Operations and Team

Jump to section

• Overview & contents
• i. Important Notice and Basis of Preparation
• 1. Executive Summary
• 2. The Operating Model
• 3. Licensing, Food Safety and Trading Rights
• 4. Market and Customers
• 5. SWOT and Competitive Position
• 6. Operations and Team
• 7. Financial Plan
• 8. Break-Even and Debt Service
• 9. Investment Analysis
• 10. Sensitivity and Scenario Analysis
• 11. Risk Analysis
• 12. Implementation Roadmap
• 13. Key Performance Indicators
• 14. Key Assumptions
• 15. Conclusion and Recommendation
• A. Appendix A: Consolidated Financial Summary
• B. Appendix B: Truck-Day and Trading Schedules
• C. Appendix C: Funding, Debt and Working Capital Schedules
• D. Appendix D: Risk Register
• E. Appendix E: Glossary

6.1 A trading day

The point of this table is the third row. A weekday truck earns its revenue in roughly three hours and spends the remaining eight preparing, travelling and cleaning. That is why crew cost is 18 per cent of street revenue: the crew is paid for the day, not for the service window. It is also why the commissary matters — every task moved off the truck and into the kitchen lengthens the time the window is open.

6.2 Menu and throughput

▪ A short menu. Six to eight items. Every additional item slows the line, raises waste and increases stockholding. Throughput is the profit driver identified in Section 10.1, and menu length is the single biggest constraint on it.

▪ Prepared components. Sauces, marinades, slaws and doughs made at the commissary. The truck assembles and cooks; it does not prepare.

▪ Pre-ordering at office parks. A simple order-ahead channel lets a truck serve a queue that would otherwise walk away, and lifts covers per service without lengthening the day.

▪ A fixed event menu. Events are quoted from a set menu at a confirmed head count. This is why event food cost is 28 per cent and waste is under 1 per cent.

6.3 Team

Truck crews are engaged per service at R58 an hour for crew and a premium for the truck supervisor, comfortably above the national minimum wage of R30.23 an ordinary hour. Costing crew per service rather than as fixed salary is what allows the business to flex between a quiet Tuesday and a busy Saturday, and it is why crew appears in the variable cost stack rather than in overhead.

Two of the six central roles do work that an owner-operator cannot do at the same time as driving a truck. The events and sales coordinator is the role that grows event mix from 11 per cent to 20 per cent of the calendar, which is worth roughly R558 000 of annual contribution at full fleet. The head chef is what makes five trucks taste like one brand. Both are part of the overhead that Section 1.3 identifies as only affordable from about three trucks.

6.4 Costs of running the fleet

R134 000 a year, or R504 per effective trading day, is what a truck costs before it sells anything. Against a blended contribution of R3 704 a truck-day that is manageable; against the R2 312 a weekday street service earns it is a seventh of the take. It is also the cost that disappears cleanly when a truck is sold, which is what makes the downside in Section 10.3 recoverable rather than terminal.