Prep at home whatever eats into selling time at the stall and travels well. Leave for the stall whatever loses quality while it waits, and small jobs you can do in quiet spells without losing customers. Decide item by item rather than all or nothing: compare your time, transport and holding, quality and, above all, the sales you lose if you are chopping when the queue arrives.
What prepping at home costs
Home prep feels free because nobody is waiting. It is not.
- Your time. An hour in your kitchen is worth the same as any other working hour. Give it a fixed value and use it every time.
- Transport and holding. Lidded tubs, a cool box, ice packs, bags. Some of it wears out or gets used up.
- Waste from waiting. Food prepped hours early can arrive tired or be left over. If you throw out some of the chopped garnish at close, that is a cost of prepping it early.
- Cleaning. Home prep dirties your kitchen as well as the stall. The guide to setup and cleanup time shows how to count the time nobody writes down.
What doing it on site costs
- Lost sales. The biggest cost and the least visible. If you are prepping when people arrive, you serve more slowly and some walk away.
- Slower work. At the stall you have no sink, little bench space and poor light. A job that takes 25 minutes at home takes longer there.
- Arriving earlier. Prepping before opening means extra hours on the pitch.
- Water and waste. Washing and peeling on site needs water you carry in and scraps you carry out.
Quality and food safety
Some decisions are about quality before cost. Tortillas are warmed to order; a tortilla warmed an hour early goes stiff. A slow-braised filling, on the other hand, needs hours on a stove that you do not have at a stand.
Food safety decides too. The rules on transporting, holding and displaying cooked food vary by country, city and type of stall, and some places only allow prep in a registered kitchen. Check with your local council or health authority what applies to you, and for each item note how long it may be held and how, according to those rules. The guide to food safety basics that protect your margin covers how to organise it.
Worked example: a taco stand
You sell carnitas tacos at a lunchtime market. Each taco leaves a contribution margin of $2.40. You value your working hour at $18.
Item 1: the carnitas. The pork shoulder braises for about 4 hours, but only 40 minutes of that is hands-on: trimming, seasoning, shredding. There is no way to do this at the stand during service.
- Home: 40 ÷ 60 × $18 = $12.00 of your time, plus the insulated carrier you already own
- On site: not possible without a full kitchen
The carnitas go in the home column without much thought.
Item 2: onion and cilantro. Here the answer depends on the day.
Prep at home. Chopping takes 25 minutes. By close, some of the chopped cilantro has wilted and you throw it out; by your own count that is about $3.00 of onion and cilantro on a normal day.
- Your time: 25 ÷ 60 × $18 = $7.50
- Thrown out: $3.00
- Total: 7.50 + 3.00 = $10.50
Prep on site, on a weekday. You chop in two small rounds during quiet spells. Without a proper board it takes 30 minutes, nobody walks away, and nothing is thrown out because you chop only what you need.
- Your time: 30 ÷ 60 × $18 = $9.00
- Lost sales: $0
- Total: $9.00
On a weekday, chopping on site wins by 10.50 − 9.00 = $1.50 and the garnish is fresher.
Prep on site, on a busy Saturday. There are no quiet spells. Your notes show that on a Saturday when you tried chopping at the stand you sold about 10 fewer tacos than usual during that half hour.
- Your time: $9.00
- Lost sales: 10 × $2.40 = $24.00
- Total: 9.00 + 24.00 = $33.00
On a Saturday, chopping at home wins by 33.00 − 10.50 = $22.50.
If, when you trim the pork shoulder, you keep 700 g of usable meat from each kilo, the trim is the same wherever you do it. To see what a usable kilo really costs you, use the yield calculator.
Item by item
The carnitas answer does not apply to everything. Ask the same question for each item.
| Item | Where | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Carnitas | Home | Hours of cooking you cannot do at the stand |
| Salsa | Home | Needs a blender and time; holds well in a lidded tub |
| Onion and cilantro | Home on busy days, on site on quiet days | Lost sales on busy days, wilting on quiet ones |
| Tortillas | On site | Warmed to order or they go stiff |
| Limes | Cut on site | Takes minutes and dries out if cut early |
You do not need one rule for the whole week. Prep at home for the busy days and leave small jobs for the stall on the quiet ones.
Put it in your week
Once you know what goes in the home column, it belongs in your production plan: what you prep, which day and in what order, so you are not braising at the time you should be loading the van. The guide to production planning helps you set that order, and the street food and market stall guide puts it together with the rest of the stall's numbers.
Do it with the calculator
In the food cost calculator, enter your recipe with your prep time, ice and your real waste; switch an item from on-site to home prep and you will see how the loaded cost of each taco changes.
Frequently asked questions
Can I cook everything at home and just reheat at the stall?
It depends on the food and on what your local food safety rules allow for transporting and holding cooked food. Fried and crisp items almost always need finishing on site; braises and sauces often travel well.
How do I value my prep time at home?
Give your hour a fixed value, what you would pay yourself, and use it in every comparison. If you leave it out, home prep looks free and it is not.
What food safety rules apply to food I bring from home?
They vary by country, city and type of stall, and some places require prep in a registered kitchen. Check with your local council or health authority before you plan around home prep.
Is it worth prepping on site during quiet spells?
Often yes, for small, quick jobs that lose quality when made early. Count what you would lose if a queue formed while you were busy, and only prep on site on days when you know there are quiet spells.