Food Truck Revenue and Continuation Benchmark

Average Food Truck Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

Mobile food services stand as their own category in the 2022 Economic Census, which provides both the establishment count and the combined receipts behind the average below.

≈$300,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

How this is calculated: about $3 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 10,155 employer establishments works out to $300,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Mobile Food Services (NAICS 722330). Category covers all mobile food services, including food carts. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

The asset here rolls, which changes the whole cost structure: no dining room to staff, but permits in every jurisdiction worked, a commissary to return to in most cities, and revenue that stops when the weather does. Mobile food services covers everything from a single taco cart to multi-truck catering fleets, and only operations with paid employees are counted. A solo owner-operated truck, which is a large share of the street, is not in these figures at all.

Commissary fees, permits by city, event slot lotteries and generator upkeep are the cost lines no national average can show; they vary block by block. Commissary rent and per jurisdiction permits are recurring operating conditions in most cities, and neither appears anywhere in receipts data.

Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed July 2026

Data Source Notice

This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.

Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.

Employer Establishments at Year Five Varies by cohort

Special food services, NAICS 7223, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

Results across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts ranged from 37.8 to 58.8 percent, so treat this as a directional benchmark rather than a precise forecast. This benchmark covers Special food services, NAICS 7223, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for mobile food services on their own: they are 10,155 of the 52,820 employer establishments in that group, about 19 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Truck crews are small by design, and the employer-only share below covers paid crews, not owner hours.

Payroll share of receipts, Mobile Food Services, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 23.0 percent of every revenue dollar in this category goes to annual payroll. As the census defines it, payroll includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses; it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and owner compensation. Treat it as one verified anchor, not a full labor cost breakdown. Many trucks run on owner labor that never enters payroll at all; the employer-only scope means this share describes staffed operations, not solo rigs. A truck usually runs on two or three people in a fixed space, which caps payroll regardless of how busy the service window gets.

This is not total labor cost or profit margin.

Position Within Its Comparison Group Computed from official data

Where this category sits among 8 food service categories in the same 2022 Economic Census release. Ranks and the group median are computed on exact values, before the rounding used above.

Position among 8 food service categories, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category ranks 8th of 8 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 7th of 8 by employer establishment count and 8th of 8 by payroll share. Payroll equals 23.35 percent of receipts here, 4.96 percentage points below the group median of 28.31 percent. A higher or lower position is not a measure of profit or of business quality: the census reports receipts and payroll only.

Compared With Similar Business Types Computed from official data

The 4 categories closest to this one by average revenue inside the same comparison group.

Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than every category shown here: Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars, Drinking Places (Alcoholic Beverages), Caterers and Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets. It contains more employer establishments than one of the four categories shown. Every figure in this table comes from the same 2022 Economic Census release and the same employer establishment population, so the columns are directly comparable.

Beyond the Benchmark BusinessNES analysis

What the census figures leave out about mobile food services, and what to look at instead.

What the numbers do not show

A truck's revenue depends on where it was allowed to park, and the census records neither the locations nor the permits. Two identical trucks in the same city can face different economics because one holds a spot in an office district and the other does not.

Weather acts as a second, invisible cost line. A season of wet weekends reduces service days without reducing any of the fixed costs, and the annual figure smooths that away completely.

Operator lens

• Service days lost to weather or permits are hard to recover. A truck that serves consistently in a mediocre location usually outperforms a better concept that loses days to weather, permits or mechanical failure.
• The employer-only scope matters more here than almost anywhere. A large part of this trade is owner-operated with no paid staff, so the figure above describes the staffed end of the market rather than the typical truck.

Questions to ask before starting or buying

• What comes with the truck? Establish which permits, commissary agreements and regular pitches transfer, and which are personal to the current operator. A vehicle without its locations is just a vehicle.
• How old is the equipment on board? Generators, fryers and refrigeration fail on the road, where repair is expensive and a lost service day cannot be recovered.
• Where does the truck sleep and prep? Many cities require a licensed commissary. Ask what it costs, how far it is, and whether that arrangement continues after a sale.
• What does the calendar actually look like? Ask for the number of service days in the last year, not the revenue. The count of days worked explains the rest.
• Is the menu built for a window? Items that need long cook times or many components throttle throughput at exactly the moment the queue is longest.

Models worth considering

• Sell the calendar, not the meal Private events, office contracts and festivals convert an unpredictable day into a booked one at a known price, and they are the part of this business that scales without a second truck.
• Use the truck as a test kitchen A mobile operation can prove demand for a concept in several neighborhoods for far less than a lease costs, which is worth something even to an operator who ultimately wants a storefront.
• Solve the second window Most trucks earn in one narrow daypart. Finding a second one, whether that is breakfast near a depot or late service near a venue, adds capacity at very low cost.

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