Streetfire Kitchens Business Plan — Sensitivity and Scenario Analysis

What moves Year 5 EBITDA: covers per service, average spend, food cost and truck-days traded, with downside and upside scenarios.

Sensitivity and Scenario Analysis

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10.1 What moves EBITDA
10.2 Scenarios
10.3 The downside: a fleet that never fills
10.4 Where the plan is deliberately conservative

10.1 What moves EBITDA

Figure 22. EBITDA sensitivity at five trucks.

Driver	Downside (R)	Upside (R)	Swing (R)
Covers per service ±15%	81 315	2 827 839	2 746 524
Average transaction value ±8%	275 148	2 634 006	2 358 858
Trading days ±12%	861 790	2 047 365	1 185 575
Event mix ±8 points	959 179	1 949 976	990 797
Food cost ±10%	990 078	1 919 077	928 999
Crew cost ±12%	1 160 358	1 748 796	588 438
Base case EBITDA at five trucks	1 454 577

The ranking is the finding, and it is not the intuitive one

Covers per service swings EBITDA by R2 746 524 — more than twice the effect of trading days at R1 185 575 and nearly three times that of food cost at R928 999. Most food truck plans concentrate on adding trading days and squeezing suppliers. The arithmetic says the first priority is serving more people in the service window you already have, and it says so emphatically: covers and average spend together account for more swing than the remaining four drivers combined. That reordering has practical consequences. It means a second serving window is worth more than a cheaper supplier, that pre-ordering at office parks is a financial project rather than a convenience, and that menu length — which reads as a chef’s decision — is one of the most consequential financial choices in the business.

10.2 Scenarios

	Downside	Base	Upside
Trading days assumption	-15%	As modelled	+8%
Average spend assumption	-6%	As modelled	+5%
Food cost assumption	+8%	As modelled	-3%
Year 1 EBITDA	(1 764 386)	(1 380 153)	(1 095 471)
Year 3 EBITDA	(836 486)	560 057	1 597 472
Year 5 EBITDA	376 054	2 736 480	4 481 600
Year 5 EBITDA margin	2.0%	14.3%	23.5%
Cumulative EBITDA, Years 1 to 5	(3 620 337)	3 307 509	8 445 003

10.3 The downside: a fleet that never fills

What actually happens when the covers do not arrive

On 15 per cent fewer trading days, 6 per cent lower average spend and 8 per cent higher food cost, EBITDA is negative through Year 4 and reaches only R376 054 in Year 5, against R2 736 480 in the base case. Cumulative EBITDA over five years is negative R3 620 337. The business does not fail suddenly, and the recovery position is better than most. Trucks are financed assets with an active second-hand market, so a fleet can be reduced from five to three to two without closing the business, shedding both the finance and the R134 000 of per-truck cost at each step. The commissary lease is the harder commitment. The realistic downside is therefore not insolvency but a business that shrinks back to the lean single-truck configuration described in Section 1.3 — which earns its owner a living and returns very little to an outside investor. That, rather than total loss, is what an investor is risking.

The distinction between the base case and the downside is not effort or competence. It is three ordinary variables moving modestly against the business at once, none of which is implausible in a single wet summer. That is the honest characterisation of the risk, and it is why the roadmap places a real trading quarter between the first truck and the fleet.

10.4 Where the plan is deliberately conservative

Assumption	Treated in the base case as	What is left on the table
Minimum booking value on events	Not applied	Most vendors enforce R8 000 to R10 000 plus a booking fee of around R1 000. At an average event of R16 510 the minimum rarely binds, but the booking fee is unmodelled revenue on every booking
Peak-season Saturday premium	Not applied	Saturdays between October and March carry a reported premium of 15% to 25%. Weekend market and event days concentrate in exactly that window
Covers per service	Held flat at 107 across five years	No learning curve is assumed. A fleet that gets better at queue handling over five years would show it here first
Assessed loss carried forward	Not valued	R1 510 603 remains available at Year 5 against Year 6 and Year 7 earnings
Second service window	Not modelled	Evening trade at selected pitches would raise covers without adding a truck or a trading day
Terminal value	3.5x Year 5 EBITDA	Appropriate for vehicles and unowned trading rights, but below what a proven pitch base and event pipeline might attract

None of these is included in the base case and none should be relied on. They are listed because a reader comparing this plan against a more optimistic one should know which direction the conservatism runs. Two of them — the peak-season premium and a second service window — bear directly on the dominant driver identified in Section 10.1, which is why they are the first places management should look once the fleet is trading and the covers are proven.

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