Fort Lauderdale, FL Food Trucks & Mobile Vendors: Sidewalk & Mobile Vending (2026)

Section 23-95 of the Code of Ordinances lists thirteen things a mobile vendor may never do, and the third is unambiguous: a vendor shall not 'vend on any public street or sidewalk except as provided in this article,' where public street or sidewalk means any surface owned by, dedicated to, or subject to an easement granted to the public. Combined with Sec. 23-94's rule that vending is confined to the B-2, B-3 and B-3-C zoning districts, the practical effect is that a vendor has to operate from private property inside one of those three districts, not from the curb or the pavement in front of it.

The article carves out one narrow exception. A mobile vending vehicle that 'does not set up permanently but that stop[s] only temporarily to make a sale' is exempt from both the zoning-district limitation in Sec. 23-94 and the street-and-sidewalk ban in Sec. 23-95(3), so a truck that pulls up, sells, and moves on is treated differently from one that parks for the day. That exemption is expressly withheld from any 'non-motorized mobile vending vehicle,' meaning a pushcart or bicycle-trailer vendor gets no benefit from it and remains bound by the full zoning and sidewalk restrictions. Vendors must also stay twenty-five feet clear of any intersection and cannot wave or flag down passing vehicles under Sec. 23-95(1) through (5), and every violation of the article is punished under Sec. 23-93.