Your crew hourly wage, overhead on direct cost and target net margin are the same on every job you bid. Save them once and every trade bid calculator here opens with your numbers instead of a stranger’s ballpark.
This tool has no separate payroll-burden field, so your saved burden rate is left alone here.
Kept in this browser only, on this site’s own storage. Nothing is uploaded, and clearing your browser data clears it. Forgetting them leaves the numbers already on this bid alone.
FOR INDEPENDENT FOOD TRUCK & TRAILER OPERATORS
A "$8/head, 100-guest minimum" quote prices the food but usually leaves out commissary prep time, the drive to the venue, propane, the one-off special-event permit, and the risk that a better turnout than expected quietly eats the margin. This free calculator finds the real price for one booking, flags the turnout risk, and checks a price you're already considering.
This is a planning floor from the numbers you typed, not an audited statement. It does not add sales tax, insurance, or a rain-date/cancellation policy unless you fold those into other cost yourself.
Already told a planner or festival organizer a number? Enter it here to see the profit and margin it actually leaves once the costs above are counted.
Everything on this page runs in your browser. Your event details, prices, and costs are never uploaded, there is no account, and nothing is saved when you close the tab. Copy shareable link is the one way a quote leaves this device, and only because you choose to send it: the figures ride in the page's URL fragment, which a browser never puts in a request line or a Referer header. Whoever holds that link can read the quote in it, so send it the way you would send the numbers themselves. We count only anonymous local feature events (quote-priced, proposed-price-checked, link_copied) so we can tell whether the calculator gets used — no event details, prices, or costs are recorded, and Do Not Track / Global Privacy Control turn it off automatically.
Because the truck and its staff are committed to the job well before service starts. Commissary prep, the drive to the venue, and breakdown afterward are real hours that a flat "$8/head" price does not show unless you add them in — and they happen whether the event runs 2 hours or 6.
A flat per-event quote is built from an expected or guaranteed guest count, but actual turnout depends on the event — a well-attended wedding or a festival with a longer line can serve far more guests than a corporate lunch headcount. The calculator reports what share of your price the food line already represents, so you can see how much room is left before a bigger-than-expected crowd erases the margin you built the quote on.
It marks the extra guest's food cost up the same way the rest of the quote is marked up — food cost plus your overhead rate, divided by your target margin — so seats added the week before an event still earn the same margin instead of just covering the added food at cost.
No. Every field on this page runs in your browser only, there is no account, and nothing you type is uploaded. Nothing leaves this device unless you choose to send it: the Copy shareable link button puts the quote on the form into the page's URL fragment, which a browser never sends to a server or into a Referer header, so it reaches only the person you hand the link to. Anyone who has that link can read the quote in it, so send it the way you would send the numbers themselves. Usage counting only tallies anonymous feature events, and you can turn it off with the button above.
New to pricing bookings? Read the guide: how much to charge for a food truck catering or event booking. Quoting off a $/guest number from a past booking? See how a flat per-guest price misses a smaller, farther booking's real cost.