Decatur, AL Food Trucks & Mobile Vendors: Sidewalk & Mobile Vending (2026)

Street vending in the City of Decatur, Alabama, starts with a legislative gate rather than a counter permit. Section 16-17(a) prohibits any person from selling, peddling, or offering to sell or peddle any produce or other merchandise or tangible personal property from any vehicle, pushcart or other device upon any public street, alley, parking lot or public place of the city. The prohibition lifts only when the person first obtains the consent of the governing body, evidenced by an ordinance or resolution that establishes the limitations and conditions the governing body considers needful. The section is written around the vending device and the place: a vehicle, a pushcart or another device, on a street, alley, parking lot or other public place.

One exception is printed. The producer of farm products who sells, peddles or offers to sell or peddle farm products grown or produced by that producer is outside the prohibition. A reseller of produce or a vendor of prepared goods does not fall inside that exception.

Subsection (b) makes it unlawful to violate any term, provision or condition of an authorizing ordinance or resolution, so the conditions the council sets are enforceable as part of the offense. The section carries cross references to Chapter 14, Licenses and Business Regulations, and Chapter 20, Streets and Sidewalks. The code also records that former § 16-18, which pertained to peddling and soliciting generally, was repealed by Ord. No. 15-4231 on July 20, 2015, and residential solicitation now sits in Chapter 16.5.

Because § 16-17 prints no fee, distance or hours, those terms come from whatever ordinance or resolution the governing body adopts for the vendor.