Author Topic: My experience making money with a food cart! (Read 7947 times)

gegepanalo · « **on:** May 28, 2012, 11:27 AM »

From my previous post where I discussed about starting a business, now I am actually almost launched!

June 1 is our first day. We have 3 employees now, and we need 1 more. I won't disclose the location but the concept is Silog and French Fries.

A friend and I invested 50k to start it up.

Any tips? Particularly managing employees? pay? etc..

Feel free to ask any questions as well! I am posting this because i want to share with the community the pains and joys, the hardships and the challenges that goes with starting your own business. I want to help people gain the courage as well to do it, and walk them through how I did mine. Enjoy! (and dont make my mistakes)

businessmind · « **Reply #1 on:** May 28, 2012, 11:44 AM »

Quote from: gegepanalo on May 28, 2012, 11:27 AM

From my previous post where I discussed about starting a business, now I am actually almost launched!

June 1 is our first day. We have 3 employees now, and we need 1 more. I won't disclose the location but the concept is Silog and French Fries.

A friend and I invested 50k to start it up.

Any tips? Particularly managing employees? pay? etc..

Hi gegepanalo,

ilan ba fudcart mo and why 3 employees?..kung isa lang baka pwede mo yan bawasan para lesser sa overhead expenses mo..imagine kung 250/day sweldo nyan 7,500 rin natipid mo sa isang buwan.

gegepanalo · « **Reply #2 on:** May 28, 2012, 01:13 PM »

Hi businessmind,

sorry forgot to mention 24/7 ang food cart na to, nasa 24/7 na location sya. So ginawa kong shift is 8 hours per employee, tapos sa 12pm - 10pm ay may isang nag 10 hours, siya yung parang ginawa kong supervisor. I did two employees sa shift na yun kasi prime time!

I'll be reporting some figures (earnings) etc.. around june 1-3.

Variation · « **Reply #3 on:** May 28, 2012, 02:39 PM »

TS what is the breakup of 50k investment for food cart?ano yung mga major equipment na kasama jan??TIA

gegepanalo · « **Reply #4 on:** May 28, 2012, 03:57 PM »

Our Food cart is 42k (with 2k worth of free merchandise)
Registering the business name is 2k
Brgy Permit is 700
Finally we need to buy a freezer with ref, and I'm estimating another 6k, but could be slightly more.

This is the initial investment what is not included here is the 5k rental deposit (because it counts towards our initial rental, and is paid at the end of the month) and the 8k worth of additional merchandise that we chose to order cause we are anticipating strong 1st week sales.

So if you include those than we had to shell out close to 60k, but we don't count that with our startup costs na, more on variable/fixed cost monthly.

autodoor · « **Reply #5 on:** May 28, 2012, 08:04 PM »

I'm going to monitor this trade... keep it up, gegepanalo. My friend also has a food franchise business in one of the malls in Marikina and just a break even as of now.

Variation · « **Reply #6 on:** May 29, 2012, 02:30 PM »

TS did you do the math na ba kung magpapagawa nlang kayo ng cart at gagayahin nlang yung nature nung business na gusto nyo ifranchise?or mahirap tlga gayahin yung line of business na yun...yung 50k pala na yun wala pa kze equipment tama ba ako??

gegepanalo · « **Reply #7 on:** May 31, 2012, 04:19 PM »

@variation

I spent 42k for the cart and the equipment, including the griddle and all the other minor cooking utensils as well as 2k worth of merchandise to try for the first day. I also spent 8k for a freezer/ref that is second hand and 5 Cu.

I checked only with one cart manufacturer who quoted me 70k for the design and construction including logos and menu boards, i just said no thanks.

@autodoor

Thanks we're very excited with our opening tomorrow! I am busy right now making sure all the sheets are ready tomorrow, by sheets I mean that spreadsheets that the staff are going to use while selling: Daily Sales tracker, Daily Inventory tracker and Cash Tracker.

I will upload the pictures of the cart tomorrow!

So excited!

SAGAD · « **Reply #8 on:** May 31, 2012, 05:42 PM »

good luck tomorrow...

tried doing my own cart too before...

success or failure, it would be an experience you won't regret doing and you would really know something about yourself (resiliency)...

mine was traumatic...learned a lot though...so all in all still a good experience...

looking forward to ur progress and updates...

gegepanalo · « **Reply #9 on:** May 31, 2012, 05:49 PM »

@sagad

Hi thanks for the well wishes!

Please tell me what sort of traumatic experiences you encountered, hopefully I can try to avoid? Any tips or tricks from someone who is experience is certainly worth a lot!

humberjet · « **Reply #10 on:** May 31, 2012, 05:59 PM »

I'll follow sir this thread.. so may idea ako kung anong progress ng business nyo..

my friend and I also planning to put business like food cart.. so hopefully makapag post kayo ng UP and Down ng business nyo...

good luck po tommorow sana marami kayong mabusog na customer.

SAGAD · « **Reply #11 on:** May 31, 2012, 06:01 PM »

if there's one tip i could give u....

be conscious of ur costs, ALWAYS...

don't be carried away by your end-of-day sales...

always look at ur costs, always find ways to keep it down...

there's the fixed cost and there's the variable cost...identify and learn w/c costs u can minimize...

gegepanalo · « **Reply #12 on:** Jun 01, 2012, 05:28 PM »

Incredible! we ran into our first big problem today and we couldnt launch until tomorrow.

There was a previous tenant occupying our space and was supposed be gone by June 1 so we can ingress by today. Our cart arrives by 12pm and the previous stall was still there, further more they refuse to move (or stop selling) because their delivery truck that picks up their cart arrives at 11pm in the evening. Undoubtedly this is a technique of theirs to operate rent free for the day. Our leasing agent didn't even inform us that this was the case and apologized profusely and obviously told us that our rental contract will start tomorrow instead. She offered to store our food cart and equipment at her office and then have her own people install it tomorrow morning. It was ridiculous drama this afternoon.

So our employees went home, and tomorrow we start bright and early.

Will update more, but this seems to be the first of many challenges.

Post Merge: Jun 01, 2012, 05:28 PM

Quote from: SAGAD on May 31, 2012, 06:01 PM

if there's one tip i could give u....

be conscious of ur costs, ALWAYS...

don't be carried away by your end-of-day sales...

always look at ur costs, always find ways to keep it down...

there's the fixed cost and there's the variable cost...identify and learn w/c costs u can minimize...

Thank you very much for the advice

GlobalPinoyRemit · « **Reply #13 on:** Jun 02, 2012, 05:35 AM »

Quote from: gegepanalo on Jun 01, 2012, 05:28 PM

Incredible! we ran into our first big problem today and we couldnt launch until tomorrow.

There was a previous tenant occupying our space and was supposed be gone by June 1 so we can ingress by today. Our cart arrives by 12pm and the previous stall was still there, further more they refuse to move (or stop selling) because their delivery truck that picks up their cart arrives at 11pm in the evening. Undoubtedly this is a technique of theirs to operate rent free for the day. Our leasing agent didn't even inform us that this was the case and apologized profusely and obviously told us that our rental contract will start tomorrow instead. She offered to store our food cart and equipment at her office and then have her own people install it tomorrow morning. It was ridiculous drama this afternoon.

So our employees went home, and tomorrow we start bright and early.

Will update more, but this seems to be the first of many challenges.
Post Merge: Jun 01, 2012, 05:28 PM
Thank you very much for the advice

WOW! GOOD LUCK SA FOOD CART BUSINESS! BEEN THERE DONE THAT. SAME WITH SAGAD, MINE IS TRAUMATIC... LOL...

gegepanalo · « **Reply #14 on:** Jun 02, 2012, 10:50 AM »

Haha thanks!

So far today I'm a little scared, but excited.

Basically we replaced the tenant before us. Today we ran into a few minor problems such as we needed longer wires between our submeter and our stall etc.

We managed to get really good staff so we're quite happy.

Today we decided to just stick purely on training them on how to cook longsilog, tapsilog, and all the meals, as well as the french fries.

To break even we need to sell at least 4 rice meals, or 3 rice meals and 2 drinks.

I'll have sales data for everyone to dissect by tomorrow evening hopefully!