Commerce City, CO Food Trucks & Mobile Vendors: Vending Zones (2026)

Section 9-3303(a), "Distance requirements," bars every outdoor vendor, mobile food operators included, from operating within one hundred feet of the property line of a residential dwelling at any time, and pushes that buffer out to three hundred feet between 9:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m., when nighttime noise and light from a stand or truck would otherwise reach closer to homes. Two further rules apply only when the vendor sells or attempts to sell food: the vendor cannot operate within one hundred seventy-five feet of the property line of any business, other than another outdoor vendor, that is open to the public and offering prepared food for sale, and it cannot operate within three hundred feet of a school during school hours.

All four distances run from property lines, not from the vendor's own stand, so a truck near a large lot can be closer to the building than the rule allows while still outside the protected line. These distance rules are separate from, and layered on top of, the sidewalk and crosswalk placement rules in section 9-3303(b), and a location that clears the residential and restaurant buffers can still be unlawful if it blocks a doorway or crosswalk. A license issued under section 9-3302 does not excuse noncompliance with these distances; the license itself explicitly never supersedes the zoning or operational restrictions that apply to a given site.