Having your own restaurant is a romantic idea but it’s a lot of work and a risky proposition. Food trucks are all the rage these days. Wouldn’t it be nice to rent one for a weekend so you can have the experience and keep your day job? It would be a fun thing to try for a couple of days, even if you don’t make your money back.
The concept is to set up a white-label food truck with some basic restaurant equipment and rent it out for a week or weekend at a time. Would-be restauranteurs create their own theme and menu, which are displayed on screens on the outside of the truck. They buy all the food, do all of the cooking and keep all of the sales. You can occasionally hire celebrity chefs to man the truck to build a social media following. Use that channel to promote the truck for regular renters to give them a fighting chance.
Say it takes $30-40k to get a truck and set it up with a fridge, grill, fryer and some other basic equipment (lightly used). If you can rent it out at $1000 for a week or weekend and get it 50% booked, you’ll make your money back in a year assuming 20% to cover maintenance, insurance and fuel.
Open issues:
- Liability
- Licensing
- Quality control
Will it work?