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

Section 42-55 is titled "Mobile food dispensing vehicles" and sits in Chapter 42, the fire prevention chapter of the Bradenton Code of Ordinances. It was rewritten by Ord. No. 4022 on October 11, 2023. Its first sentence sets the inspection rule: mobile and temporary cooking operations are inspected prior to operation at each event or location within the city. The rule attaches to the event or location, so a truck that moves from one site to another in the City of Bradenton faces the inspection again at each stop.

Subsection (1) sets the equipment standard. Cooking equipment used in mobile or temporary cooking concessions, such as trucks, trailers and buses, must comply with NFPA 10, NFP 96 (as the code prints it), the FFPC and FAC 61C. Subsection (2) sets the licensing rule: each vendor must be properly licensed by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, Division of Hotels and Restaurants, and/or the Florida Department of Agriculture, Division of Food Safety. The city does not issue that license; the state agencies do.

Section 42-55 itself prints no application form and no fee, and Appendix A to the land use regulations, the fee schedule, is not part of the code text. Street vending is handled separately in § 4.3.12 of the Land Use Regulations, which prohibits street vending on public lands or property unless the city council authorizes it as part of a special event or revitalization initiative. On private commercial property that section permits one vending cart as an accessory use within 20 feet of the primary building, with a city use permit.

A vendor whose operation is found unsafe faces the tools in the same chapter: § 42-53 lets the authority having jurisdiction post a stop work or cease and desist order, and § 42-54 sends an aggrieved person to the city construction code board of rules and appeals.