Boca Raton, FL Food Trucks & Mobile Vendors: Food Truck Permits (2026)

Sec. 28-1315, adopted by Ordinance No. 5540 on September 22, 2020, treats a mobile food dispensing vehicle strictly as an accessory use: it may only operate where the applicable zoning district regulations specifically authorize it, not as a standalone use on any lot. Four placement restrictions apply. The vehicle cannot operate within a public or private right-of-way. It cannot be placed in any required yard, required open space, or area required to be landscaped. It cannot occupy any required parking space, though it may use parking spaces that exceed the number the site is required to provide, and it can never use a handicapped-designated space regardless of surplus parking.

Before operating at all, the vehicle must obtain a certificate of use from the city, and the city can attach reasonable conditions to that certificate to protect public health, safety and welfare, including limits on the days and hours of operation and requirements for keeping the plot orderly and sanitary. The certificate of use application must include whatever information the city needs to evaluate the vehicle's potential impacts on the site. Because the accessory-use rule ties operation to a specific plot's excess, non-required parking, a mobile food vendor cannot simply set up on any commercially zoned lot; the site must already have more parking built than the zoning code requires for its existing uses before a truck can legally park there.