Food Trucks at Breweries: Handling Revenue Share and Host Fees

On this page 7 sections

1. Food Truck Brewery Revenue Share: Common Host Arrangements
2. Gross vs. Net: Should the Host's Cut Include Tips, Tax, and Card Fees?
3. Pulling a Clean Per-Event Sales Report From Your POS
4. Paying a Venue Percentage of Food Truck Sales: ACH, Check, or Settlement at Close
5. When the Venue Wants You on Its POS Instead
6. Contract Clauses That Prevent Payment Disputes With Hosts
7. Next Steps

Key takeaways

• Before your first service, agree in writing on exactly which dollars the host's percentage applies to: tips, sales tax, discounts, refunds, surcharges and card fees.
• Treat every brewery stop as its own reporting unit in your POS so you can produce a clean per-event report the night you close.
• Pay hosts on a predictable schedule, by a traceable method, with the sales report attached, and net out later refunds and chargebacks.
• If a venue wants all sales run through its POS, settle who is the merchant of record and who handles tax, tips and disputes before you agree.

A food truck brewery revenue share sounds simple. The brewery takes a percentage, and you keep the rest. The trouble starts on Monday morning, when you and the taproom manager are looking at different numbers. Yours might exclude tips and sales tax, while theirs might be the total charged at the window. This guide covers how host arrangements are usually structured and how to decide what the percentage applies to. It also shows how to pull a per-event report from your POS, how to pay the host cleanly and which contract terms head off disputes.

Food Truck Brewery Revenue Share: Common Host Arrangements

A brewery without its own kitchen may book trucks to keep customers around for a second or third pour. Some hosts charge nothing and treat the truck as an amenity. Others charge a fee, and it usually takes one of three forms.

Flat Fee

The truck pays a fixed food truck host venue fee per service, per weekend or per month. It's easy to budget for and easy to pay. It works against you on a slow, rainy Tuesday, though, because the fee stays the same whether you sell 20 plates or 200.

Revenue Share

The truck pays the brewery a percentage of sales from that stop. Your cost rises and falls with the crowd, so you're never paying a big fee on a dead night. On the other hand, you have to report sales to the host, and that reporting is where disagreements tend to begin.

Minimum Guarantee

This is a hybrid: the host gets a set minimum or a percentage, whichever is higher. It protects the brewery on slow nights and lets it share in the upside on release days, trivia nights and packed Saturday afternoons.

Food Truck Site Fee vs. Revenue Share

There's no standard brewery food truck percentage or flat fee. Terms depend on local demand, how many trucks want the spot, whether the brewery supplies power, seating and marketing, and how busy the taproom is. Compare any offer against your actual margins at that stop.

Gross vs. Net: Should the Host's Cut Include Tips, Tax, and Card Fees?

"10% of sales" can mean several different numbers. Spell out each of these items in writing.

Tips

Tips customers add at your window generally belong to the staff who earned them. Wage-and-hour laws in many places restrict employers from keeping tips or sharing them with people outside the tip pool. A host percentage that applies to tips can create problems on that front. Excluding tips from the revenue base avoids that problem. If you have questions about tip handling, confirm with an employment attorney. Our guide on whether you can deduct credit card fees from employee tips covers a related question.

Sales Tax

The sales tax you collect isn't your revenue. You're holding it for the taxing authority. Paying a host a percentage of tax means paying out money that was never yours. Exclude it, and make sure you're charging the right rate at each brewery's address. Rates can change across city and county lines. Our article on collecting the right sales tax rate at every stop walks through how.

Card Processing Fees

You can negotiate this one. One argument is that the percentage should apply after processing costs, since the truck pays those fees on every card sale, including the tax and tip portions. A host may push back because it doesn't want its cut to depend on your processing deal. Either answer can work if it's written down.

Discounts, Comps, Refunds, Surcharges and Cash Discounts

• Discounts and comps: These usually come out of the base, since the money was never collected.
• Refunds: Decide whether they're subtracted from the event where they happen or from the next payment.
• Surcharges or cash discount pricing: If you run a cash discount program or surcharge card payments where permitted, decide whether the fee portion counts as sales. Because it exists to offset processing costs, there's a good case for excluding it. Our guide to food truck surcharge and cash discount rules explains the compliance side.

Running the Numbers: An Illustrative Example

All figures below are illustrative, not typical results. Say a Saturday at a brewery produces:

At a hypothetical 10% revenue share, the host's cut changes depending on the base:

A gap of about $36 on one night looks small. Across a season of weekends, it adds up, and it's exactly the kind of difference that sours a good host relationship if nobody defined the base up front.

Pulling a Clean Per-Event Sales Report From Your POS

You can only report accurately if your POS keeps each brewery stop separate. A few habits make that easy.

1. Tag the event. Use whatever your system offers to separate it. Options include a dedicated location, device, order type, employee login or menu. If nothing else, check whether you can filter reports by date and time range.
2. Open and close cleanly. Start a new shift or sales period when you open at the brewery. Close your batch when service ends so card sales from the next stop don't bleed into this one.
3. Pull the right report. You want a sales summary that breaks out gross sales, discounts, refunds, net sales, tax, tips and payment type (card vs. cash).
4. Count cash the same night. Reconcile the drawer against the POS cash total and note any overage or shortage.
5. Account for preorders. If customers order ahead for pickup at the brewery, make sure those sales land in the event report too. Our guide to preorders when your location changes covers setup.
6. Save the report as a PDF or export. Attach it to every payment you send the host.

If your current system makes this hard, it may be time to compare options. Our breakdown of the best food truck POS features for a moving kitchen explains what to look for. Handheld devices such as mobile card terminals also let you take orders in the beer line, which can help on packed nights.

Paying a Venue Percentage of Food Truck Sales: ACH, Check, or Settlement at Close

When you're paying a venue percentage of food truck sales, how you pay matters almost as much as how much.

A few practical rules:

• Pay from settled funds. Card sales usually reach your bank a short time after the batch closes. A weekly or monthly payment cycle gives deposits time to land and refunds time to surface.
• Always attach the report. One page showing the base, the percentage and the math prevents most follow-up questions.
• If you pay cash, get a signed receipt. Note the date, the event and the amount.
• Keep records for tax time. Depending on how payments to the host are classified and how the host's business is structured, you may have information reporting obligations. Ask your accountant how to treat these payments.

When the Venue Wants You on Its POS Instead

Some breweries prefer to ring up food on their own system so customers can run one tab for beer and tacos. The brewery then pays the truck its share minus the house cut. It's convenient for customers, but it changes your position.

Before you agree, settle these questions:

• Who is the merchant of record? If the brewery processes your food sales through its merchant account, its processor needs to know. Running another business's sales through a merchant account without disclosure can violate the merchant agreement, so the venue should confirm the arrangement is approved. Neither party should treat it as a workaround.
• Who collects and remits sales tax on the food, and under whose permit?
• Who handles tips for your crew, and how do they reach you?
• How fast do you get paid? Waiting for a monthly check from the venue can strain a truck's cash flow.
• Who absorbs refunds and chargebacks on food orders?
• What data do you get? Without item-level reports, you lose insight into your own menu performance.
• How does tax reporting work? If the venue collects payments on your behalf, the question of who receives payment-network tax forms can get complicated. Our explainer on 1099-K reporting when one business collects for others covers the basics. Confirm the specifics with a tax professional.

Keeping your own processing and reporting to the host is usually simpler, and it keeps you in control of your money.

Contract Clauses That Prevent Payment Disputes With Hosts

A one-page agreement is fine as long as it covers the following:

• Revenue base definition: List what is included and excluded, naming tips, tax, discounts, refunds, surcharges and card fees.
• Percentage, flat fee or minimum: State the number and how a minimum guarantee is calculated.
• Reporting: Set what report you provide, in what format and by what deadline.
• Payment terms: Specify method, schedule and where payments go.
• Adjustments: Explain how later refunds and chargebacks are netted against future payments.
• Audit rights: Decide whether the host can review POS reports, and how often.
• Cancellations and weather: Say who owes what if the brewery cancels, the event is rained out or you can't make it.
• Catering and private bookings: Define whether events booked through the brewery are covered. Our guide to pricing private food truck events can help you set those terms.
• Utilities and exclusivity: Note power, water, parking and whether other trucks can book the same night.
• Dispute process: Name who to contact and how quickly discrepancies must be raised.

This is general information, not legal advice. Have an attorney review agreements before you sign.

Next Steps

Before your next brewery booking, write down your revenue base. Set your POS to separate each stop, and pick a payment method that leaves a paper trail. A clear report and a predictable payment schedule do more for a host relationship than any percentage negotiation.

If you want help with the payment side, MannyPay works with mobile food businesses on food truck payment processing, POS systems and fee programs. Request a free quote, and a MannyPay specialist will respond within one business day.

ME

About the author

MannyPay Editorial Team

Beyond the Swipe's editorial desk researches the publication's guides and news and cites its sources in every article. Articles reviewed by a named MannyPay editor carry that editor's byline.

This article is for general educational purposes and is not legal, tax or financial advice. Card network rules and state laws change; confirm current requirements for your business.