By Heidi Macomber · October 15, 2026

Success stories in the food business usually come with a revenue number and no cost number. This series is about the operators who publish both. The second installment pairs two one-vehicle businesses from Business Insider's small-business reporting: a Minneapolis food truck whose owners walked a reporter through every dollar they spent before their first sale, and a New York City coffee cart operator who published his monthly bills and the exact price increase that cost him half his customers. Every number below comes from those two interviews.

The truck built from a $4,470 RV

In 2021, three friends in Minneapolis, Isaac Flomo, JT Tarwai, and Eddie Adegeye, found a 1996 Winnebago on the auction site K-bid.com. It had spent its life as a mobile dentistry unit, with under 400,000 miles and most of the dental equipment already stripped out. The winning bid was $4,470, split three ways: $1,490 each.

Then the stack of costs began. The axle needed immediate replacement, at $15,000. The renovation to turn a dental office into a commercial kitchen took two years and an estimated $100,000, most of it labor, and included an $8,000 fire-suppression system over the griddle to meet code. Put together:

Line Cost
Purchase price $4,470
Axle replacement $15,000
Renovation (includes the $8,000 fire-suppression system) $100,000
All-in before the first sale $119,470

Flo's Eats received its operating license on June 6, 2023. The truck now runs March through November, out five or six nights a week in peak season plus daytime lunch service, and has reached annual sales of $240,000. The article does not state weekly sales, so here is the arithmetic with the assumption shown: March through November is about 39 weeks, and $240,000 spread over 39 weeks is roughly $6,150 a week. Your own season length and closure days would move that number.

The menu stayed small on purpose. The best sellers, a $17 buttermilk-fried chicken sandwich and an $11 grilled cheese on garlic bread, have anchored the menu since the start. Flomo's answer to why: "Why change what's trusted and most popular?"

A caveat for anyone pricing out a truck. The three owners each had other businesses, so the two-year build did not have to feed three families, and the $100,000 renovation estimate is mostly labor in a market where they knew contractors. A first-time buyer should also notice which number surprised them. The axle was $15,000 on a $4,470 vehicle, more than three times the purchase price, and it arrived before the renovation even started.

The cart that tested a 25-cent increase

Petey Stathopoulos, 29, runs Peteys World Cafe, a coffee and breakfast pushcart at the corner of Park Avenue and East 32nd Street in Midtown Manhattan. His father had been in the food cart business for decades and told him: "Don't ever get into this business. This is the hardest and the worst business in the world. You'll destroy your life." During COVID, out of work and living at his parents' place, he got an ultimatum: buy the pushcart his father had found, or move out. He bought the cart and the business for about $35,000.

He publishes his monthly costs the way the truck owners publish their startup stack:

Cost Amount
Garage storage, Long Island City $350 a month
Baked goods $1,200 to $2,000 a month
Propane about $200 a month
Cleaning $50 a week

The cleaning line converts the same way any weekly bill does: $50 times 52 weeks is $2,600 a year, or about $217 a month. Add the garage and propane and the fixed non-food lines reach about $767 a month before a single pastry is bought. With baked goods included, his stated monthly costs run from roughly $1,967 to $2,767, and he notes the list leaves out insurance, gas, and maintenance.

The number that makes his story worth a series like this one is a price test. He raised his prices by $0.25, and in his words, "I lost about half of my customer base when I raised my prices by $0.25." A quarter. At a coffee cart, where individual items sell for a few dollars, a quarter is a visible percentage of the price, and his customers showed him exactly where the ceiling was.

Four years in, working 4 a.m. to about 11 a.m. five days a week, his summary is plain: "At the end of the day, I earn enough to simply maintain, but that's not a way to live." He is saving toward working in, and eventually owning, a specialty coffee shop.

What the two stories share

The truck's story is about what it cost to start. The cart's story is about what it costs to keep going. Flo's Eats spent $119,470 building a business from a stripped-out dental RV and grew it to $240,000 a year. Petey bought a going concern for $35,000 and found that even with his costs tracked to the dollar, the ceiling on his prices kept the business at maintenance level. One is a growth story with the full cost stack published. The other is a cost story with the price ceiling published. Most operators reveal neither half.

There is also a lesson in what each owner watched. The truck trio's decisive numbers were startup costs: purchase, surprise repair, buildout, code requirements. Petey's decisive numbers were recurring costs and price sensitivity: garage, propane, baked goods, and what a quarter did to his regulars. Which set matters more depends on which side of the purchase you are standing on.

Do this in your own shop

Three moves from these two stories you can make this week:

  1. Write your full stack before you buy. Purchase price, the repair the inspection might miss, the buildout, the code items like fire suppression. If the Flo's Eats axle taught anything, it is that the surprise line can dwarf the purchase line. Budget for it on paper instead of discovering it in a shop.
  2. Convert every weekly bill to monthly. Petey's $50-a-week cleaning is $217 a month, and that conversion is what makes a real fixed-cost total visible. Add up your own garage, propane, cleaning, and storage lines before your food costs, and you have the number a day of sales has to clear.
  3. Write down how many customers a price increase can cost you. Before your next increase, put a number on paper: the customers you could lose and still come out ahead. Petey's answer turned out to be less than half his base. You can work out your own break-even customer count with your sales history in the free demo at percyplate.com/demo.

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