Shelby County, TN Food Trucks & Mobile Vendors: Sidewalk & Mobile Vending (2026)

Shelby County Code § 8-186 lists four prohibited activities for itinerant vendors and peddlers operating in the unincorporated county, and the third bars sale of drinks or other prepared foods and edible items upon public streets, highways and rights-of-way, except as may be otherwise regulated in the Code. That clause is what stops a sidewalk food cart or truck from selling directly off a public street, highway or right-of-way outside Memphis, Bartlett, Collierville, Germantown, Millington, Arlington or Lakeland unless a separate part of the code carves out an exception.

The same section bars peddling, huckstering or hawking by vehicle or movable receptacle on streets, highways, rights-of-way and public places; erecting stands or similar receptacles on those public ways to display, give away, buy or sell goods; and using a parked vehicle as a business stand to sell to occupants of other vehicles. Section 8-185 layers on a location buffer: it is unlawful to sell or solicit within 200 feet of an open air market, farmers market or public-designated square. The article defines itinerant vendor/peddler broadly at § 8-181 to include a peddler, solicitor, canvasser, foot peddler or hawker who sells goods, wares or merchandise, or solicits patronage, from a temporary or transient location outside a city's corporate limits.