Mobile Food Franchises: Carts, Trailers, and Kiosks

Food truck franchises get most of the ink in this category, but the truck is the most expensive way into mobile food, not the only one. Carts, trailers, kiosks, and event-only setups all let you sell the same menu without the six-figure vehicle build, and each comes with its own cost structure, its own permitting headaches, and its own version of “who actually controls where you’re allowed to sell.”

This piece walks through the mobile spectrum format by format, with sourced total-investment figures for real brands in each category. We sell no franchise and have no referral arrangement with any brand named here. Every number below traces to a specific FDD filing or a franchisor’s own disclosure page, dated, and where two sources disagreed on the same brand, we say so instead of picking whichever figure looked cleaner.

The mobile spectrum, plainly

“Mobile food franchise” gets used as a catch-all, but the formats underneath it are genuinely different businesses with different cost structures.

Carts are the smallest footprint: a pushcart or small trailer-mounted unit, often towed by a standard vehicle rather than requiring a commercial truck chassis. Kona Ice’s shaved-ice units and similar snow-cone brands fall here. The unit itself is the largest cost, and there’s no building lease at all.

Trailers step up in size and equipment. A concession trailer can carry fryers, ovens, or espresso equipment that a pushcart can’t, and it’s usually parked at a fixed spot for a shift rather than driven store-to-store the way a food truck circuit works. Auntie Anne’s Concession Shop format, built for farmers’ markets and temporary stands, sits in this category alongside dedicated concession-trailer brands.

Kiosks are fixed, small-footprint structures, sometimes inside a mall or airport, sometimes a standalone drive-thru-only building on a leased pad. This is the format where cost varies most, because “kiosk” describes the size of the space, not who owns the structure or the land under it. Our coffee kiosk franchise guide goes deeper on this format for coffee brands specifically.

Event-based concepts don’t have a fixed location at all. The business is built around booking festivals, fairs, farmers’ markets, and private events, often on a seasonal calendar that varies by region.

What each format actually costs

Start with the cart end of the spectrum. Kona Ice, the shaved-ice and snow-cone franchise built around a fleet of branded mobile units, discloses a total estimated initial investment of $178,856 to $226,841 in its 2025 FDD, per Franchise Direct’s review of that filing. The franchise fee is a flat $15,000. Royalties are tiered by year: $3,000 in years one and two, $4,000 in years three through six, and $5,000 in years seven through ten, plus a $500 annual brand fund contribution per unit and a $600 annual technology fee.

Worth flagging directly: Kona Ice’s own franchising site lists a different total investment range, $102,365 to $226,841, with a $151,950 truck cost as the largest line item. That’s a real discrepancy between the franchisor’s own page and the FDD figure reported elsewhere, and we can’t reconcile it without the current FDD in hand. If Kona Ice is on your shortlist, request the current FDD directly and don’t rely on either secondhand figure, including ours.

Moving up to trailers and concession formats, Auntie Anne’s offers the clearest documented example of a franchise brand explicitly separating a smaller, mobile-style format from its full retail shop. Per its 2024 FDD as reviewed by Franchise Chatter, the standard full retail pretzel shop runs $149,625 to $624,800 total investment with a $35,500 franchise fee, a 7% royalty, and a 1.5% to 3% advertising contribution depending on location type. Auntie Anne’s FDD also describes a Concession Shop format, covering temporary stands at farmers’ markets, concession trailers, and food trucks, as a distinct location type, though the sources we reviewed did not isolate a separate total-investment figure for that format specifically. If a Concession Shop is what you’re actually considering, that separate cost breakdown is exactly the kind of thing to ask the franchisor for before you sign anything, since the brochure figure you’ll see quoted publicly is almost always the full-shop number.

For a straight kiosk comparison, two coffee brands show how differently “kiosk” can price out depending on who owns the structure. Caribou Coffee’s kiosk format, per its 2025 FDD as reviewed by Franchise Chatter’s 2026 update, runs $279,100 to $703,000 total investment excluding lease costs, with a franchise fee of $15,000 for a standard kiosk and a reduced $7,000 fee for kiosks placed in university or hospital settings. Royalty runs 6% of gross sales standard, or 4% for kiosks in airport, university, or hospital locations. Scooter’s Coffee, by contrast, builds and owns a small standalone drive-thru structure rather than leasing floor space inside another building, and its total investment for that format runs $794,000 to $1,341,500 per FDD Item 7 figures, per franchiseinvestordata.com’s review of the 2024 FDD. Franchise Chatter’s own review of that same 2024 FDD lists a higher range, $894,500 to $1,393,000, so the two secondary sources don’t agree on the low end by roughly $100,000. Either way, that’s still well above Caribou’s kiosk cost at the high end, and the gap is entirely about who’s paying for the structure and the land under it, not about the coffee. Pull the current FDD yourself before you treat either figure as final.

Wetzel’s Pretzels adds a third kiosk data point. Per its 2024 FDD as reviewed by Franchise Chatter, total investment across the brand’s kiosk and inline formats runs $178,500 to $689,750, with a $40,000 franchise fee, a 7% royalty, and a 1% advertising fee. That range overlaps both Caribou’s leased-kiosk figures and part of Scooter’s owned-structure range, which is the clearest illustration in this piece that “kiosk” alone tells you almost nothing about price. You have to know the square footage, the buildout scope, and who owns the structure before the word “kiosk” means anything financially.

Toastique, a build-your-own toast and juice bar concept, discloses a total investment of $471,152 to $890,846, verified against the brand’s own site. It’s not a mobile format in the cart-or-trailer sense, but it’s a useful data point for what a small-footprint, non-traditional-friendly food concept costs when it’s built as a leased storefront rather than a kiosk or trailer.

Permitting and health department reality

Every format on this spectrum, except pure event-based vending of prepackaged goods, runs into the same wall eventually: your local or state health department, and in most cases, a commissary kitchen requirement.

Florida’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services lays out a fairly typical structure. Vendors preparing potentially hazardous food, think hot dogs, espresso drinks with dairy, anything cooked to order, generally must have a signed Commissary Letter of Agreement with an approved facility on file before the state will schedule an opening inspection or issue a permit. Vendors selling only prepackaged, non-perishable items may qualify for an exemption. Florida also requires permit applications at least 21 days before opening, with inspectors typically making contact within three to five business days and scheduling the inspection within two weeks after that.

This varies by state and county, so the Florida structure is an illustration, not a national rule. What’s consistent almost everywhere: you need a licensed food-prep facility backing your unit if you’re cooking or holding hazardous food, you’ll go through an inspection before you’re allowed to operate, and many jurisdictions require the unit to return to the commissary daily for cleaning and restocking. None of that shows up in a franchise brochure’s cost table, and none of it is optional. Build it into your budget before you assume a mobile format means “no fixed location, no fixed costs.”

Host-venue economics: who actually controls your spot

A cart, trailer, or kiosk franchise almost never operates on land you own or a building you lease directly from a landlord the way a standalone restaurant does. Instead, you’re operating inside somebody else’s space, a mall corridor, a gas station lot, a hospital lobby, a festival footprint, under a separate agreement that sits entirely outside your franchise agreement with the brand.

That distinction matters more than most franchise buyers expect going in. The franchise agreement governs your relationship with the franchisor: your fee, your royalty, your training, your brand standards. It does not govern your relationship with whoever controls the physical space you’re actually operating in. If a mall changes management companies, if a gas station owner leases your pad to someone else at renewal, or if a festival organizer picks a different vendor next year, your franchise agreement with the brand doesn’t protect that spot. You can be in perfect standing with the franchisor and still lose the location.

For event-based and festival vending specifically, this shows up as a booking calendar rather than a lease. Vendor fees at these events run from under $100 at small local markets to several thousand dollars at large regional festivals, on top of whatever food and labor cost you’re carrying for that day. An event-focused concept can work as a real business, but it’s inherently seasonal and regional, since fairs and festivals cluster around specific months, and a brand that looks great on a summer circuit in one region may have a much thinner calendar somewhere else. Ask any franchisor selling this model how many bookable weekends exist in your specific area, not just what the brand’s best markets look like nationally.

Before you sign a franchise agreement for any host-dependent format, get the actual host or venue agreement, separately, and have someone who isn’t on the franchisor’s recommended attorney list review it. That document, not the FDD, determines your hours, your renewal terms, and what happens when the host’s own business relationships change.

Financing tends to follow the same split. Cart and trailer equipment financing works more like equipment or vehicle lending, since there’s no building to collateralize; the SBA 7(a) program can finance a franchise fee, equipment, and working capital up to $5 million, and the SBA microloan program offers up to $50,000 through nonprofit intermediary lenders for smaller cart purchases. Kiosk formats that involve building a standalone structure, like Scooter’s Coffee’s drive-thru unit, finance more like a small commercial construction project, paying for architecture and a physical building rather than just equipment, which is a meaningful part of why that format costs several times more than a cart-based brand even though both get marketed as “small-footprint” concepts. Our SBA loan guide for franchise buyers covers this split in more detail.

A quick side-by-side

Format	Example brand	Franchise fee	Total investment	Source
Cart	Kona Ice	$15,000	$178,856-$226,841 (FDD); $102,365-$226,841 (franchisor site)	2025 FDD via Franchise Direct; ownakona.com
Trailer/concession	Auntie Anne’s (full shop, for comparison)	$35,500	$149,625-$624,800	2024 FDD via Franchise Chatter
Kiosk (leased space)	Caribou Coffee	$7,000-$15,000	$279,100-$703,000	2025 FDD via Franchise Chatter’s 2026 review
Kiosk (mixed formats)	Wetzel’s Pretzels	$40,000	$178,500-$689,750	2024 FDD via Franchise Chatter
Kiosk (owned structure)	Scooter’s Coffee	$40,000	$794,000-$1,341,500 (franchiseinvestordata.com); $894,500-$1,393,000 (Franchise Chatter)	FDD Item 7, 2024 FDD, two secondary sources disagree
Small storefront (comparison point)	Toastique	Not covered in sources reviewed	$471,152-$890,846	Verified against toastique.com

We couldn’t find a verified, isolated total-investment figure for Auntie Anne’s Concession Shop format specifically, only its full retail shop figure, so that row is included as a comparison point rather than a direct trailer-format cost. If you’re pricing an actual concession-format deal, get that specific Item 7 breakdown from the franchisor.

How to vet a mobile format before you commit

Start by reading the actual FDD Item 7 table for the specific format you want, not the brand’s average or its most commonly quoted figure. Our plain-English guide to reading an FDD walks through where these numbers live. Then request the host-venue or event-booking agreement for wherever you’d actually be operating, and get it reviewed separately from the franchise agreement.

Talk to a current franchisee operating the same format, cart, trailer, or kiosk, in a similar venue type to what you’re targeting, not just any franchisee in the system. Someone running a mall kiosk can’t tell you what commissary requirements look like for a trailer. Ask specifically what their commissary costs run, how their host relationship was structured, and whether they’ve ever lost a location through no fault of their own.

If a full food truck feels like the right level of investment once you’ve compared it against these lighter formats, our food truck franchise cost guide covers that end of the spectrum. And if you’re comparing across the whole low-cost category, our roundup of food franchises under $100,000 is the place to start. For how we source every figure on this site, see our editorial methodology page.

The honest summary: a cart is the cheapest way into this category, a kiosk can run anywhere from a quarter million to well over a million depending on who owns the structure, and every format in between depends on a health department and a host venue that neither the franchisor nor its FDD fully controls. Price the whole picture, not just the franchise fee line.