Get your price wrong by 50p and a 100-cover day quietly hands back £50 of profit you will never see again. Get it right and the same day pays your pitch, your gas and your wages with money to spare. Pricing is the single biggest lever you have, and most new caterers pull it blind. Here is exactly how to price a mobile menu, with a full worked example you can copy in five minutes.
Why pricing a mobile unit is different
In a fixed restaurant the rent is the rent and you cook in one spot. On a pitch, your costs move with you: a tank of gas, the pitch or event fee, the diesel to get there, the disposables that walk out of the hatch with every order. Two caterers can sell the identical burger and one makes money while the other works a twelve-hour day for nothing, purely because one of them priced for the whole picture and the other copied the van down the road.
So forget what the next pitch charges. The only price that matters is the one built on your costs and a margin that covers the day. It starts with knowing what a single portion really costs to make.
Worked example: pricing a cheeseburger
Let us cost a quarter-pounder with cheese, the way you would before you ever pick a price. Every component, down to the napkin:
What one cheeseburger costs you to make
Typical 2026 UK wholesale prices · your figures will vary by supplier
| Brioche bun | £0.25 |
| 4oz beef patty | £0.70 |
| Slice of cheese | £0.12 |
| Onions, sauce, gherkin | £0.10 |
| Wrap, napkin, tray | £0.08 |
| Food cost per burger | £1.25 |
Sell at £4.50 → gross profit £3.25 a burger (a 72% margin)
The maths to get there is simple: divide your food cost by your target food-cost percentage. Aim for food to be about 28% of the price and a £1.25 burger prices at £1.25 ÷ 0.28 = roughly £4.50. Want a fatter margin in a premium spot? Target 25% and it climbs to £5.00. That one decision, made on purpose instead of by feel, is the difference between a healthy pitch and a busy one that breaks even.
Now check the day actually pays
A £3.25 margin per burger looks great until the day’s overheads turn up. Say you trade a pitch and sell 120 covers:
A day’s overheads, spread across 120 covers
| Pitch / event fee | £60 |
| Gas for the day | £15 |
| Diesel to and from | £20 |
| Disposables & cleaning | £15 |
| Overheads per cover | £0.92 |
Real profit per burger after overheads: about £2.33 — before your wages
This is the number that catches people out. Price only to beat the £1.25 food cost — say you sold at £3 — and after that 92p of overhead you are left with 83p a burger to pay yourself for a long, hot day. The same stall at £4.50 pays you properly. Nothing changed but the price.
“In twenty years of buying and selling trailers, the thing that separated a good pitch from a bad one was almost never the footfall. It was whether I knew the exact margin on every single item before I opened the hatch. The day I started costing everything to the penny was the day the business actually started making money.”
David Hinton · author of “Start Mobile Catering UK”, turned a £750 trailer into £8,500
Re-price when your costs move
Wholesale prices drift, especially meat, oil and gas. A margin that worked in spring can quietly slide by autumn until you are busy and broke again. Re-run your cost on any item that jumps and nudge the price to hold your margin. A 20p rise rarely loses a single customer; clawing a lost margin back later is far harder.
One more to build in early: once you are VAT-registered, most hot takeaway food is standard-rated at 20% VAT. Price as if you might cross the threshold so a future registration does not force an ugly price jump on your regulars.
A 15-second look at the Menu Pricing Calculator inside the MobCater app
Price any item in seconds, free
The MobCater app’s Pricing Calculator does this for you: type in what a portion costs and your target margin, and it hands back the sell price, or work backwards from a price to see your real margin. It is one of six planning calculators, and it is built into the free app you can start using today. No spreadsheet, no guesswork, no maths on the back of an order pad.
Get the free appFree to start · works on your phone · nothing to lose, yours to keep
Frequently asked questions
What profit margin should a burger van aim for?
A gross margin of 65 to 85 percent on food is the healthy range, which means food costs you 15 to 35 percent of the sell price. On a burger costing £1.25 to make, that points to a sell price around £4 to £5, leaving enough to cover gas, pitch fees, travel and your wages with profit on top.
How do I work out the price of a burger?
Add up the cost of every component of one portion, then divide by your target food-cost percentage. A £1.25 burger at a 28 percent food cost prices at £1.25 ÷ 0.28, which is about £4.50.
Why is my busy day not making money?
Usually because the price covers the food but not the day’s overheads. Pitch fees, gas, fuel and disposables can add 80p to £1 per cover. If your margin only beats the ingredient cost, those overheads come straight out of your wages.
Do I have to charge VAT on hot food?
Once you are VAT-registered, most hot takeaway food is standard-rated at 20 percent. Below the threshold you do not charge it, but price as if you might cross it so you are not forced into an awkward price rise later.