Palatine, IL Food Trucks & Mobile Vendors: Vending Zones (2026)

Village Code Section 20-190 restricts where and when mobile food vendors, ice cream trucks, and other delivery vehicles can sell on public rights-of-way near schools. It is unlawful to sell, offer to sell, barter, or exchange ice cream or other food products from a mobile food dispensing unit or delivery vehicle on any public street, alley, highway, or public way within 500 feet of a school between 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. on any day school is in session, with school property measured from the property line of any public, private, or parochial school authorized to provide education by the state.

The section carves out one exception: it does not stop a vendor from delivering items a customer already ordered in writing, so a pre-arranged delivery to a home near a school during school hours is not a violation. Section 20-191 layers on a village-wide curfew for the same vehicles, making it unlawful to sell, offer to sell, barter, or exchange ice cream or other food products from a mobile food dispensing unit or delivery vehicle on any public street, alley, highway, or public way between 8:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., regardless of distance from a school.

Read together, the two sections mean a Palatine food truck or ice cream vendor working the public right-of-way needs to track both a school buffer during the school day and a village-wide nighttime cutoff, on top of the licensing and permitting requirements in Section 20-165 that already govern whether the vehicle can operate at all. Violations of either restriction fall under the general licensing enforcement and fine provisions of chapter 20, article I, including suspension or revocation proceedings for a vendor's underlying mobile food dispensing unit license.