Food Truck Break-Even Calculator
Find out exactly how many orders you need to cover your costs each month, each day, and how much cushion you have before a slow stretch turns into a loss.
Your numbers
Use realistic monthly figures for the best result.
What a typical customer spends per visit.
Mostly ingredients plus card fees for one order.
Truck payment, insurance, permits, commissary, base wages.
Add this to see your margin of safety.
How break-even works for a food truck
Your break-even point is the sales level where money in equals money out. The math comes down to one idea: every order you sell leaves a little money behind after you pay for its ingredients. That leftover is your contribution margin, and it slowly chips away at your fixed monthly costs until they are fully covered. Everything after that is profit.
The formula: Break-even orders = Monthly fixed costs ÷ (Average order price − Variable cost per order). For example, $6,000 in fixed costs with an $8 margin per order means you need 750 orders a month, or about 34 a day across 22 operating days.
Want to go further? Run your full earnings with the profit calculator, set prices that protect your margin with the menu costing calculator, and read the forecasting and profitability guide.
Break-even questions, answered
What is a break-even point for a food truck?
It is the amount of sales you need just to cover all your costs, with nothing left over and nothing lost. Earn more than that and you are profitable. Earn less and you are losing money.
How do I calculate my break-even point?
Subtract the cost of ingredients for one order from your average order price to get your contribution margin. Then divide your total monthly fixed costs by that margin. The result is how many orders you need each month to break even.
What are fixed vs variable costs for a food truck?
Fixed costs stay roughly the same no matter how much you sell: truck payment, insurance, permits, commissary rent, and base wages. Variable costs rise and fall with sales, mainly food ingredients and payment processing fees.
What is a margin of safety?
It is how far your current sales sit above the break-even point, shown as a percentage. A higher margin of safety means more cushion before a slow month pushes you into a loss.