Rapides Parish, LA Food Trucks & Mobile Vendors: Vending Zones (2026)

The same Sec. 19-12 that bans curbside and sidewalk vending also spells out, in its second paragraph, the one place mobile selling is allowed in unincorporated Rapides Parish: delivery to a specific address. The ordinance, adopted December 8, 1970, states that the ban on using parish streets as places of trade shall not be construed as preventing the temporary stopping or parking of vehicles on the streets for the purpose of making sale or delivery of goods, wares, merchandise or produce on private premises to occupants of the buildings or dwellings thereon, as long as that sale or delivery is not barred by some other parish ordinance.

In the same breath, the section makes clear what that exception does not cover: it is expressly construed as prohibiting the stopping or parking of vehicles or other conveyances on the streets for the purpose of selling or delivering to the general public, or otherwise engaging in trade or business with the general public, from the vehicle itself. Read together, the two clauses draw the line for a food truck or produce vendor operating outside Alexandria's city limits: pulling up to make a delivery a specific resident or business already ordered is lawful, but parking on a parish street and opening for walk-up sales to whoever passes by is not.

There is no separate mobile-vending permit or designated vending-zone map in the parish code: the boundary is drawn entirely by this one sentence in Sec. 19-12, and Sec. 19-17 supplies the penalty for crossing it.