Glendale, CA Food Trucks & Mobile Vendors: Food Truck Permits (2026)

Section 113831(c) defines a "compact mobile food operation" as a mobile food facility that operates from an individual or from a pushcart, stand, display, pedal-driven cart, wagon, showcase, rack, or other nonmotorized conveyance. 7 provides otherwise. 1 exempts a cart with 25 square feet or less of display area selling only prepackaged, nonpotentially hazardous food or whole uncooked produce from most permitting, though it must still comply with specific labeling, water, and general retail food sections, and the enforcement agency can still inspect it on the basis of a complaint or just cause and recover its administrative costs.

2 limits non-exempt carts to "limited food preparation" and lets them display or sell food outdoors only with overhead protection and enforcement-agency approval of the outdoor display. 3 lets a permitted cottage food operation or microenterprise home kitchen serve as a commissary for up to two compact mobile food operations, allows storage of a cart in a private home if the agency finds no public health hazard, caps home storage at two carts absent an agency finding otherwise, and bars any food prepared in that home from being sold off the cart unless it comes from a permitted cottage food or microenterprise operation.

4 requires full warewashing and handwashing facilities for carts preparing raw meat, poultry, or fish, but lets a cart without raw-meat preparation choose a three-compartment sink, a compliant two-compartment sink, or a one-compartment sink paired with spare sanitized utensils, and allows multiple nearby carts to share a permitted "auxiliary conveyance" that supplies those facilities.