Building Your Food Trailer Yourself: Can It Be Done?
Thinking of entering the mobile food industry with a kick-ass food trailer?
Great idea. A food trailers convenience, elevated functionalities and low price point, make them an ideal investment for aspiring culinary entrepreneurs to cook up some profit.
Building your own food trailer?
Not such a great idea.
Even for DIY professionals, building a food trailer- specifically the kitchen- isn’t really recommended. You might not be building a brick and mortar kitchen, but there are many factors you have to consider when it comes to food trailers and their operations. Yes, it can be done- but for a long term investment, outsourcing is likely your best bet.
Even the savviest builders can end up with a malfunctioning food trailer; yes, mobile kitchens operate the same as brick and mortar kitchens. However, the nature of where they are housed and how the components need to operate together differ greatly.
At the end of the day, safety triumphs cutting corners to save some dollars. In our experience in the food trailer industry, safety hazards are harder to avoid in such a small space, and knowledge of how to correctly build a food trailer kitchen is imperative.
Before you grab the tool box and browse online for an empty trailer, give consideration to a few things below before doing so:
Five Things to Consider Before Building Your Food Truck Yourself
1. Will It Actually Save You Money?
Building your own food trailer might save you money in labour costs, but have you factored in the price of buying the tools, supplies and appliances that you’ll need?
Buying them piece by piece yourself may actually be up to 30% more expensive than using a reputable dealer. Companies who focus on building food trailers and trucks have those awesome industry discounts, as well as discounts for ordering in bulk.
The money you save from labor may not make it back into your
pocket once you are done sourcing and purchasing every individual
item you’ll need.
Do You Know Everything You Need to Get?
There’s the obvious components- grills, deep dryers shelving units, fridges etc. While those are pretty standard, there are components of a well functioning food trailer that even DIY superstars forget.
Do you have the correct ventilation systems? Does your fire system align with the heat driven appliances in your kitchen? Have you looked into compression systems or overhead fans?
Once again, the placement and wiring of each component in a mobile kitchen may be similar to a brick and mortar kitchen, but you can’t forget that these kitchens are on wheels. The back of a trailer, in both set up and size, presents different challenges and requirements than building your home’s kitchen.
You also need to make sure that the functionalities of your mobile kitchen align with the menu and vision you have designed for your future business. You have limited space, and strategic design and placement ensures that your kitchen is set up to churn out the food and beverages you’ve chosen.
This can be hard to determine though. You really do have to be extremely saavy with the space you are given, and poor design and appliance placement can take up your entire kitchen without servicing your brand and menu at all.
2. The Requirements, Regulation and Building Codes of Food Trailers & Trucks
Admittedly, the regulations surrounding food trailers and trucks can be pretty overwhelming. Permits and licenses aside, your mobile kitchen has to be built to a pretty strict code to ensure that it’s safe for both you and the communities you’re serving.
And of course, like every regulated venture out there, the requirements for your food truck will differ from region to region; the hours you spend researching how to build your kitchen up to code might be entirely wasted once you travel to another region.
Experienced companies within the field are fluent in food trailer regulations, and design kitchens that will meet most, if not all requirements for every region. Food trailer builders understand:
- Emissions guidelines
- Proximity restrictions
- Parking permits
- Staffing regulations
- Fire prevention system requirements
- Health and sanitization station requirements
- Food storage regulations
- Sanitation requirements
- Water supply requirements
- Sewage and solid waste disposal
- Toxic & harmful material reduction systems
- Ventilation requirements
- Lighting requirements
And that’s really only some of the rules you’ll have to research and abide by.
3. Do You Have a Set Budget?
With cost being the number one driver of building your food trailer yourself, you’d likely assume that you’ll come in miles behind buying through a reputable builder.
However, your budget can actually get away from you quite quickly
if even one little thing goes off the rail.
Unexpected costs are, well, expected. But doing it yourself- you
might end spending a whole lot more on mistakes than you
originally planned to.
Even with a good idea of construction and the best intentions, you
could easily surpass your budget by coming into unexpected
mistakes, costs or missing items. Using a knowledgeable company to
build your trailer saves you the unknown- we do this daily, and we
know which speedbumps are coming and when.
4. How Much Customization Are You Looking For?
If you’re going into this whole heartedly (which you should be), your food trailer should look and operate exactly how you envisioned it. Not only should the internal guts of the trailer be 100% on point, but the outside should reflect you and your business.
That can be really hard to do by yourself.
Not to mention- costly. Singular custom wrapping of vehicles is inherently more expensive than doing so on a bulk discount, not to mention, your options will likely be way more limited.
Building a kitchen that is entirely customized to your needs may seem easy to plan, but again- limited space and a set budget can easily be derailed when the time comes. Hiccups happen more often than not when you branch outside a standard set up, and experience is usually the only thing that can help mitigate these hiccups.