SmoothBoarBBQ
is Blowin Smoke!
Hey Brandon,
Just a few things off the top of my head. Disclaimer : I just hit 1 year running a BBQ food trailer, so take what I say with that limited amount of experience in mind.
-Shotgun Smoker : looks like a great smoker but it's small. With such a small smoker you're going to severely limit your potential for growth. It's probably better to invest in a larger smoker so that you have room to grow. Again, this is just my experience...I have a large "hog style" smoker with an offset firebox for stickburning, and it has 2 propane burners so I can wrap the meat after a few hours and walk away until it's all done.
I've got a warming box on the left there, and the smoker in the back is what I use for everything. I can do a 175Lb hog on the bottom rack and a 125Lb hog on the top rack. It's a shockingly good smoker and cost was $1900.
-Business : have you setup an LLC or similar business entity yet? If not I'd start working on it because it will take at least a month, and if the government is moving slow it can take multiple months. You'll also need a solid business model and even more importantly a solid MENU. I bring up the menu because it will dictate the exact type of equipment / cooker you'll need. Example : do you plan on using vegetables in any of your dishes? If so you're likely going to need a 5th sink just as a vegetable wash station. Most places will require you to have a 3 bay sink as well as a hand wash station. The menu is so important because it will let you know what size refrigerator you'll need, size of smoker, how much counter-top space / work tables, etc..
Have you looked around and are there any commissary kitchens available in your area? Can you afford to pay them with your current plan of just doing a few events or weekend work? There are no co-op kitchens in my county so my only way of getting a commissary kitchen was to go to just about every restaurant in town and ask them if I could use their place as a commissary. As you would imagine the answer was a resounding "NO." So this left me in a spot where I had all my equipment and was ready to go, but couldn't get permitted by the Health Department / Environmental Health.
-Equipment : have you decided on electric versus propane? Electric will require you to have a pretty large and powerful generator, while propane will require you to have access to LP and a couple of 100Lb tanks. What type of hot water system are you planning on going with, and is that compatible with the Food Code in your area? It's unreal how some counties will not allow tankless hot water heaters...such a joke.
-I highly recommend a steam table...I cheaped out when I bought my trailer and now I'm running with chafing dishes each day to keep the food warm...it's a huge pain in the butt and a steam table is such a better choice.
-Funding : Do you have all the money on hand for everything you need? There is little to no external funding for any kind of food operations. In terms of lending food trucks / trailers are considered to be the exact same thing as restaurants, and restaurants are one of the worst investments in the history of the human race. My trailer, all in, was about $20K, and I needed another $7K in equipment (generator, cooking equipment, initial stock), and another $3Kish for incidentals (liability insurance, licensing fees, inspections, registration, etc..). Both my wife and I have credit scores of over 800 and the only loan I could get was for $12,500 and the APR was unreal. I ended up getting a personal loan, instead of a business loan, and that is what I used to fund my business.
Even the SBA loans didn't want anything to do with me because it was a food truck business...pretty demoralizing.
All of this is just food for thought to get your mind oriented towards the business aspect of things. Everybody told me to quit thinking like a pit-master and more of a business person, but it took me a while to make that switch. Initially my portions were large and my prices were a bit low, so after 3 months I was breaking almost dead even...working ~80 hours a week for zero profit. I made some changes on portion sizes, increased my prices, and found some cheaper alternatives for meat sources and things are finally looking better. I've also got a great following now so I've been able to branch out a bit from just lunch service into more vending-events and it's great!
Medic92 helped me a lot when I was getting my business off the ground, and he has offered up some good advice / wisdom in this thread already. Feel free to reach out to me if my post is unclear or if you'd like me to further explain anything I've said, or with just any other questions in general.
I will suggest that before you buy a smoker, or build a trailer, you have a sit down with the Health Department / Environmental Health and find out exactly what kind of equipment they will require you to have. Some places will ONLY allow a NSF smoker and if that's the case then your smoker budget is going to need to increase by a large percentage. Most NSF cookers start at $5K and ramp up from there pretty aggressively. Just trying to help you to avoid the mistakes I made : technically I don't need an NSF smoker in my city / county according to the Food Code, but the Health Inspectors want to see an NSF label regardless of what the Food Code states. As a note here I seem to have way more problems with my Health Department than anybody has with theirs, so your experience might not be such a pain.
OK, good luck moving forward!
Just a few things off the top of my head. Disclaimer : I just hit 1 year running a BBQ food trailer, so take what I say with that limited amount of experience in mind.
-Shotgun Smoker : looks like a great smoker but it's small. With such a small smoker you're going to severely limit your potential for growth. It's probably better to invest in a larger smoker so that you have room to grow. Again, this is just my experience...I have a large "hog style" smoker with an offset firebox for stickburning, and it has 2 propane burners so I can wrap the meat after a few hours and walk away until it's all done.
-Business : have you setup an LLC or similar business entity yet? If not I'd start working on it because it will take at least a month, and if the government is moving slow it can take multiple months. You'll also need a solid business model and even more importantly a solid MENU. I bring up the menu because it will dictate the exact type of equipment / cooker you'll need. Example : do you plan on using vegetables in any of your dishes? If so you're likely going to need a 5th sink just as a vegetable wash station. Most places will require you to have a 3 bay sink as well as a hand wash station. The menu is so important because it will let you know what size refrigerator you'll need, size of smoker, how much counter-top space / work tables, etc..
Have you looked around and are there any commissary kitchens available in your area? Can you afford to pay them with your current plan of just doing a few events or weekend work? There are no co-op kitchens in my county so my only way of getting a commissary kitchen was to go to just about every restaurant in town and ask them if I could use their place as a commissary. As you would imagine the answer was a resounding "NO." So this left me in a spot where I had all my equipment and was ready to go, but couldn't get permitted by the Health Department / Environmental Health.
-Equipment : have you decided on electric versus propane? Electric will require you to have a pretty large and powerful generator, while propane will require you to have access to LP and a couple of 100Lb tanks. What type of hot water system are you planning on going with, and is that compatible with the Food Code in your area? It's unreal how some counties will not allow tankless hot water heaters...such a joke.
-I highly recommend a steam table...I cheaped out when I bought my trailer and now I'm running with chafing dishes each day to keep the food warm...it's a huge pain in the butt and a steam table is such a better choice.
-Funding : Do you have all the money on hand for everything you need? There is little to no external funding for any kind of food operations. In terms of lending food trucks / trailers are considered to be the exact same thing as restaurants, and restaurants are one of the worst investments in the history of the human race. My trailer, all in, was about $20K, and I needed another $7K in equipment (generator, cooking equipment, initial stock), and another $3Kish for incidentals (liability insurance, licensing fees, inspections, registration, etc..). Both my wife and I have credit scores of over 800 and the only loan I could get was for $12,500 and the APR was unreal. I ended up getting a personal loan, instead of a business loan, and that is what I used to fund my business.
Even the SBA loans didn't want anything to do with me because it was a food truck business...pretty demoralizing.
All of this is just food for thought to get your mind oriented towards the business aspect of things. Everybody told me to quit thinking like a pit-master and more of a business person, but it took me a while to make that switch. Initially my portions were large and my prices were a bit low, so after 3 months I was breaking almost dead even...working ~80 hours a week for zero profit. I made some changes on portion sizes, increased my prices, and found some cheaper alternatives for meat sources and things are finally looking better. I've also got a great following now so I've been able to branch out a bit from just lunch service into more vending-events and it's great!
Medic92 helped me a lot when I was getting my business off the ground, and he has offered up some good advice / wisdom in this thread already. Feel free to reach out to me if my post is unclear or if you'd like me to further explain anything I've said, or with just any other questions in general.
I will suggest that before you buy a smoker, or build a trailer, you have a sit down with the Health Department / Environmental Health and find out exactly what kind of equipment they will require you to have. Some places will ONLY allow a NSF smoker and if that's the case then your smoker budget is going to need to increase by a large percentage. Most NSF cookers start at $5K and ramp up from there pretty aggressively. Just trying to help you to avoid the mistakes I made : technically I don't need an NSF smoker in my city / county according to the Food Code, but the Health Inspectors want to see an NSF label regardless of what the Food Code states. As a note here I seem to have way more problems with my Health Department than anybody has with theirs, so your experience might not be such a pain.
OK, good luck moving forward!
