Boca Raton, FL Food Trucks & Mobile Vendors: Sidewalk & Mobile Vending (2026)

City Code Sec. " That single sentence rules out curbside and sidewalk vending citywide, regardless of zoning district, because sidewalks and street frontage sit within the public right-of-way. The same section layers on additional siting restrictions even for vending confined to private property: subsection (b) bars trucks from any required yard, required open space, or area required to be landscaped, and subsection (c) bars them from required parking spaces, though a plot with more parking than the code requires may host a truck on the surplus spaces, never on handicapped spaces.

Before a truck can operate at all, subsection (d) requires the operator to obtain a certificate of use from the city, and the city may attach reasonable conditions to that certificate covering days and hours of operation and sanitation upkeep of the plot. An application for the certificate of use must include information the city needs to evaluate the truck's potential impacts. This framework was adopted by Ord. No. 5540, Sec. 8, on September 22, 2020, and it makes Boca Raton's approach the opposite of a permissive sidewalk-vending model: vending on public rights-of-way is a flat prohibition, not a permit category, and even private-lot vending needs a district that authorizes it plus a certificate of use before a single sale can occur.