Charlottesville, VA Food Trucks & Mobile Vendors: Vending Zones (2026)

The City Code's Article V, Vending From Vehicles In Streets, controls where and when a vending vehicle selling food, drink, ice cream or frozen dessert may set up on a Charlottesville street. Sec. 28-158 sets the operating rules: a vending vehicle must stop at the right-hand curb in a legal parking space, or at the extreme right-hand edge of pavement where there is no curb, and no sale may be made to a customer who is not standing on the sidewalk, or off the paved roadway where none exists; the engine must be shut off unless it is needed to make the product.

during Eastern Standard Time, and a vending vehicle cannot park or sell in front of an established restaurant on the same side of the street during that restaurant's operating hours. Sec. 28-155 adds a citywide speed cutoff: no sales from any street posted above 25 miles per hour. Sec. 28-157 keeps vending vehicles at least 100 feet from any school unless the principal has given annual written consent, and Sec. 28-159 caps the crowd at up to 4 vending vehicles working the same city block at one time. Farm produce grown by the vendor and firewood sellers are exempt from the whole article under Sec. 28-153.