Mobile Food Services (U.S.) — Industry Primer

NAICS 2022 code 722330. NAICS stands for the North American Industry Classification System, the standard the U.S. and Canadian governments use to sort businesses into industries.

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1. Overview

Mobile Food Services is the food-truck-and-cart business: companies that prepare and serve meals and snacks for immediate eating from a vehicle or a pushcart — taco trucks, gourmet trucks at office parks, ice cream trucks, hot dog carts, shaved-ice trailers, festival concessions, and mobile catering rigs [1].

It is one of the smallest and most fragmented corners of the U.S. restaurant economy, and almost entirely a small-business industry. Federal statistics put tax-filing revenue at roughly $3.0 billion a year across about 10,000 firms [2], but the number of trucks actually on the road is much larger, because most are one-person operations that don't show up cleanly in employer data (Section 3 details the undercount).

Why an investor cares. This is not a place to buy a "food-truck stock" — there is no meaningful publicly traded pure-play operator. The industry matters instead in two ways. For private and entrepreneurial investors it is a fast, low-capital on-ramp: own a truck, buy a franchise, or back the commissary/ghost-kitchen and event infrastructure underneath the trucks. For public-market investors it is reachable only indirectly, through the diversified "picks-and-shovels" companies that supply it — payment terminals, vehicle chassis, delivery platforms, and food distribution. It is a growing, flexible food-service format that remains highly fragmented, locally regulated, operationally intensive, and poorly captured by federal employer statistics.

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2. What it is and how it's structured

Scope. NAICS 722330 covers establishments whose main activity is preparing and serving food and drink for immediate consumption from motorized vehicles or non-motorized carts — food trucks, mobile canteens, mobile concession stands, hot-dog carts, ice-cream trucks, and mobile snack or refreshment stands [1]. A defining quirk: the Census Bureau counts the central location that services the route — the commissary or home base — as the "establishment," not each individual truck or cart [1]. So one company running six trucks is generally a single establishment, which is why establishment counts understate the number of vehicles on the road.

What it excludes (and where those activities sit instead) [1]:

• Fixed-location restaurants — full-service (NAICS 722511), limited-service/fast food (722513), and snack-and-nonalcoholic-beverage bars (722515). A truck that parks permanently and becomes a stall drifts toward these codes.
• Caterers who cook from a fixed commercial kitchen and deliver — NAICS 722320. The line is blurry: many trucks also cater, and many caterers also run trucks.
• Food-service contractors (722310) running cafeterias and concessions under contract.
• Vending-machine operators and sellers of unprepared food from carts — separate retail classifications.
• Packaged-food makers and grocers (NAICS sectors 311 and 445).

Operating formats. Independent owner-operated trucks and carts; small local fleets running recurring routes; event-focused operators (festivals, campuses, weddings, sports, corporate); branded franchisors whose units are independently owned; and hybrid brands that start mobile and later add fixed restaurants, commissaries, or packaged products.

Ownership mix. Overwhelmingly sole proprietors, single-member LLCs (limited liability companies), and small family operators — one truck, an owner who often cooks and drives, and a handful of part-time staff. Federal data show roughly 3 paid employees per employer establishment on average [3]. (The federal statistics do not publish a formal split among sole proprietorships, corporations, franchises, and PE-backed firms; that breakdown is not in the ground-truth data.) Layered on top are three organized players: franchise systems (Kona Ice, Mister Softee, Cousins Maine Lobster), a handful of multi-truck operators in big metros, and an infrastructure layer — shared commissary kitchens, catering-booking marketplaces, and payment/point-of-sale providers — where most of the scalable, investable money actually is.

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3. How big it is

Prefer these federal figures:

CBP = County Business Patterns, the Census Bureau's annual count of employer businesses. SBA = U.S. Small Business Administration; its size standard is the receipts ceiling below which a firm counts as "small" for federal programs — and at $9 million, essentially every firm in this industry qualifies [5].

The undercount — important here. Two things make the federal figures understate the real footprint:

1. Non-employer businesses. County Business Patterns and the Economic Census cover firms with payroll; they exclude the self-employed, businesses with no employer identification number (EIN), and EIN-holders with no employees [3][4]. A large share of mobile vendors are owner-operators with no paid employees — sole proprietors filing a Schedule C, seasonal or part-time, often cash-heavy. Private industry trackers that count these one-person businesses put the population far higher: IBISWorld counts roughly 92,000 food-truck "businesses" in the U.S. in 2025 [6], versus the ~10,000–12,500 employer firms/establishments in federal data [2][3]. The gap is mostly non-employers.
2. The route-vs-vehicle definition. Because an "establishment" is the home base, not the vehicle, the count of physical trucks and carts is higher still than the establishment count [1].

Treat the published federal totals as an employer-business baseline, not a complete census of all mobile vendors. One further caution: the 2023 CBP release and the 2022 Economic Census concentration release are built on slightly different NAICS vintages, so they are not a perfectly consistent same-basis time series [3][2].

Why private market-size estimates vary so much. Commercial research firms disagree widely — from about $1.1 billion (Mordor Intelligence, a narrow value-added measure) to $2.0–2.8 billion (Grand View Research), depending on whether they count value-added service revenue or gross sales [7][8]. Treat any single private number with caution. The cleanest apples-to-apples revenue figure is the federal Economic Census receipts of ~$3.0 billion (2022) [2] — which lines up with reporting that the sector is "nearing $3 billion" [9].

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4. The investable universe

There is no pure-play publicly traded food-truck operator — no U.S.-listed company whose filings identify NAICS 722330 as a material segment. The largest branded systems (Kona Ice, Mister Softee) are private. Public-market exposure is therefore entirely indirect: you buy the companies that supply or platform the trucks. Private investors get direct exposure through franchises and infrastructure.

Public "picks-and-shovels" (indirect exposure). Mobile food is a rounding error for every company below — none is a "bet on food trucks."

Ticker note: Block trades as XYZ (changed from SQ in 2025). Public franchised-restaurant operators such as CAVA Group (CAVA, NYSE) and Yum! Brands (YUM, NYSE) are sometimes cited as reference points for restaurant unit economics and franchise/royalty models, but they are fixed-location businesses, not 722330 proxies.

Major private / franchise owners (direct exposure).

• Kona Ice — the largest food-truck franchise, a shaved-ice system owned by founder Tony Lamb. The company reports more than 2,500 units run by 700+ franchisees across all 50 states [22], with roughly $352 million in system-wide gross sales in 2024, up ~56% from 2022 [12]. Uniquely, it builds its own trucks and charges a flat royalty (~$3,000–$4,000 per truck per year) instead of a percentage of sales [12].
• Mister Softee — describes itself as the largest U.S. franchiser of soft-serve ice-cream trucks: 625+ trucks, 350+ franchise dealers, operating in 18 states [21].
• Cousins Maine Lobster — lobster-roll trucks and restaurants; co-founded by Sabin Lomac and Jim Tselikis in 2012, a "Shark Tank" alumnus backed by Barbara Corcoran; ~66 mobile units, combining franchised trucks with fixed restaurants and centralized support [12][23].
• The Halal Guys — began as a New York cart in 1990 and now mixes carts, restaurants, and franchising [24]. Plus Frios Gourmet Pops (~70 units) [12], legacy ice-cream fleets, and thousands of independent single-truck operators.

Private infrastructure (venture/PE exposure). Shared commissary and "ghost/cloud kitchen" networks such as CloudKitchens (private; founded by former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick) and REEF Technology, plus catering-booking marketplaces (ezCater, Roaming Hunger). This layer is where scaled private capital concentrates, because a single kitchen or platform serves many trucks. The federal government publishes no national owner roster; these are examples, not a ranking.

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5. How the money works

Food trucks are a per-vehicle unit-economics business — closer to a very small restaurant that pays almost no rent than to a chain. Revenue comes from walk-up transactions, pre-booked private and corporate events, festivals/sports/school and workplace programs, delivery and digital orders, and (for some) merchandise, packaged products, or franchise royalties. The core costs are food and packaging; labor and payroll taxes; commissary/cold-chain; fuel, repairs, insurance, and permits; parking/site/event fees; and payment-processing and delivery-platform fees.

A representative single truck (industry-tracker estimates, not federal data — the federal file does not publish industry margins or utilization) [13][14]:

• Annual revenue: commonly $250,000–$500,000, averaging around $300,000–$350,000; daily takings roughly $500–$2,000 depending on location and concept.
• Food (cost of goods): ~25–35% of sales.
• Labor: ~20–30% of sales (often lower for owner-operators who work the window themselves).
• Other costs: fuel, propane, commissary rent, permits/insurance, and maintenance.
• Net profit margin: roughly 6–9% for a truck with employees, and 15%+ for a lean owner-operator [13][14] — better than a typical sit-down restaurant's 1–3%, because the truck skips expensive real estate and drives to where the customers are.

Startup capital: roughly $50,000–$200,000, with the truck itself $30,000–$100,000+ used or $75,000–$150,000 custom-built [13]. Break-even typically lands between six months and two years.

The catering lever. The single biggest margin story is private and corporate catering — weddings, company events, festivals — which pays guaranteed minimums of ~$1,500–$5,000+ per event and is far more profitable than random street traffic [15][16]. Reports suggest catering demand is growing roughly twice as fast as truck supply, with about half of posted catering events going unfilled [15][16] — a real forward-looking opportunity, not a guaranteed outcome.

Metrics that matter (more informative than a restaurant's "same-store sales," since trucks move): sales per service day and per service hour; orders per hour and average ticket; food and labor cost as a percent of sales; contribution margin per truck before overhead; truck uptime and repair days; same-route and same-event sales; event-booking pipeline and repeat-event rate; digital-order share; and cash payback period per vehicle.

How the organized players make money: franchisors earn royalties and truck-build margins (Kona Ice's flat per-truck royalty is unusually franchisee-friendly [12]); POS/payment firms earn software subscriptions plus a cut of every card swipe; commissary operators earn rent and per-use fees; chassis makers and distributors earn on the vehicle and the food that flows through it.

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6. What drives demand

• Events and catering — festivals, concerts, fairs, sporting events, campuses, weddings, and especially corporate catering, the fastest-growing slice [15][16].
• Office-district lunch traffic — a core weekday revenue source that softened as remote and hybrid work thinned out downtown foot traffic.
• Younger consumers — millennials and Gen Z over-index on trucks for novelty, variety, price, and social-media discoverability [7][8].
• Breweries, taprooms, and food-truck parks — venues without kitchens that host rotating trucks, giving operators reliable stops.
• Cuisine variety and low price point — trucks let chefs test concepts cheaply and undercut sit-down pricing, and test a neighborhood before committing to a permanent site.
• Digital ordering and location apps — online/delivery ordering is projected to grow faster than the walk-up business [7].
• Franchising — transfers a proven menu and operating system to local owners.

Because most of these are discretionary and event-driven, demand is cyclical and weather-sensitive: strong in warm months and good economies, weak in cold snaps, rain, and downturns. The strongest concepts combine a clear food identity with reliable scheduling, visible locations, fast service, and repeat local demand.

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7. Regulation

Mobile food is one of the most heavily and confusingly regulated small businesses in America, because several agencies govern it at once and the operational rules are almost entirely local [17][18][19].

Local operating permits (the binding layer):

• County/city health department issues the core mobile food establishment permit and requires a commissary agreement — a licensed commercial kitchen where the truck preps food, refills water, dumps wastewater, and cleans; in most jurisdictions the truck must return to the commissary daily [19].
• Fire marshal inspects propane and fire-suppression systems [19].
• City issues the mobile vending permit and sets where and when you may park.
• DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) handles commercial vehicle registration; plus a business license and sales-tax collection.

Two politically charged issues:

1. Proximity ("distance") restrictions. Many cities bar trucks from parking within a set distance of brick-and-mortar restaurants — among the most contested rules in the industry, frequently challenged in court (the Institute for Justice and others have sued to strike them as protectionist) [18].
2. Permit caps. Some cities cap the number of vending permits. New York City famously capped citywide permits for decades, creating years-long waitlists and a gray market in which permits were sub-rented for tens of thousands of dollars; recent local laws are phasing in thousands of additional permits over several years [17]. The broad trend is gradual loosening and permit expansion, though it remains a city-by-city patchwork.

Federal overlay:

• Food safety. Standards derive from the FDA Food Code (the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's model code, updated 2022), which expressly covers mobile facilities; states and localities adopt and enforce it through their health departments [20].
• Labor. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) sets federal minimum-wage, overtime, recordkeeping, and tip-credit/tip-pooling rules; state and local law can be stricter [10].
• Franchising. The Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Franchise Rule requires a franchisor to give prospects a Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) — 23 specified items — generally at least 14 days before any signing or payment [11].
• Federal small-business status. The SBA's $9 million size standard matters for federal small-business programs, not for market size or valuation [5].

Operators should also plan for insurance, accessibility, and local event contracts.

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8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

This is about as fragmented as an industry gets. Federal concentration data (2022) [2]:

• CR4 = 1.5% — the four largest firms together hold just 1.5% of revenue.
• CR8 = 2.6%, CR20 = 4.8%, CR50 = 8.8% — even the top 50 firms are under a tenth of the market.
• HHI = 1.8 — the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (a standard 0–10,000 antitrust concentration score) is essentially zero, indicating near-perfect fragmentation. (CR4/CR8/… = the combined revenue share of the top 4/8/… firms.)

There is effectively no consolidation at the operator level — barriers to entry are low, one truck is one business, and scale gives little cost advantage. Competition is local: for high-traffic sites, event calendars and corporate bookings, digital discovery, reliable employees, and commissary capacity. Rivals include other trucks, fast-food and fast-casual chains, convenience retail, and brick-and-mortar restaurants — the last of which also lobby for the proximity rules that constrain trucks.

Where consolidation is happening is one layer up, through:

• Franchising — the main way any brand scales (Kona Ice, Mister Softee, Cousins Maine Lobster) [12][21].
• Infrastructure platforms — shared commissaries/ghost kitchens, procurement, route-density and POS software, delivery/ordering platforms, and event-booking networks, which serve many independent trucks at once.
• Occasional acquisitions of regional fleets.

Local fragmentation is likely to persist, because permits, weather, routes, and tastes are all local — brand systems can scale but cannot eliminate the need for local execution.

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9. Risks

• Cyclicality. Spending is discretionary; recessions and pullbacks in events and corporate budgets hit revenue directly.
• Weather and seasonality. Cold, rain, heat, and short winters make cash flow lumpy, especially outside the Sun Belt.
• Input-cost inflation. Food, fuel, and equipment costs squeeze already-thin margins, and small operators have little purchasing power to push increases through; industry revenue growth was reported roughly flat (~0.2%) in 2025 amid these pressures [6][9].
• Location and permit risk. A permit change, construction, parking restriction, proximity ban, or lost recurring site can cut revenue quickly, and multi-agency red tape can block a whole city market [17][18].
• Vehicle / single-point-of-failure operations. One truck, one engine, one owner — a breakdown, refrigeration failure, accident, injury, or lost permit can halt all revenue. Undercapitalization and cash-heavy bookkeeping add fragility.
• Food-safety and labor-compliance risk. A single contamination or safety incident can damage cash flow and brand; wage, overtime, tip, and worker-classification errors under the FLSA can create penalties and litigation.
• Event and platform concentration. Reliance on a few festivals or corporate clients is fragile; delivery marketplaces add volume but cut margins and customer ownership.
• High turnover. A frequently cited (but not federally verified) claim holds that a majority of food trucks fail within their first year; whatever the exact number, churn is high and durable brands are rare [9].
• Erosion of the lunch base. Persistent remote/hybrid work has permanently thinned some downtown weekday traffic.
• Data risk. Employer-only federal statistics understate the smallest part of the market, making market sizing and failure-rate analysis genuinely hard.

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10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public-market routes (indirect only). There is no food-truck stock to buy. Thematic exposure comes from the enablers: restaurant POS/payments (Toast, Block/Square, Fiserv/Clover, PAR), delivery platforms (DoorDash, Uber), vehicle chassis (Ford, Stellantis, GM), and food distribution (Sysco, US Foods, Performance Food Group) [25][26]. Treat these as different businesses whose share prices, dividends, and valuation multiples reflect company-specific economics — mobile food is immaterial to each, so you are buying broad restaurant-tech, auto, and distribution exposure, not a food-truck bet.

Private / direct routes (where the real industry access is):

1. Own and operate a truck — $50,000–$200,000 to start, ~6–9% net margins with staff and more solo, break-even in months to years [13][14]. High effort, high failure rate, direct control.
2. Acquire a small local fleet — build route density and event coverage.
3. Buy a franchise — Kona Ice, Mister Softee, Cousins Maine Lobster and peers offer a proven playbook, brand, and truck build in exchange for fees and royalties; read the FDD before committing [12][11].
4. Back the infrastructure — commissary kitchens, food-truck parks (real estate), ghost-kitchen networks, and catering/event platforms. This is where private-equity and venture capital concentrate, because one asset serves many trucks.

For any private deal, underwrite on route-level bank and POS data, service-day history, food and labor costs, permits, vehicle-maintenance records, insurance claims, event contracts, payroll compliance, franchise disclosures and territory terms, and a realistic working-capital reserve — not on federal industry totals.

Near-term drivers and outlook (forward-looking judgment):

• Independent forecasters project modest mid-single-digit annual growth — Grand View Research sees ~6% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) toward ~$2.0 billion by 2030 on its measure; Mordor sees ~6.5% CAGR to 2031 [7][8]. The measures differ, and nobody credible projects explosive growth.
• The strongest tailwind is catering and corporate events, where demand is outrunning truck supply [15][16].
• Ghost-kitchen/commissary integration and better POS and catering software should keep lifting per-truck productivity, and franchises/procurement/event networks should keep organizing the top of the market.
• The near-term headwind is cost inflation and flat 2025 growth [6][9], plus lingering downtown-lunch softness.

Bottom line. Mobile Food Services is a large number of very small businesses generating roughly $3 billion in tax-reported revenue [2] — a vibrant, low-barrier, intensely fragmented small-business and franchise sector, not a public-equity growth story. For private and entrepreneurial investors it is a genuine, accessible market; for public-market investors it is reachable only through the diversified companies that supply it. The best outcomes, on either side, go to units with diversified service calendars, high vehicle uptime, repeat local demand, and clear evidence of cash generated after all labor, maintenance, permit, and overhead costs.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau. 2022 NAICS Definition — 722330 Mobile Food Services. https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=722330&year=2022&details=722330
2. U.S. Census Bureau. 2022 Economic Census — Concentration & Receipts, NAICS 722330 (receipts ~$3.02B; 10,062 firms; CR4 1.5%, CR8 2.6%, CR20 4.8%, CR50 8.8%, HHI 1.8). https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022.EC2200SIZECONCEN?g=010XX00US&n=722330
3. U.S. Census Bureau. County Business Patterns 2023, NAICS 722330 (12,487 establishments; 38,438 employees; ~$996M annual payroll; ~$197M Q1 payroll) and CBP methodology (employer-only coverage). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
4. U.S. Census Bureau. Nonemployer Statistics — Overview (definition of non-employer / self-employed businesses). https://www.census.gov/econ/overview/mu0500.html
5. U.S. Small Business Administration. Table of Small Business Size Standards (NAICS 722330 = $9.0 million), effective March 17, 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
6. IBISWorld. Food Trucks in the US — Number of Businesses (≈92,000, 2025). https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/number-of-businesses/food-trucks/4322/
7. Grand View Research. U.S. Food Truck Services Market Report (and press release: market worth ~$2.04B by 2030, ~6.4% CAGR). https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-food-truck-services-market-report
8. Mordor Intelligence. United States Food Truck Market Size & Trends Report, 2026–2031. https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/united-states-food-truck-market
9. CNBC. America's food trucks are nearing a $3 billion business, but the road to success is getting rougher. Nov 1, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/01/food-truck-restaurant-billion-dollar-business-keys-success-costs.html
10. U.S. Department of Labor. Fair Labor Standards Act — Fact Sheet #15: Tipped Employees. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/15-tipped-employees-flsa
11. Federal Trade Commission. Franchise Rule and A Consumer's Guide to Buying a Franchise (FDD; 23 items; 14-day rule). https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/consumers-guide-buying-franchise
12. Franchise Times. Food Truck Franchises Capitalize on Growing Sector (Kona Ice ~$352M 2024 system sales, flat per-truck royalty; Cousins Maine Lobster ~66 units; Frios ~70). https://www.franchisetimes.com/franchise_news/food-truck-franchises-capitalize-on-growing-sector/article_9b8eece6-dafe-45cf-8176-50d893ec20fb.html
13. Toast. How Much Do Food Trucks Make? (2025 Data) (average revenue, margins, startup cost). https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/on-the-line/how-much-do-food-trucks-make
14. FoodTruckLease. Food Truck Profitability Guide: Income & Profit Margins. https://www.foodtrucklease.com/blog/how-profitable-is-food-truck
15. Otter. Food Truck Trends (catering demand vs. supply; margins). https://www.tryotter.com/blog/industry-news/food-truck-trends
16. Food Truck Club / Curbside. Food Truck Catering Industry Report (event pricing; unfilled events). https://app.foodtruckclub.com/curbside/food-truck-catering-industry-report
17. NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene. Mobile Food Vendor Regulations. https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/business/food-operators/mobile-and-temporary-food-vendors.page
18. Municipal Research and Services Center (MRSC). Regulating Food Trucks (proximity restrictions; legal challenges). Aug 2025. https://mrsc.org/stay-informed/mrsc-insight/august-2025/regulating-food-trucks
19. StartPermit. How to Start a Food Truck: Permits, Commissary Requirements, Fire Suppression, and Startup Costs. https://startpermit.com/blog/how-to-start-a-food-truck/
20. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Food Code 2022 and State Retail and Food Service Codes and Regulations by State. https://www.fda.gov/food/fda-food-code/food-code-2022
21. Mister Softee. About Us (largest U.S. soft-serve-truck franchiser; 625+ trucks, 350+ dealers, 18 states). https://mistersoftee.com/about-us/
22. Kona Ice (OwnAKona). About Our Shaved Ice Franchise (2,500+ units, 700+ franchisees, all 50 states; owned by Tony Lamb). https://www.ownakona.com/about-our-franchise/
23. Cousins Maine Lobster. Press Kit / Franchise (founders, 2012; trucks + fixed restaurants). https://www.cousinsmainelobster.com/press/kit
24. The Halal Guys. About Us (cart founded 1990; carts, restaurants, franchising). https://thehalalguys.com/about-us/
25. Toast, Inc. Food Truck POS System (public-company POS built for trucks). https://pos.toasttab.com/restaurant-pos/food-truck
26. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (EDGAR). Form 10-K filings — Toast (TOST), DoorDash (DASH), Uber Technologies (UBER). https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany