers that when guests pay the truck directly, most trucks need to do 45 to 60 sales an hour or more [12]. That's what a truck needs at a busy event, not what most windows can do on an ordinary day. One Southern California owner told Food Network that customers typically "won't wait more than five minutes" for their order [9]. Evan Kidera, who runs the Señor Sisig trucks, told Freakonomics Radio he aims for at least 30 orders an hour [15].

What owners say they actually get

These are individual accounts from trucks doing well enough to be interviewed, so they aren't typical. Kidera told Freakonomics Radio [15] that 100 to 200 orders is "a pretty good service", and the day the show visited, his truck did 177 in a three-hour lunch. Fork in the Road in St. Paul often serves 100 at lunchtime and more than 200 in three hours at evening concerts, Twin Cities Business reported [16]. Just A Pizza My Mind usually serves 60 to 100 pizzas a day, according to South Sound Business [17].

Starts can be slow. Prathan Powell told the Ledger-Enquirer [18] that his Emeralds Touch BBQ truck got around four customers a day at first. Plan on your slow days, not these good ones.

Event and market fees

Events and markets often charge a share of your sales or a flat fee. Food truck associations in Minnesota and Cincinnati say trucks expect percentage fees of about 5% to 10% of sales, and that a truck needs about 10 times a flat fee in sales to make it worthwhile [12] [13]. Washington's association asks large events to keep flat fees at or under $300 a day [14].

• A 10% fee takes $1.40 from each $14 order, so each order leaves $7.47 instead of $8.87. That's about 19% more orders to cover the same bills.
• A $300 flat fee takes 34 orders' worth of what's left ($300 ÷ $8.87 = 33.8) before the day starts paying any bills.

What changes the answer

Each line changes one thing from the example and keeps the rest.

The per-day customer figures you'll see online vary widely, and we found no survey behind them.

What this leaves out

• Slow seasons. Run the numbers for your slowest month, not your average one.
• Delivery-app commissions. If you sell through apps, subtract their fee from each order too.
• Paying back what you spent to start. Only the monthly truck payment is in the bills. Breaking even means you're not losing money; it doesn't mean you've earned your investment back. Still choosing what to buy? Compare food truck vs food trailer vs food cart.
• Taxes on your own income. The owner's pay here is before personal taxes.

How we did the math

Money is rounded to the cent at each step, and order counts are rounded up to the next whole order.

• Bills: $600 + $1,200 + $351 + $1,062 + $3,097 + $3,600 + $100 + $300 + $150 = $10,460.
• Loan: $50,000 at 10% a year (0.8333% a month) over 60 months comes to $1,062.35 a month.
• Cook: 8 hours × 20 days = 160 hours. 160 × $17.98 = $2,876.80. Employer taxes: $2,876.80 × 0.0765 = $220.08. Total $3,096.88, rounded to $3,097.
• The example: $14.00 − $4.62 − $0.51 = $8.87. $10,460 ÷ $8.87 = 1,179.3, so 1,180 a month. 1,180 ÷ 20 = 59 a day. 59 ÷ 3 = 19.7, so 20 an hour.
• $12 order: food $12.00 × 0.33 = $3.96. Card fee $12.00 × 0.026 = $0.31, plus $0.15 = $0.46. Left: $7.58. $10,460 ÷ $7.58 = 1,379.9, so 1,380 a month. 1,380 ÷ 20 = 69 a day. 69 ÷ 3 = 23 an hour.
• 16 days: 1,180 ÷ 16 = 73.75, so 74 a day. 74 ÷ 3 = 24.7, so 25 an hour.
• 10% fee: $14.00 × 0.10 = $1.40. Left: $14.00 − $4.62 − $0.51 − $1.40 = $7.47. $10,460 ÷ $7.47 = 1,400.3, so 1,401 a month. 1,401 ÷ 20 = 70.05, so 71 a day. 71 ÷ 3 = 23.7, so 24 an hour. $8.87 ÷ $7.47 = 1.19, about 19% more orders.
• You pay yourself nothing: $10,460 − $3,600 = $6,860. $6,860 ÷ $8.87 = 773.4, so 774 a month. 774 ÷ 20 = 38.7, so 39 a day. 39 ÷ 3 = 13 an hour.
• Window check: 15 an hour × 3 hours = 45 orders. 59 − 45 = 14 short.

Figures checked: Oct 2026.