A budget for an event catered by Heritage Food Truck can include the following items: the food itself, the preferred serving format, the potential equipment rental (glasses, plates, napkins etc.), and of course… taxes.
You will need a bartending company to provide the beverage service. As a caterer, we cannot do the bartending ourselves because it requires a bartending license that we do not have.
We will work with you to fit into your budget. However, we do have a few constraints in terms of minimum spend and travel distance:
- What is Heritage Food Truck’s catering minimum spend?
- Can you give us an example of a budget for an event catered with Heritage Food Truck?
- How far can Heritage Food Truck cater events?
- Are there differences between the types of events? For example, a food truck for a wedding, or a neighborhood party?
- Do you know other food trucks that can help me if I do not match your minimum spend?
1. What is your minimum spend?
We do have a food minimum spend of $4,000 per event for Monday to Friday events and $4,500 per event for Saturday and Sunday events.
This includes the price of food only for events with travel up to 1.0 hour from our Malden base. Service is not included and will vary based on the service type your select, such as buffet, family style, or plated service.
This minimum spend also does not include any equipment rented from us such as tablecloths, napkins, plate ware, silverware, glasses/cups.
While we typically operate within a circle of 1.0 hours from our Malden base, we can sometimes overcome this obstacle by adding a “distance fee” to the food and service cost.
2. Can you give us a budget example? What if we also want to rent equipment from you?
Please note that all the illustrative menus we show on our “price point page” are calculated with no rented equipment. They only include food, and service (buffet style).
Want to rent equipment from us? Here is an example below for a wedding catered by Heritage Food Truck for a total budget of $9,000 for 150 persons, based on a buffet-style service as well and rented equipment from us :
- Food cost: $43 per person for a total of $6,480 (72% of budget)
- Service cost: $7 per person assuming buffet and passed appetizers for a total of $1,080 (12% of budget);
- Rented equipment: $6 per person for a total of $900, assuming venue provides tents, tables and chairs and Heritage Food Truck supplies tablecloths, napkins, plate ware, silverware, glasses/cups (10% of budget)
- Tax: 6% (technically, 6.25% of total of items 1, 2 and 3): $540; $4 per person.
3. How far can Heritage Food Truck cater events?
We travel up to 1.0 hour from our Malden base, and occasionally up to 1.5 hour with an added “distance fee”.
Unfortunately, some locations even in MA are a little bit too far away from our base for us to be able to competitively cater an event.
While food trucks are by definition trucks that can travel, they tend to become economically ineffective when moving much beyond 1 or 1.5 hour from their base, between their mediocre fuel mileage and the cost of having a full staff spending a lot of time on the road just getting there.
We can sometimes overcome this obstacle by adding a “distance fee” to the food and service cost to cover the required hours of driving time and truck cost, but this quickly adds up. Most of the time, our customers work with a fixed budget, and dollars are better used for food and service rather than to pay for transportation to and from the site.
4. Are there differences between the types of events? For example, a food truck for a wedding, or a neighborhood party?
Our minimum spend and travel limits apply to all our catered events.
5. Do you know other food trucks that can help me if I do not match your minimum spend?
In addition to running our own food trucks, we also run Stockpot Malden, a shared kitchen that has about 7 other food trucks, so we have a good sense of the food truck market as a result.
Although most of the other trucks are more affordable than we are, you may find yourself struggling to attract a food truck for small events, especially if you are aiming for a weekday between May and October. Most trucks have a regular gig every weekday at a location where they typically generate more than $2,000 in revenues (upward of 150 people at about $13-14 average). Your best bet may be to find a new truck that has just come on the market and is still in the process of establishing its schedule.