Baytown, TX Food Trucks & Mobile Vendors: Sidewalk & Mobile Vending (2026)

Chapter 74, article II of the Baytown Code regulates itinerant merchants and open air vendors. Section 74-26 defines an 'open air vendor' as anyone who solicits, sells, offers for sale, or exhibits goods, merchandise or service to the public other than from within a facility holding a certificate of occupancy or on the same property as such a facility, and who remains on one property for an hour or more doing so. Section 74-33(c) then states flatly that it shall be unlawful for any person to engage in any activity described in the definition of 'open air vendor,' and subsection (d) extends liability to any landowner, tenant or agent who allows or authorizes such vending on their property.

Section 74-28 lists the article's exemptions, and subsection (2) specifically exempts sales made by mobile food vendors licensed in accordance with chapter 42 of the code, meaning a permitted food truck operating under the mobile food establishment rules is not swept up in the open-air vendor ban, while a sidewalk table, pushcart or unlicensed street vendor is. 00 bond under sections 74-61 through 74-69, with licenses valid for 90 days and enforcement by the fire chief, police chief, and the health and planning directors under section 74-29.