Mid-Season Money Check: Are Your Summer Pitches Actually Paying?

August is when the season blurs. You're four months in, the van smells permanently of onions, and if someone asked what you've actually made since April you'd guess. Guessing is how vendors work a whole summer for less than minimum wage without noticing. This week, run the mid-season money check. It takes an hour with a brew, and one hour is nothing against four more months of trading on a hunch.

Why the middle matters more than the end

Most vendors tot things up in November, when the season's done and the numbers are history. A mid-season check is different because you can still act on it. Drop the pitch that's losing you money and you save four months of losses, not zero. Raise a price that's too low in August and the busiest weekends of the year pay the new rate. The January review tells you what happened. The August one changes what happens next.

The hour, step by step

Pull the takings per event

Card app, bank statements, cash notes, whatever you've got. Write down what each gig took, gig by gig, since the season started. If you've been logging as you go this step takes five minutes. If you haven't, this step is the argument for starting.

Subtract what each gig cost

Pitch fee. Stock used, not stock bought. Fuel there and back. Staff for the day. Card fees quietly skimming their percentage off everything. A worked example: a festival Saturday that took £1,400 sounds brilliant, until you stack up a £250 pitch, £380 of stock, £40 of diesel, £120 for a helper and about £24 in card fees. That's £586 left, for roughly fourteen hours doorstep to doorstep. Fine. Now do the same sums for the quiet Sunday market that took £380 with a £30 pitch, and you might find the boring market pays better per hour than the glamorous festival. It happens more than you'd think.

Rank your pitches

Best earner per hour at the top, worst at the bottom. Somewhere near the bottom there's usually one event you keep doing out of habit or loyalty. The check exists to make you look at it squarely.

Count what you bin

One more number while the calculator's out: wastage. Roughly tally what you've thrown away over the last month, at cost price. Vendors consistently underestimate this one because it disappears a little at a time, a tray here, a bag of buns there. If the figure makes you wince, the fix is usually prep quantities rather than menu changes. Prep for the event you booked, not the event you're hoping for.

Sense-check the margin

Once each event has a profit figure, divide it by the takings. As a working rule for mobile catering, anything under about 20% deserves a hard look, and consistently above 30% means your pricing and costs are behaving. There's no prize for a precise benchmark. The point is comparing your own events against each other, because your best gig is the standard the rest should answer to.

What to actually change in August

• The loss-making regular: give notice on it, or use the numbers to bargain the pitch fee down for autumn.
• The underpriced bestseller: if the queue never shortens, the price is too low. Fifty pence on your top item lands during your biggest remaining weekends.
• The bloated menu: your slowest two items tie up stock and prep time. Cut them for September and watch nothing bad happen.
• The missing deposit: if a no-show stung you this summer, tighten the booking terms before wedding enquiry season arrives.

We covered the deeper version of this thinking in profit versus revenue, and the card fee line in your sums connects to which reader you're using. Small percentages, long season.

The second half of the season is where the money is: the big August weekends, September weddings, then the Christmas run. Going into it knowing your numbers beats going into it knackered and hopeful. One brew, one hour, one honest list. Sorted.