Effect of Location on Food Truck Revenue Given
Demographics and Human Geography
Liudi Yang & Christian Siason
Introduction
Food trucks have recently made an appearance in the
cultural scene of large cities in America. There are
currently 58 food trucks that are members of the NYC
Food Truck Association, some with multiple trucks
citywide (citation). The recent popularity is
understandable since food trucks offer dishes created
by notable chefs at low prices and reasonable wait
times. As is the case with many small businesses,
location is crucial for a food trucks’ success. The
purpose of this project is to see if there is a correlation
between the revenue of the trucks and the human
geography of that area. The larger goal is to predict
where to place food trucks so that they will make the
most profit.
Data
Results and Conclusion
Revenue of the food trucks were taken from
observations of their earnings over a half an hour
interval. The times for data collections were all the
same, and on weekdays. The revenue in the graphs
below reflect those earnings times two.
Mass Transit Density:
After analyzing our data, we have found that there
is a strong positive correlation between mass
transit density and food truck revenue. (We have
yet to gather and analyze data on the amount of
tourists and workers in the areas of the trucks.)
Note: This equation was created with consideration of frequency of rides. The number of each
transit type corresponds to a 0.25 mile radius around the location.
Methodology
We found food truck revenue through observation of
the trucks’ activity over a period of half an hour: we
watched as people went to the food trucks to
purchase food. Taking into account menu prices, we
were able to translate the amount of customers into
actual sales numbers.
Revenue (dollars/hour)
Mass Transit Density vs. Revenue (Wafels
and Dinges)
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References
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http://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Documents/Ridership/2013-q1-ridership-APTA.pdf
http://www.mta.info/nyct/facts/ridership/#atGlance_b
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Mass Transit Density
Food trucks differ by the type of food they serve:
meals or snacks/deserts. We selected the Korilla BBQ
and Wafels and Dinges trucks to get an overall view of
the two types of trucks.
We found mass transit statistics by counting the
subway, bus, and LIRR stations that were located
within a ¼ mile radius of the trucks and we took the
amount of annual riders and taking into consideration
the fact that each type of transit had a different
amount of riders, we assigned a constant to each type
of transit in order to reflect this. We then analyzed our
findings to see if there was a correlation between
mass transit density and food truck revenue. (We will
add tourism and work force statistics.)
Acknowledgments