Free tool
How Many Tickets Your Window Can Actually Clear
Enter your order time, your build time, and how many tickets the kitchen can work at once to see the ceiling on your lunch rush and what the line loses.
Free tool, no sign up
Should You Take That Vending Fee
Put in the fee, your service hours, and your own plate economics to see what a booking actually clears and how many tickets it takes to get to zero.
Every food truck owner has taken a spot that felt busy and cleared almost nothing. It usually happens because the fee was quoted as a flat number, the day felt full, and nobody stacked the propane, the ice, the second crew member, and the fuel run against the gross. This calculator does that stacking in front of you before you reply to the organizer.
The number that decides most bookings is the break-even ticket count at the bottom. If it is comfortably below what you have served at similar events, take it. If it is close to your best day ever, the organizer is asking you to carry their risk. Knowing that figure also gives you something concrete to negotiate with, because a lower fee or a longer window changes it immediately.
Your result
Gross sales for the day
$2,688
Tickets per hour across your open window at your average ticket.
Cost of goods sold
$806
What the food on those plates cost you to buy.
Net after fee, food, crew, and fuel
$1,272
What is left before truck payment, insurance, and commissary rent.
Tickets needed to break even
63
Tickets that cover the fee and the shift costs out of gross margin.
Fixed monthly costs like insurance, the truck note, and commissary rent sit outside this day, so treat the net as contribution rather than profit.
Why flat vendor fees punish slow formats
A flat fee is fixed cost with no relationship to how the day goes. That is fine at an event where you know the crowd, and brutal at a first year festival where the organizer is optimistic. Percentage deals shift some of that risk back to the organizer, which is why experienced operators often prefer them at unknown events even when the headline number looks worse.
The other factor is your service speed. Two trucks with identical menus and identical fees can walk away with completely different numbers because one clears forty tickets an hour and the other clears twenty two. If your break-even count sits above what your window can physically produce in the hours offered, the booking is not marginal, it is impossible, and no amount of foot traffic fixes it.
Using this to negotiate rather than to decline
When the number comes out ugly, you have three levers before you say no. Ask for longer service hours, since the fee is fixed and each additional hour is close to pure contribution. Ask about exclusivity in your category, because being the only taco truck changes tickets per hour more than any menu tweak. Or ask for a lower fee in exchange for committing to a series of dates.
It also helps to run the calculator twice, once with a realistic ticket count and once with a pessimistic one. Weather, a competing event across town, or a gate that opens late can easily cut a day by a third. If the pessimistic run still clears your crew cost, the booking is safe. If it does not, you now know exactly what you are gambling.
Questions about this calculator
Should I include my own labor in crew and fuel?
If you want an honest number, yes. Pay yourself what you would have to pay someone to run that window, then look at what is left. Owners who leave their own hours out of the math often keep taking events that only work because they are unpaid.
What food cost percent should I use if I do not track it?
Most trucks land somewhere in the high twenties to mid thirties depending on protein and portion. Rather than guess, cost out your three best selling items against a recent invoice and weight them by how often each sells. That takes an hour and it improves every decision after.
Does this work for a regular weekly lot instead of an event?
Yes. Put the weekly or daily share of the lot rent in the vendor fee field and use your normal service hours. The break-even ticket count then tells you whether that lot is worth holding through a slow month.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The Vending Spot Vetting Checklist
Twenty checks across four stages for deciding whether a curb or lot is worth your truck before you commit a season to it.
You Have the Number, Now Fill the Window
The count you just ran assumes people actually turn up at the curb you are working today. A short demo shows the daily broadcast reaching everyone who has eaten from your window in about the time the flat top takes to come up to heat. Bring the figures from this page and we will talk through the spots they apply to.