Your truck moves; a website does not. So the page carries today's spot with one tap to directions, the hours you are actually serving, the line that matters most — sold out at seven — the menu with prices, and the Instagram and pre-order links you already use. A register with online ordering runs $219 a month at Toast, in January as well as July. No subscription. No commission on a taco you sold.
All three vendors also take card processing on every payment, and none of them removes it. The line this page is about is the subscription — the fixed cost a truck pays whether or not the window was open. The three-year math →
If you are looking for a Toast or Square alternative for a food truck, the honest split is this: those are registers, and you may well need one — a handheld is the right device in a truck. The page a customer reads at 11:40 to find out which corner you are on today is a different thing, and it is the part a truck keeps renting by the month.
| For one truck | Monthly | 3 years | What the money buys |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toast Basic — Traditional, plus the $1,153 kit | $69 | $3,637 | Register and reports; no online ordering, no website |
| Toast Core — adds online ordering, plus the kit | $219 | $9,037 | Online ordering and the DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub integrations |
| Toast Core with the handheld kit — the truck's device | $219 | $8,997 | Same software, $1,113 of handheld instead of a countertop terminal |
| Toast Growth — first pack with a website | $578 | $21,961 | Website, gift cards, loyalty, SMS and email marketing |
| Toast Core on Pay-as-you-Go — $0 software, $0 kit | $0 | $0 | Then 3.39% + 15¢ on every card payment instead; 3.69% on Growth |
| Square Free — ordering page included | $0 | $0 | Reader at $59, ordering page, 2.6% + 15¢ in person, 3.3% + 30¢ online |
| Square Free + handheld — per location | $0 | $399 | The $399 handheld is the whole hardware bill, bought once |
| Square Plus — per location | $49 | $1,764 | Inventory, close-of-day reporting, ordering page; card rate drops to 2.5% + 15¢ |
| Square Premium — per location | $149 | $5,364 | Coursing, seat management, 24/7 phone support |
| ShopLaunch Starter — today's spot, the menu, the window QR | $0$49 once | $49 | The page itself, built for you, paid once. No register, no card processing, no commission |
| ShopLaunch Local Pack — the page, the full menu, three print pieces | $0$199 once | $199 | Up to 40 items, window sticker, A5 board, table cards, five Instagram posts |
Three years of the subscription only, at the vendor's own November 2026 price, before tax and before card processing. Toast's kit is included at the price its starter-kit checkout lists; the handheld kit figure is the one reported for August 2026 (NerdWallet) — Toast does not publish a standalone list price. Square's ordering page is on every tier, which is why its cheap rows are shown.
A restaurant can hide $219 inside a $90 table for two. A truck sells $13 tickets — the median in 2026 — and about a third of that is food. Roughly $8.85 left per ticket before propane, commissary and wages:
A third of the ticket in food cost is an assumption, not a published figure — a taco is closer to 30% and a loaded fries box closer to 35%. Substitute your own and the shape does not change. Card processing is excluded on both sides because it is paid either way.
This is the line truck owners notice in February. Most trucks are dark six to ten weeks a year — weather, a commissary closure, an engine, a slow January:
An eight-week dark season is an assumption drawn from how trucks in cold markets actually run; a Florida truck may be dark for two weeks, a Minnesota one for three months. The arithmetic is $219 × 12 ÷ 52 × weeks closed.
Two things about a truck are different from a shop, and both of them are the reason this page exists.
A countertop kit is a 14-inch screen, a card reader and a router, on a counter you also pass food across and prep on. The handheld is the right device in a truck — and it is the device that does not make the page. Nothing in the POS box fixes where you are today.
Monday at a hospital, Tuesday at a brewpub, Saturday at a market. A Maps listing holds one address and the customer reads it three days late. The page holds today, with one tap to directions from where they are standing.
Where a shop has a door and a sign, a truck has a sticker: a QR the person in the queue can scan while they wait, and a board that says what ran out. Both come as print-ready PDF in the $49 — nothing to design, nothing to order from a printer twice.
A register knows you sold 94 birria tacos. It does not know that the person deciding right now, three miles away, is choosing between you and the pizza place with a fixed address, and would walk over if they knew which corner you were on.
We are not asking you to change how you take money, and there is nothing to migrate. The page is the storefront; the handheld stays the till.
Square Online, Toast, your own link, or simply “order at the window”. One line in the form — or none, if you would rather everybody just turned up.
If you take pre-orders, the button says Order and lands there. If you do not, the buttons are Directions and Call, which is what a truck customer uses anyway.
The customer who only wanted to know the price of a gringa never has to ask you at the window with six people behind them.
Not a mock-up. A sample taco truck, built the way we build yours — scroll it in the frame, then open it on your phone and stand on the corner.
Live sample · Fuego Verde Taco Truck.
Open it full size ↗
What Toast and Square cost one truck over three years, what the truck's own fixed costs already are, and the five questions to ask before you sign a two-year term.
Prices in US dollars, before tax. Pay by card on Polar's checkout page. If you are not sure, start at $49 — it is a real deliverable, not a trial.
Less than two months of Toast Basic. Yours forever.
Page + menu + stickers + posts.
Everything, plus 30 days of us on call.
Not sure which one? Write to chonnom61482@gmail.com and tell us the truck and how many items are on the board. We will say which package you actually need — even if it is the $49 one. By ordering you agree to our terms and refund policy.
You do, in about thirty seconds, with the edit key we give you — the address line, the hours and a one-line note sit on one screen, and the page shows the change at once. If you would rather not, send us the spot in a text and we change it. What the page cannot do is guess: a truck that does not say where it is today is the reason this page exists.
Only if you want the page built rather than built by you. Square for Restaurants includes an ordering page on every tier including Free, and Toast includes a website from its Growth pack; both are registers first. What neither includes is someone writing your menu, setting up the today's-spot line and handing you a print-ready window sticker tomorrow. If you are happy in their editor, keep it — the $49 Starter is for the truck that is not.
No. It has no register, no card payment and no order flow. The Order button opens the ordering link you already have — Square Online, Toast, your own site, or simply a phone number — and if you take orders at the window the buttons read Call and Directions instead. Nothing is migrated and no order passes through us.
A Maps listing is built around one address, and yours changes. The page carries today's spot as a line you edit, with the hours for today, the sold-out note and one-tap directions from wherever the customer is standing — and it is a single link you can post in an Instagram story at nine in the morning without touching your listing.
Toast's starter-kit checkout lists three software packs on its Traditional plan: Basic $69, Core $219 and Growth $578 a month, on a two-year agreement. The hardware is bought up front or financed: the countertop kit is listed at $1,153 in Toast's checkout, and the handheld kit — the device a truck actually uses — is reported at $1,113. Core is the first pack with online ordering, Growth the first with a website. On Pay-as-you-Go the software and kit are $0 and the card rate rises to 3.09%–3.69% + 15¢, so the cost moves into every payment instead — worth doing the sum at your own ticket size.
Usually, yes, for taking money. Square for Restaurants is Free, Plus $49 and Premium $149 a month per location, with an ordering page on all three, a handheld at $399, a terminal at $299 and a reader at $59. Card rates are 2.6% + 15¢ in person (2.5% on Plus) and 3.3% + 30¢ online on Free. What Square does not do is write your menu, design the page or print the sticker — that is the part we do, once.
It stays up and it costs nothing. A page paid once has no bill for a week you did not trade, and it can say “Closed for the season, back in March” — which is better than a customer finding an empty corner. A subscription charges through those weeks whether the window was open or not: at Toast Core, eight dark weeks a year is about $404 a year.
Yes, and it is the line customers come back for. A short status line under the name — “Birria gone at 7, back tomorrow” — plus any item marked sold out in the menu. You change it from your phone in a minute, and it saves the person who would have driven across town for it.
One business day from the moment your form is complete. The form asks for the truck's name, phone, your usual spots and the days you are at each, your hours, your menu with prices, your Instagram and any ordering link, and a photo or two. If you would rather not type it, paste your Instagram or your Google listing and we pull what we can, then confirm the rest by email.
No. The page goes live on an address we give you, and that link goes in your Instagram bio, on the window sticker and in the text you send a regular. If you already own a domain, we tell you how to point it at the page; the domain itself is paid to a registrar, not to us.
No. $49, $199 or $499 is the whole price, charged once. The page stays live, the files are yours, and you pay again only when you order new work. We take no percentage of a taco you sold, and we collect no customer data at all.
You see a preview before we call it finished, and every package includes at least one round of edits. If we have not started building, you get a full refund. If we delivered and something on the list is missing or wrong, tell us within 7 days and we fix it or refund that part. Details: refund policy.
Polar Software, Inc., our merchant of record, takes it on their checkout page. Your card details are entered there, never on this site, and they handle the receipt and the tax. We never see your card number.
Pick the $49 Starter if you just need the link and the window sticker. Pick the Local Pack if the board is out of date and people keep asking where you are today. Either way, one form, one payment, and no monthly bill to forget about in February.