Food truck event management software
The date that decides your February is in November.
Two dates, one gig
The one you can miss without noticing
You will not forget the day you are trading. The deadline three months earlier is the one that costs you a season.
The gig
Wharf Rd summer market
Sun 14 February — the date you would trade
Applications open
1 November
Published by the organiser
Applications close
~ late November
Estimated — they wrote a season, not a date
Three months before the day you would work
Which is the whole problem with market work: the deadline that decides your February is in November, and it is not on any calendar you keep.
src/lib/event-discovery/applicationWindow.ts — the same window component the gig page, the pipeline and the mobile sheet all use. A date the organiser never published is marked as an estimate rather than printed as a fact (decision 0088).
A gig, end to end
Ninety days of it happen before you cook
Laid out on one line, because that is the shape of the problem: everything that decides whether you trade in February is over by the end of November.
Applications open
1 November. Published.
Applications close
~ late November — estimated
Submitted
Tracked, and on the calendar.
Service
Sun 14 February. Bump in 06:00.
01The open and close dates come from the organiser where they published them, and are marked as estimates where they did not.
02An application tracks as far as submitted. Whether the organiser’s decision returns automatically depends on how they run their process, so nothing here draws it.
03The gig sits on the same calendar as your private bookings from the moment you apply, so the date is not quietly sold twice.
04Bump in, setup, service and pack down are the run sheet’s own phases, not stages invented for this drawing.
Put plainly
A deadline we guessed at is worth something. A deadline we guessed at and printed as a fact is worth less than nothing.
Decision 0088 — an estimate says it is an estimate. A close date the organiser never published is rendered amber and says so on tap, rather than printed as a fact you would plan around.
From found to fed
What managing a gig actually involves
Four stages, and only the last one looks like catering.
Find it
Public gigs within a radius of your home base, on a map and in a list. Save the searches that matter so the next one finds you rather than the other way round.
Apply before it closes
The window is on the gig — when it opens, when it closes, and whether that close date came from the organiser or is our estimate of what they meant. Your application tracks through to submitted.
Run the day
Bump in, setup, service, pack down. The run sheet prints, and any one person can be sent just their own part of it as a message — no account, no app, no seat on your bill.
Count what it made
Takings in, and the costs out: food, fuel, crew. Where a cost cannot be worked out it shows as a gap naming the missing input rather than as a zero that flatters the day.
One calendar
A truck does not have two Saturdays
Private bookings and public gigs are different ways work arrives, not different businesses. They land on the same day, and the day only has one of everything.
One diary
A gig you applied for blocks the date the same way a booking does, so your own website stops offering it. The two lanes cannot double-sell the truck between them.
One roster
The same people, whichever lane the work came from. Somebody rostered on a market is not also available for a wedding.
One set of numbers
A market day and a private booking are compared on the same basis, which is the only way to find out that the good one is not the one you assumed.
Who it is not for
Where this is the wrong tool
You need a till at the window
Not a point of sale. Takings go in as a figure after the day; there is no card reader and no per-item ring-up.
You want it to apply for you
It finds the gigs, tracks the window and keeps the application, but a human writes the application. An auto-submitted pitch is not what a market organiser is looking for.
You want stock counted as you sell
Ingredients and costs are modelled and forecast; live depletion at the hatch is a different problem and this does not solve it.
Questions
What operators ask about gigs
- What is different about managing a market gig?
- It has two dates, not one. There is the day you trade and there is the deadline to apply, and the second one is often three months earlier and written on somebody else’s website. That is the date that decides your February, and it is the one nothing else in your life is tracking.
- What if the organiser never published a closing date?
- Then it shows as an estimate and says so — amber, marked, and it will tell you why on tap. A guessed deadline printed as a fact is how you miss a round; a guessed deadline that admits it is a guess is something you can act on.
- Do private events and public gigs live separately?
- No, and that is the point. However the work arrived, it is the same day on the same calendar with the same crew and the same numbers underneath. A truck does not have two Saturdays.
- Does it tell me when an organiser accepts me?
- It tracks your application as far as submitted. Whether the organiser’s decision comes back into the system automatically depends on how they run their process, and we are not going to claim it always does.
- What happens on the day itself?
- A run sheet in phases — bump in, setup, service, pack down — that you can print, share, or send one person their own slice of. Then takings go in and you get what the day actually made after food, fuel and crew.