Courses · 🍔 Food Truck Wars

Runs on Extrapoli

BUSINESS MATHEMATICS

Percentages, margins, and break-even: run the numbers behind a food truck.

Built for quantitative-literacy and business-math courses at community colleges and high schools.

Teach this on Extrapoli, free →Or export it to Canvas

This one you can teach without leaving Extrapoli

All 15 weeks render on the platform: the reading, practice a student can check, and a two-part assignment. The numbers are graded automatically, and on 14 of those weeks they are graded against the simulation that team actually ran, so those answers are each student's own rather than something to pass along. The exception is the amortisation week, where the whole section works the same loan on purpose. The written half, where a student defends the decision, comes to you with their figures beside it. Finish the course and the platform issues a certificate.

What your students do

Student teams run competing food trucks: choosing locations, composing a menu around a hero item, setting prices against the market, staffing the window, and managing budgets for ingredients, marketing, and maintenance. Reputation and momentum reward consistency; changing your hero item is a costly pivot: switching costs made visceral.

Food Truck Wars also fits: Entrepreneurship & Small Business, Managerial Accounting, Operations Management, Principles of Marketing, Principles of Management, Financial Accounting. This kit is written for Business Mathematics; for those courses the simulation runs the same and you bring the syllabus.

The rhythm

The market closes once a day at the tick hour you set (5 PM by default, Pacific): whatever decisions a team has saved are what run. Results arrive as a daily report with the economics lesson and a class discussion prompt attached.

Every result feeds the class leaderboard, and a section can be connected to the Extrapoli Universe once the class is running, so ventures that finish a season go on the permanent record.

The 15-week curriculum

Sequenced fundamentals-first, so any prefix is a coherent course: run 4 weeks as a supplement, 6 as a module, or all 15 as the semester. Each week ships an eText, a decision brief tied to the live market, a discussion, and a quiz, and the final exam covers exactly the weeks you ran. Every week's reading is free to read: open any week below.

  1. 1.Revenue, Cost & Profit
  2. 2.Unit Cost, Markup & Price
  3. 3.Gross & Contribution Margin
  4. 4.Break-Even Analysis
  5. 5.Percent Change & Discounts
  6. 6.Scaling & Simple ROI
  7. 7.Ratios, Rates & Proportions
  8. 8.Weighted Averages & Product Mix
  9. 9.Inventory & Spoilage Math
  10. 10.Payroll & Team Math
  11. 11.Simple & Compound Interest
  12. 12.Loans & Amortization
  13. 13.Depreciation & Book Value
  14. 14.Statistics for Operators
  15. 15.Capstone: Financial Statements

Setup takes an afternoon, not a semester

  1. 1 · Generate. Pick your course length in the Canvas Cartridge Generator and import the .imscc into Canvas, modules, assignments, quizzes, dates, all done.
  2. 2 · Invite. Create your section, put the join code on the syllabus. Students join free; when billing is enabled at your school, one $49/year pass covers every Extrapoli course they take.
  3. 3 · Teach. The market closes once a day at the tick hour you set (5 PM by default, Pacific); reports arrive with the lesson and the discussion prompt attached. The leaderboard settles every argument.

Prefer to run the sim beside your own syllabus? Skip the cartridge, the join code works on its own. See pricing →