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

Chapter 5.40 of the Pico Rivera Municipal Code, Cafés, Food Establishments and Food Hawkers, requires anyone operating a café, food establishment, public eating place, or hawking business to hold a permit from the city health officer under § 5.40.010. Section 5.40.020 goes further for mobile sellers: any person peddling, selling, or delivering food or drink for human consumption from packs, baskets, handcarts, wagons, or vehicles, retail from door to door, must first obtain a health permit each year and then a business permit under Title 5, valid for one year and subject to annual renewal.

The section carves out exemptions for people selling to retail establishments, distributors delivering milk, water, ice, or packaged food to regular customers, farmstand operators selling their own homegrown produce, and operators of a fixed public eating place, none of whom need the mobile hawker permit. The application fee, and the fee for each annual renewal, is set at $5 per person under subsection D, matching the fee the city charges for several other Title 5 peddler-style permits. Once permitted, § 5.40.030 restricts operating hours for sound-amplifying equipment: hawkers and food vendors cannot run radios, horns, bells, or other sound or musical devices meant to attract customers to their vehicle or stand between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m.

Because Title 5's general permit rules also apply, an application for a mobile food permit passes through the director of finance or, if referred, the permit hearing board under §§ 5.08.360 and 5.08.370, and a permit may be revoked under § 5.08.390 for violating the Business License Law or for having been obtained on fraudulent evidence.