Howell, NJ Food Trucks & Mobile Vendors: Sidewalk & Mobile Vending (2026)

Howell Township Code Chapter 223 defines a mobile retail food establishment or vendor as any movable restaurant, truck, van, trailer, cart, bicycle or other movable unit, including hand carried portable containers, in or on which food or beverage is transported, stored or prepared for retail sale or given away at temporary locations. The same definition says these licenses are issued for necessary service to construction sites and isolated industrial locations, and it sets the 1,000 foot buffer from any permanent retail food establishment. Mobile food establishments renting space at markets and special functions are not governed by that distance rule.

Location limits stack on top of the buffer. Section 223-11 bars itinerant merchants and transient vendors from selling goods or services from roadsides or parking lots in the Township, except as provided under § 223-2B and § 223-9D. Section 223-9D prohibits peddling or soliciting for more than one hour in one location within any twenty-four-hour period starting at 12:01 a.m. unless the Township Council expressly permits it, and moving equipment, vehicles or wares out and back does not start a new period. Section 223-9E keeps licensed vendors from soliciting food, ice cream and soft drinks in any municipal park or other place of recreation or cultural activity, or on the public street or right-of-way next to one, unless the governing body of the Township of Howell authorizes it.

Street operating rules sit in § 223-4. A licensee can canvass or take orders from pedestrians or vehicular traffic only while the vehicle is properly parked immediately adjacent to the curb of a public street in a permitted locality, never double parks, and transacts business only on the curb side of the vehicle. Waste cannot be left on any street, roadway, curb or walk, and refuse stays in a covered, metal, leakproof container. Section 223-10 bans horns, bells and amplified sound capable of being primarily heard on the streets and parks.

Licensing runs through the Township Clerk and the Howell Township Police Department. Applicants and their employees are fingerprinted, with checks resubmitted every three years, and the Police Department must approve the application before a license issues. Annual licenses expire at midnight on December 31 (§ 223-16), and a licensee must show the certificate of license to any citizen or law enforcement officer who asks (§ 223-12). The fee schedule is in Chapter 139, § 139-49.