Wanting to Start a Mobile Coffee Business on a Budget? We are and in this post we will be sharing our real and most recent numbers from our second month of operation with our own mobile coffee business.
*** This post is purely an opinion piece and not meant to be used as financial, legal, or business advice. Please seek a professional for your unique circumstances. ***
Let’s get the numbers out of the way since that’s what everyone is here for
Side Note: This includes the numbers from last month and then I mathed the maths to break down and separate the two sets of numbers.
Income: $1,825.50 total – $417.50 (Last month) = $1,408 Monthly Earnings!
Expenses: $6,425.91 total – $3,319.30 (last month) = $3,106.61 outgoing this month
Above All!!!! We are not in debt to a bank or lender. We put some of our own savings in to start and using the income to fund the rest.
What goes into those numbers?
Expenses
BIG UPDATE!!!!!
We found the cutest most perfect trailer on Facebook Marketplace. It was $2,700 which is what contributed to the higher number. It is a 10 x 6 (tiny) vintage Shasta trailer and it was already stripped down for the most part on the inside and was being used as a jewelry workshop sitting in a lady’s backyard. This means it was in pretty good shape despite its age. On top of that it quite literally only took us another two hours to rip out the rest of the inside, and that was with three kids running around us at that lol. We’ll be renovating it come this winter.
Besides the camper, $406.61 is what we spent in coffee, supplies, and vendor fees. Not too bad considering we brought in triple that in sales. We only set up twice a week consistently.
Income
We had two catering jobs for the same non-profit organization. This took us away from two of our regular Saturday Farmer Market spots but it definitely made up for the missing of sales. On top of that we made SO MANY good business connections at one of their events that may be opening even bigger doors for us in the future.
Our Farmer’s Market spots are consistent income for the two days a week we set up for them. We live in a small area and so we don’t make a ton of money but something is better than nothing in my opinion. It’s a good way to start, simple, and it gets our name out there in front of people.
Food for Thought: It’s interesting to see how different markets sell more of one item than the other an vice versa. Our Saturday morning market we sell in the slightly bigger town next door (about 30k population) and sell a lot more coffee and there’s more of a market for alternative milk vs our Thursday afternoon market (rural town of 8k) we sell a ton of sodas and if we sell a coffee or two it’s always regular dairy.
What did we do right?
We didn’t say no for the most part. We hustled as much as a mom with three kids and a husband away at military school possibly can lol. That means I was carrying all of our things in and out of the house to and from the car (the ice chest “rode shotgun” since car seats take up so much space). Packing the kids up at the crack of dawn. Setting up and tearing down. Helping customers. Etc. I was one tired lady.
We catered two events, attended community events (National Night Out, Fair Days, Car Show), weekly farmer’s markets, and we gave out flyers at every single place we went.
Plus, we are lined up to be a vendor at our local pumpkin patch every Saturday and Sunday in October which is super exciting for us.
What will we be doing next?
Postcards. We are toying with the idea of sending postcards out to local businesses, schools, and offices promoting our catering services since it is getting closer to the colder months and the markets will be ending. We’re hoping if we can do two rounds of these post cards (super cheap and easy to create on Vistaprint) then we might be able to score a couple holiday parties or employee appreciation catering gigs!
Pumpkin Patch. We’re excited to serve coffee each weekend at a popular pumpkin patch in our area. Hopefully it’ll be lucrative enough to fund most of our camper renovations.
Camper Renovations. Speaking of the camper, we have been sitting inside of the empty trailer drawing and dreaming up what we can make it into. It’s a small space but we have a ton of ideas we want to implement like how to maximize the space we have while still adding a sitting/play area for our kids to be in there with us. I plan to do a more detailed post about this process and then I will update this one with a link to that. But to generalize it, We are going to do a 4 bay sink area, one big counter for our machines and lots of storage under that, a bench with storage underneath, and then a slim serving ledge by a sliding window to try and save on the walkway space. Everything will be done in lighter colors to try and keep it as open as possible. And because it is vintage, I would like to keep as much of the original character on the outside as we can so we probably will just paint the exterior rather than doing a huge wrap like you see on those square food trucks.
How is your business venture going? Would love to hear your updates!
Best Wishes,
Ashley
Hi. I have just started reading your posts. I too want to start a coffee stall on a budget in the UK. I cannot afford a truck at the moment so was thinking about a gazebo. I want to keep my day job as a music teacher but try to find Christmas indoor markets at weekends to start with. My aim is to buy a trailer and do summer festivals next year. Good luck with everything. Angie
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