Concession Trailer Business – 7

At this point in planning your concession trailer business, you need to decide about your power, water, and waste sources.

We will start with deciding where you will get all that precious, much needed electricity.

You can use a generator, which is good, if you move from spot to spot regularly. For example, if you have 3 roadside location which you set up regularly thru the week. You can run a heavy-duty extension cord and plug in somewhere, which is good if the power is readily available to run everything you have in the trailer.

You do not want to do this if all you have to plug into is a regular 20-amp outlet. You will continually be resetting breakers and having power outages which will soon become very frustrating for you.

But if there is plenty of power (I recommend at least 50 amps) go for it and I would also suggest offering to pay a monthly fee for this power if it is available to you.

Your final choice is calling your power company and having them set a power pole and meter at your location. Now this only works out to your advantage if you stay in the same spot continually. Every city differs on the price they charge for doing this service. Anywhere from $85 to $1000. In the long run you will appreciate the convenience no matter what the cost is. You will get the bill sent to you like you do at home and you can keep up with how much you are spending on electricity as well.

Deciding whether to haul your fresh water or hook straight up to the city is your next decision.

There are pros and cons to both. My thoughts have always been that you don’t use that much water anyway so why pay a huge amount to hook up to the city when you are already paying to get this service at home and it is hardly any trouble at all hauling the water from home and filling your tanks. Most concession business owners take there dirty dishes home to wash every evening anyway so the only water you are actually using is to wash your hands with.

Even if you did clean your dirty dishes on site you probably would not use over 10 gallons a day. To me it’s just not worth it but it’s your decision so you can decide.

Wastewater disposal is the same way. It is a lot easier to dispose of it yourself than to pay to hook up to the city. All It is, is dirty dishwater anyway and no big deal to drain the tank into a container and empty it at home in the sink. You could also get a service to come by once a day or 3 times a week to empty your tank for a very reasonable fee. Just keep in mind whatever you do make it as convenient at possible.

You want to keep your business fun and not turn it into a job.

Keep in mind that the more you are hooked up to like city water and waste the more codes you will have to follow and more hassles. To some these hassles might be worth it. You just have to decide for yourself. Ok moving right along to step eight…

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