Two Year Warranty
Karpatia’s Custom Coffee Trucks: Built to Respect your Craft
Get a Coffee Food Truck that’s trusted by independent artisan baristas and Fortune 500 coffee brands.
A coffee truck investment is a personal thing for baristas who serve discerning coffee lovers. That’s why we custom build our mobile coffee solutions around your specific workflows and dreams. Respecting your craft is our key to your success in this artisanal sector.
Karpatia’s Discovery Process for Coffee Food Trucks
Whether you’re looking for a coffee shop food truck outside your brick and mortar store, a mobile coffee solution that can take you to meet customers on the go, or a full-scale coffee concession trailer for big events, our coffee food truck builds are custom designed around your craft, with an eye to satisfying your discerning customers.
Getting to Know the Barista Truck Operator: Our discovery process plays a vital role in helping us design a fitting custom coffee truck solution that respects your craft and specific workflow needs.
What is your brand about? What type of coffee are you serving? Why? How experienced are you or how much help in setting up the business do you need? How are you sourcing your coffee? Who are your customers and where do you intercept them?
But don’t be intimidated. This is a process we walk through together as partners with one goal – designing the turnkey coffee truck solution that’s the best fit for you. Once we’re confidently all on the same page, you can rest assured you’ll receive a barista truck that’s Made with Karpatia’s Passion but Built for YOUR Coffee Business.
Let this Custom Coffee Truck Tip Percolate
If you intend on serving only coffee, many of the food truck code requirements are less stringent, which means the usual triple sink and vent hood wouldn’t apply. However, we do recommend including them in your custom build if you think your current strategy might evolve.
Karpatia’s Custom Coffee Truck Solutions
Our coffee shop food truck is made to order and we leverage our true custom design capabilities to ensure every detail of your mobile coffee shop is built around your unique needs and aesthetic hopes.
But first, we need to decide on a base unit that does your coffee concept justice and work up to perfection from there. We can guide you in the right direction but, for now, have a look at the options we offer below and let them percolate in your mind for a second. If one in particular resonates with you, let us know!
THE STEP VAN COFFEE TRUCK: Big Volume for Busy Baristas
The Step Van Food Truck makes for a GREAT mobile coffee shop. It’s a highly durable workhorse that offers a wealth of space. This gives you enough room to go for a full diner styled coffee van or go the boutique mobile cafe route serving a dazzling array of modern coffee options.
Using an older Vintage Step Van as the base can achieve a similar outcome with a surprisingly affordable price tag, and that vintage look and feel goes with mobile cafe solutions like Beignets go with a dark roast!
THE COFFEE TUK TUK: For an up close and personal touch.
Serving coffee from a custom Tuk Tuk Food Truck or Piaggio Ape has several distinct advantages. They have a cute mini aesthetic about them and keep you highly mobile, allowing you to go places bigger rigs can’t. They’re also ideal as satellite coffee stations on campus and movie sets, which is what we delivered on our Wildflower Studios Coffee Station Project. Coffee Tuk Tuk owners also often report feeling they can truly connect with their clients by being up close and personal. Just be sure to throw your local weather in with your list of considerations around this option.
Modern customers looking to buy locally or sustainably sourced coffee from an environmentally conscious brand often respond well to baristas serving from an electric Tuk Tuk. With exceptionally low operational costs, Karpatia’s premium, custom built and road legal option is as good for your margins as it is the environment. The initial outlay is more than a regular Tuk Tuk, but it’s worth it.
THE CUSTOM COFFEE BIKE: Affordable, agile, and striking.
For anyone looking for their entry point into the Food Truck market, it can be quite daunting and the general price ranges can make you rethink your decision. That’s where the Custom Coffee Bike is great. It’s an affordable entry point, it’s agile, and in the hands of the right custom design team, it can offer a truly eye-catching display for your brand to leverage!
VINTAGE COFFEE TRUCK: Serve up an authentic experience.
A major part of upselling specialty coffee is the “retail brand experience”. Selling from a quality vintage food truck can truly amplify your whole barista truck experience. Karpatia restores vintage food trucks to mint condition. Many vintage coffee trucks are used as a display or fixed service point, as it’s the easiest and cheapest option. Pricing a vintage restoration is situational as each ‘old-timer’ comes with a unique set of challenges.
Our iconic and retro Citroen HY Food Truck in particular delivers standout vintage charm that makes it an ideal candidate for your custom coffee truck. It offers that authentic/genuine experience coffee lovers are often chasing. A major consideration vs. a step van is that the square footage is smaller, and although price points are similar the lead time is a few months longer due to the amount of restoration work involved.
If you want that classic charm the Citroen offers and no old engine headaches, we also apply official New Citroen Type H body kits to the modern chassis of the high-performance Ram ProMaster. If you’d like to see example projects where we applied these body kits specifically to coffee truck builds, you should take a look at what we did for Herbs’ Coffee, Cafe Gourmino, and Cafe Beignet.
COFFEE CONCESSION TRAILER: The morning go-to!
Karpatia makes all types of Custom Concession Trailers – from 7ft and up to 50ft. A small box trailer is a great way to get into the coffee business with a practical amount of space and a cost effective investment. Easily pulled on a regular driver’s license, your boxy kiosk can be the morning go-to coffee stop, especially if we apply some creative decor to the paneling or wrap of the trailer.
AIRSTREAM COFFEE TRAILER: Upgrade your style!
You can upgrade your style by going from a regular concession trailer to a new, vintage, or replica Airstream Concession Trailer instead. Airstream’s classic, sleek silver bullet style is hard for coffee lovers to resist and walk by!
There are a few extra considerations when converting an Airstream travel trailer to a coffee concession trailer. It takes extra time as refurbishing is more labor intensive than building from scratch, and a box concession trailer can be customized to a greater degree. However, as far as aesthetic appeal goes, the Airstream makes any extra time and investment feel worth it.
A replica Airstream trailer offers bang for your buck. Not only does it balance price and quality, it makes for a striking coffee trailer.
To Brew, Drip, or Percolate… THAT is the Question!
With little to no losses on spoilage, Coffee trucks generally offer a healthy margin on every cup sold. But if you want the right turnover too, you need to think where you’ll be selling and from what kind of coffee truck!
You’ll be wanting to take advantage of morning rush traffic, office workers stepping out for coffee, or getting yourself booked for specialty corporate events or weddings. You’ll need to find a sweet spot where you balance the quality and uniqueness of your offering against volume and speed, which depends on your location and the people you’ll serve.
Being able to sell a $7 coffee with a $5 margin is great unless it takes you so long that would-be-customers drop out of your ‘corner shop’ line. If you are inside a corporate lobby though, that wait time is usually appreciated (by everyone except the manager). So, this is the balancing act you’ll need to consider before embarking on your venture.
YOUR BARISTA TRUCK BUILD OPTIONS AND SPECIFICATIONS
A lot of planning goes into our coffee trucks. Think of the list below as your personal ‘Barista’s cheat-sheet’ to help you think ahead.
Concession Windows:
What size do you need and where? One or two windows?
Exterior Service Counter:
What material and what size? Do you need to put up displays on it?
Cabinetry:
How much space do you want inside, what material do you want, and what type of door?
Wall Covering:
Stainless steel or vinyl? What color do you like?
Insulation:
Will regular insulation do or are we shipping to Alaska/New England/Arizona?
Flooring and Floor Drains:
Diamond plate aluminum is our standard, but we have multiple higher grade options.
THE NON-ESSENTIALS:
FOR BARISTAS WHO WANT THE ‘BELLS AND WHISTLES’ COFFEE TRUCK
- Worktables: Stainless steel as a restaurant kitchen, or heavy stained oak like a coffee shop?
- Fridge and freezer models and space
- What size clean/grey water tank and heaters? What do you want, need and what is mandated?
- Triple sink and handwashing sink size requirements.
- Necessary AC / heating options and air curtains.
EQUIPMENT OPTIONS:
FOR BARISTAS WHO WANT A MOBILE CAFE THAT FEELS LIKE A “REAL COFFEE SHOP.”
- Espresso machine or big percolator? What kind? How many?
- Ice bins? Fridges, freezers, blenders?
- Any specialty coffee options or add-ons you want to sell alongside the coffee that need their own equipment?
POWER SUPPLY:
FOR BARISTAS WHO ALWAYS HAVE A BACKUP PLAN
Karpatia does high-quality, certified electrical work as well. You do not need to think much about power at all when ordering, except to tell us what you want to put in that coffee truck and we will work our way back from there for you.
“BUT WILL MY COFFEE TRUCK MAKE PROFIT?”
That’s mostly up to you. Food trucks and concession trailers are some of the most profitable small businesses you can operate and coffee in particular can offer good margins. But, as with any business, you have to be willing to grind – and not just your coffee beans! If you’re a grinder, what we can do is set you up for success. We look at your custom coffee truck build as a high-speed kitchen in a compact space….
We consider your menu and brand strategy, and optimize for workflow efficiency so your staff can maintain peak output during rush periods, maximizing your daily revenue potential. For example, our custom cabinetry isn’t just storage space; it’s designed to minimize the ‘steps-per-latte’ for your barista during the morning rush.
Let our craft amplify yours,
with a truly unique, truly custom Coffee Truck build
Karpatia delivers an industry-leading quality-to-value ratio, and our custom coffee trucks are designed to prove it. We treat your mobile cafe as a precision instrument and ensure you never have to fight against a layout that wasn’t built for your specific workflow. We’ll set you up for efficient service with a workspace that feels like an extension of your skilled hands.
Karpatia’s USP is rooted in true custom builds on unique models with standout design. We don’t just install equipment; we design a seamless extension of your brand with intricate floor plans optimized for your specific menu and equipment footprint. The result is a turnkey business solution that doesn’t just manage the morning rush, it masters it.
Partner with Karpatia Trucks on your custom mobile coffee truck build and receive all the perks of a turnkey business solution that’s…
Made with Passion || Built for Business
Still have questions about Coffee trucks? Karpatia has the answers
Learn more in our knowledge center ►Yes, we ship to Hawaii. We can also ship to LA and you can take care of the Pacific transport yourself.
Yes, we ship to Alaska, although extra rates apply. We can also deliver to Seattle and have you arrange local pickup.
Containers go everywhere, and all units can always be shipped to the nearest port. We might not have a local forwarder in your country (yet) though, in which case we will find one together with you.
We are based in Middlebury, Indiana – which is a lot closer to Canada than it is to a lot of place in the US – so by all means neighbo(u)r, come on over – we’ll build you a coffee truck and make sure it is compliant with your local code and has valid export paperwork.
If you do it right – yes. Food trucks and concession trailers are some of the most profitable small businesses you can operate without very specialized skills. Latte art is optional. But there’s also a lot of luck involved.
It all depends on your product and the effort you put in to the business. Go out there and grind every day, expect nothing, and who knows!