Food Truck and Food Truck Park Feasibility Study for SBA, USDA and Bank Loans

A food truck is titled personal property that must report to a commissary, and a food truck park is a ground lease business whose revenue is pad rent. MMCG Invest prepares food truck and food truck park feasibility studies for SBA 7(a), SBA 504, USDA Business and Industry and conventional financing that build the truck's revenue from its route and event calendar rather than from a national average, carry the permit, commissary and fire costs the jurisdiction actually charges, underwrite the park on pad rent with the landlord's utility and sanitation capital stated, and report the debt service coverage ratio (DSCR) by year under the lender's floor.

The counts disagree by a factor of seven and the regulation moved this year. IBISWorld reports 92,257 food truck businesses in 2025, up 16.9 percent, with about one employee per business, which suggests a modeled figure; the Census County Business Patterns count of employer establishments in NAICS 722330 is 12,487. The study uses the Census figure as the verifiable floor and treats the modeled estimate as an upper bound. Texas moved mobile food vendor licensing from cities to the Department of State Health Services on July 1, 2026 under HB 2844, so Austin and Houston fee schedules are legacy data for any Texas study. Every jurisdiction MMCG reviewed requires a commissary or central preparation facility, with narrow self-contained exceptions, so a truck's fixed cost includes rent for a kitchen it does not own. A truck is also depreciating collateral under a title lien, which makes a truck-only loan collateral-short by construction. The general method and the SOP 50 10 8.1 spine are on the restaurant feasibility study hub; the commissary the truck must report to is on the ghost kitchen and commissary feasibility study page.

A truck has no trade area; it has a route, a set of permitted locations and an event calendar, and the study builds revenue from them. The inputs are the service days per week by season, the locations by day with the permit or private agreement that authorizes each, the tickets per service from the operator's point-of-sale history or from the locations' comparable traffic, the ticket average from the menu, and the events booked with their fees and their history. A single aggregator figure puts median truck revenue near $350,000 a year with no primary source behind it, and the study does not use it; it reports the subject's own build-up and the sensitivity to weather days, lost locations and a shorter season. The cost side carries food at the format's rate, labor for a two- or three-person crew, fuel and generator cost, commissary rent, the permit stack below, insurance on a vehicle and a kitchen, and the vehicle's maintenance reserve. The study then reports EBITDA and DSCR against the 7(a) floor of 1.15 times, or 1.10 times on a 7(a) Small loan at $350,000 or less, which is where most single-truck loans sit.

The study carries the fees the subject's jurisdiction charges in the year of the study, not a national placeholder. Under the Texas statewide license a Type III full-cook unit pays $876 on application plus a $500 pre-licensing inspection, with $500 routine inspections, and Houston's LP-gas permit is separate at about $225. Los Angeles County charges a high-risk mobile food facility $761 a year with a $741 plan check for fiscal 2026-27. Multnomah County, which covers Portland, charges $760 for Class I to III and $920 for Class IV units with a $790 plan review in 2026, rising to $810 and $980 in 2027. Denver charges a $200 application and a $125 license. Fees are small next to the truck and the commissary, and the study says so, but the inspection and fire requirements behind them decide whether a given unit can operate: the Denver fire code bars trucks from parking within 10 feet of another truck or a structure, which drives the layout of any park, and California's Retail Food Code requires every mobile food facility to operate from a commissary. The study lists each permit, its fee, its renewal and its inspection schedule, with the private location agreements the route depends on.

Denver requires units to report to a commissary daily, Houston requires servicing within the 24 hours before operating with receipts kept a year, and Texas rules at 25 TAC 228.221 require a central preparation facility and prohibit private residences. Shared kitchens charge $15 to $45 an hour nationally in The Food Corridor's survey, with 42 percent of kitchens averaging $20 to $29, and published sheets run $16 to $24 an hour or $1,200 a month for a dedicated kitchen. A truck that needs two hours of prep and an hour of clean-down on each service day at $25 an hour spends about $75 a day, and the study carries the subject's actual commissary agreement, with its monthly minimum and its storage charges, as a fixed cost.

Published startup ranges, all from aggregators, put a used truck at $50,000 to $80,000, a new build at $50,000 to $200,000 and a cart at $15,000 to $50,000, and the study replaces them with the builder's quote and the equipment schedule for the subject. A truck is titled personal property; the lender's security is a perfected lien noted on the certificate of title, and the truck depreciates like any vehicle, so a truck-only 7(a) loan is collateral-short and the lender looks to cash flow and the guarantor. The truck is equipment for SBA maturity purposes, which puts the loan on the ten-year equipment term rather than the 25-year real estate term, and the study reports debt service on that basis. A second truck for an operator with history is the most common lendable project in the format, because the first truck's point-of-sale record is the projection's evidence.

A park is land, pads, power, water, graywater and grease handling, restrooms, seating, lighting and often a bar, rented to trucks by the month or the day. Its revenue line is pad rent; aggregator figures put Portland pod rent at $400 to $1,200 a month per cart, and the study sources the subject's rate from the operator's letters of intent and from the parks in the trade area. The landlord's capital is the hookups, the sanitation and the restrooms, and the study carries it as the project cost with the site work. Multnomah County has licensed pods since 2022, shifting sanitation duties to the pod operator, at $540 for two to nine carts and $720 for ten or more with a $770 plan review, and a park elsewhere faces the local zoning, fire separation and health rules the study documents. No published park operating statement exists, and the study builds one from pad count, rent, occupancy, the bar if there is one, and the operating cost of a small outdoor venue. A park with a bar is underwritten with the bar on the bar and nightclub feasibility study method, and a park that is really a food hall without a roof shares the stall-turnover logic of the food hall feasibility study page.

A truck is a 7(a) loan, usually a 7(a) Small at $350,000 or less with the 1.10 times floor and the lender's own credit analysis, or a standard 7(a) at 1.15 times above it, with the 10 percent start-up injection where the operator has no history. A park whose owner buys the land is a 504 project if the owner's operations occupy the required share of the improvements, which the study tests under 13 CFR 120.131 with pads rented to third parties counted as they will be counted, and a conventional or USDA Business and Industry project otherwise. A rural park in a town under 50,000 people is a USDA candidate on the terms on the USDA feasibility study page, with the new-business equity test of 20 percent balance sheet equity or 25 percent of project cost and an independent feasibility study above $1 million. The program rules are on the SBA 7(a) feasibility study and SBA 504 feasibility study pages.

The study reports DSCR as EBITDA over total debt service by year against the program floor. For a truck the sensitivities are service days 15 and 25 percent below plan for weather and lost locations, ticket count 10 and 20 percent down, food cost 300 basis points up, commissary rate at the survey's $29 upper average, and the loss of the single largest location or event. For a park the sensitivities are pad occupancy at 60 and 75 percent, rent at the trade area's low quartile, bar excluded from year one, and a lease-up of 12 and 18 months. The study shows the service-day and pad-count break-evens.

A MMCG food truck or food truck park study includes the route and calendar revenue build-up or the pad rent roll, the permit and inspection schedule for the subject's jurisdiction, the commissary agreement and cost, the truck or site cost from the builder's or contractor's quote, the collateral discussion on title liens and depreciation, the capital stack by program, the DSCR schedule with sensitivities and break-evens and a signed conclusion. Standard delivery is nine to sixteen business days; expedited delivery in five to seven is available. Fees begin at $4,900 for a single-truck 7(a) study and run $7,500 to $15,000 for a 504 or USDA park. Revisions required by the lender or agency are made at no additional cost under MMCG's written acceptance guarantee. See MMCG's feasibility study methodology and where we work.

The truck format shares its small-loan method with the drive-thru coffee kiosk case, SBA 7(a), a modular unit on a ground lease underwritten on a ten-year 7(a) maturity with the sales case set by the site, not the brand average, and the park format shares its venue method with the competitive socializing venue case, SBA 504.