Author Topic: My experience making money with a food cart! (Read 7986 times)

esclabo · « **Reply #45 on:** Jun 22, 2012, 07:54 AM »

any news? wish you all the best sa business nyo.. balitaa nyo po kami. hehe..

businessmind · « **Reply #46 on:** Jun 22, 2012, 10:24 AM »

balita naman dyan gege..marami matutunan sa negosyo mo na to, kumbaga sa tv parang reality show to

1997 · « **Reply #47 on:** Jun 25, 2012, 11:13 AM »

Suggestion lang po..
1. I saw your staff cooking garlic rice and looks unsanitary... try puting your stove higher...
2. Try eliminating some products that are not selling... IMHO masyado na marami at nakakalito kasi.. look at other food carts minsan 3 products lang... pero its still upto you...
3. Unifrom sa mga staff and they should look clean everytime... if ever give them a few minutes to freshen up after major food preparation... Hair nets and gloves when handling food.
4. Avoid using plastic... you may also consider other organic packaging... atleast for me I'll buy from you instead of those stall using plastics...

This are my opinion only po... Goodluck and more updates to come... hehehe

magpapakayamanako · « **Reply #48 on:** Jul 31, 2012, 01:36 AM »

nalugi na po ata si TS? o nagkasalubong na kilay. wag naman po sana...

keep it up!

joss · « **Reply #49 on:** Jul 31, 2012, 03:26 PM »

pa order nga po ng silog

moto461 · « **Reply #50 on:** Aug 15, 2012, 07:13 PM »

musta na kaya ang pinoy silog ni gege..?

pmtmember · « **Reply #51 on:** Aug 15, 2012, 09:25 PM »

Quote from: 1997 on Jun 25, 2012, 11:13 AM

Suggestion lang po..
1. I saw your staff cooking garlic rice and looks unsanitary... try puting your stove higher...
2. Try eliminating some products that are not selling... IMHO masyado na marami at nakakalito kasi.. look at other food carts minsan 3 products lang... pero its still upto you...
3. Unifrom sa mga staff and they should look clean everytime... if ever give them a few minutes to freshen up after major food preparation... Hair nets and gloves when handling food.
4. Avoid using plastic... you may also consider other organic packaging... atleast for me I'll buy from you instead of those stall using plastics...

This are my opinion only po... Goodluck and more updates to come... hehehe

nice share

blisstacy · « **Reply #52 on:** Oct 07, 2012, 01:07 AM »

very informative thread. =D

abundantseeker · « **Reply #53 on:** Oct 08, 2012, 09:58 PM »

I'm new here and learned a lot of things just by reading this thread. I'm planning to make a cart business early next year.
It seems na successfull ung story pero sana keep us posted to learn also from your experience.
But I appreciate your openness to all.
Hope your business is doping good na...

zhai · « **Reply #54 on:** Oct 13, 2012, 03:56 AM »

I want also to go into food business but I don't know how to start.... I learn a lot from this thread.

gegepanalo · « **Reply #55 on:** Nov 05, 2012, 02:48 PM »

Hi guys!

I know it has been awhile since I've posted, but I've received so many questions through my inbox, thread and email that I've decided to give an update.

Firstly, I'd like to give a general update on how much our cart has been making since we started.

Profit
June: 2000 pesos
July: 1,600 pesos
August 9,500 pesos
September 5,400 pesos
October: 13,500 pesos

So how did our profit rise from the measly profit of June and July?

Before I explain, I just want to say that for the months of August and September, our profits are actually low because we had to shut a few times due to the habagat. And because we've already paid rental, we lost money on the days that we were closed. We even shelled out money for our staff, we called it the "bagyo bonus". So taking all those into account, we could've made 13,000 pesos in August, and around 10,000 in September.

When we first started, we stuck to our concept of rice meals. What we quickly learnt was that people who were in a hurry to catch their bus, or wanted to eat in the bus, did not want to bring rice meals. We introduced sandwiches, but to make things simple, we used our existing ingredients and combined them with bread. So for the first time, we served Tapa Burger, Longsi Burger, Toci Burger and other combinations soon came up such as Egg Burger, Omelette Burger and hotdog burger. People were so curious about what a toci burger and tapa burger was, but the sales shot up. Now our burgers account for 60-70% of our sales, so much so that the carts beside us started serving burgers as well

The second part was to attack our costs. We negotiated our ice, our water, our bread. We found cheaper suppliers for our meat, while retaining the quality and taste. We stopped serving french fries because they cost so much compared to what we were making. Imagine for Fries you would use so much oil and electricity that you would have to sell a certain quantity in order to really make it worth while. The minute we started attacking our cost, we increased our profitability.

Thirdly, we developed regular clients around the area that continued to patronize us.

Our total investment for the cart was 160,000 pesos. But that's including 2 months of rental deposit and 1 month advance rental. So after subtracting that, and the 10k for our initial inventory, we invested around 70k to put up the cart.

So our since we've started we've already profited 32,000 pesos and are nearly half way to getting a full return on the cart within 5 months of operation. Our November has already started strong, and we're expecting to breakeven by the month of January.

We are also considering selling the operation, or closing it down, as both me and my partner have full time jobs and we started this cart for the learning experience and not really to make money. My business partner is a doctor and I'm a mid level manager at a company, so between our schedules we barely have time to manage.

jenxent · « **Reply #56 on:** Nov 05, 2012, 03:38 PM »

nice sir ngayon kulang po nabasa yung tread niyo..sana di kayo magsawa sa pagpost dito...

george88 · « **Reply #57 on:** Nov 05, 2012, 05:17 PM »

Nice TS... but why are you planning to sell it?next year it will give you passive income... at isang food cart pa lang yan...

benlita · « **Reply #58 on:** Nov 08, 2012, 05:50 AM »

Woah, great write ups!

Ngayon ko lang nabasa to and apart from learning, naentertain din ako

How did you hire your staff? Where did you find them? Saw on your other thread na they applied by emailing you. Did you just post at someplace in the web?

Also, did you register your food cart name as IP? Kasi may nakita na kong ganyan, exact name, recently somewhere di ko lang maalala (sa may MRT Ayala yata)

Good luck with your future ventures

For sure mas marami ka pang matutunan but I do hope you get to the point where you are confident to take the leap to be a full time ent...(repreneur hehe)

gegepanalo · « **Reply #59 on:** Nov 08, 2012, 12:22 PM »

Quote from: benlita on Nov 08, 2012, 05:50 AM

Woah, great write ups! Ngayon ko lang nabasa to and apart from learning, naentertain din ako

How did you hire your staff? Where did you find them? Saw on your other thread na they applied by emailing you. Did you just post at someplace in the web?

Also, did you register your food cart name as IP? Kasi may nakita na kong ganyan, exact name, recently somewhere di ko lang maalala (sa may MRT Ayala yata)

Good luck with your future ventures For sure mas marami ka pang matutunan but I do hope you get to the point where you are confident to take the leap to be a full time ent...(repreneur hehe)

Thanks everyone for the comments. I really want to keep sharing my experience so everyone can learn without having to fall into the same pitfalls we did.

To answer some of the questions:

1.) We hired our staff through the internet mostly. We posted in job websites, sulit.com and ayos dito. If I'm not mistaken we also used the pinoy exchange forum and this forum to post our ads. We got a lot of replies from sulit and ayos dito. We then did a phone interview, and the ones we liked we asked them to visit our cart then our most senior cart attendant who has been with us since the start did the interview and training. This was very efficient because we did not need to be present for us to hire staff. Of course this is a risk you need to take, you need to trust that your senior attendant is highly competent.

2.) No we did not register our cart with the IP as it is not ours to register. We bought the cart and the concept from foodcartlink.com they were very easy to deal and very cheap, though the cart construction is not that good as the cabinet already started falling apart last month, but you get what you pay for right? The concept was theirs, and is not registered so any one that purchases a cart from them can use it, or change it. The good thing about them is that they are not a franchise by nature, they are a cart construction business. So even though we bought the name from them, and they gave us the recipes and equipment, we could add or subtract anything from the cart's concept.

3.) @george88 the reason why we are selling the cart is we don't have enough time and it isn't making enough money for it to be worthwhile for us to continue. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but since we're anonymous here on the web, both me and my business partner make around 40-60k a month from our full time jobs. We understand that a 13-15k a month is good passive income, but split between two people is 6-7k a month. We would rather focus on our full time jobs to increase the chances of getting promoted and getting a better paycheck. There have been times where we would get a problem in the cart during the middle of a work day, and we would have to attend to it. At night we would have to process the ordering of stock, compute pay of employees and sometimes post new ads cause employees are leaving. During the weekends we might be meeting with the landlord, replacing broken equipment or calculating inventory and profit and loss statements (yes we have a basic accounting set up). So rather than enjoying my time with my gf, or my business partner being able to go to the gym at night, it takes our time. Another factor is that sometimes it causes friction between my business partner and me. I agree that we need to develop ways to be better at working together, but aside from the business, we is also my best friend. So word of caution to everyone before getting in a business with a good friend, you risk more than the money sometimes.

i will be posting the sulit ad soon, I will be taking more photos of the cart and posting the financials for everyone to see. If we don't end up selling the cart, we will just give it away for free to our senior attendant in hopes that she can uplift herself. Feel free to also visit the cart, it is at cubao bus station (araneta). The pictures are in the thread somewhere, it is called sisig silog, though we stopped serving sisig hahaa.