Decatur, GA Food Trucks & Mobile Vendors: Vending Zones (2026)

Section 86-24(d) of the Code of Ordinances for the City of Decatur, DeKalb County, Georgia, sets the spacing standards that decide where a permitted mobile food facility can actually set up. Subsection (d)(2) caps the operation area, meaning the facility plus the room a vendor needs to run it, at 36 square feet. Subsection (d)(3) bars operating within ten feet of any other mobile food facility, measured in a straight line from the closest boundary of each facility's operation area. Subsection (d)(4) keeps a facility at least 50 feet from the primary entrance of any restaurant in the city, protecting brick-and-mortar competitors from vendors setting up at their front door.

Subsection (d)(5) adds a traffic-safety buffer: no facility within 20 feet of the extended right-of-way lines of an intersecting street, or of a street crossing a railroad right-of-way. The same subsection layers on operating conditions that shape how a vendor can run: no alcohol sales, no serving people inside vehicles, no amplified sound or loudspeakers, and no added lighting beyond what running the facility requires. An on-site owner or employee must be present the whole time the facility operates. Because these are zone and distance rules rather than a use-district map, a vendor can set up anywhere in the city that a permit is issued and these distances are met, so long as it stays outside the ten-, 20- and 50-foot buffers.