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Mobile food vendors across Texas, including food trucks, carts and stands, must apply for a new statewide food license by July 1 to comply with a state law passed during the most recent legislative session.
House Bill 2844 requires new and existing food trucks to submit an application for a statewide mobile food vendor license from the Texas Department of State Health Services. New food trucks will be subject to inspection by the department before they can begin selling food.
Chris Van Deusen, spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, said the law eliminates the municipal licensing needed to operate a food truck. Previously, if a mobile vendor wanted to change locations between cities and counties, they would need to obtain a different license for each area. Now, with the one required license, they will be approved to operate anywhere within the state.
Existing food trucks with previous licenses can continue to operate before inspection if they have submitted an application, and they will be inspected as soon as possible in order to obtain the new license. Food trucks that do not comply with the new license issued by the department cannot operate, according to the bill.
“It’s a new program for us, so obviously a bigger outlay for us and bigger effort for us to do, because it’s something we weren’t doing in most of the state previously,” Van Deusen said. “It would be to the benefit of those vendors who do operate in multiple jurisdictions. So somebody who wants to operate in Austin and also Williamson County … without having to get multiple licenses.”
Reinaldo Lezcano, owner of the food truck Cachitos512 at Arbor Food Park on East 12th Street, said he didn’t think the new food license was explained to vendors clearly.
“I don’t feel any excitement for the change,” Lezcano said. “I don’t know what … the reason (is) for the change.”
Austin is a popular city for food trucks, with nine trucks on Yelp’s annual top 100 Food Truck list in 2025. There are several university-owned and independent food trucks on campus. Near Dobie Twenty21 and on 26th Street and Rio Grande Street in West Campus, there are food truck parks where groups of vendors stay year-round.
Gerard Nocco owned a food truck in West Campus, Nocco’s Napoletana, which operated at the sports bar Victory Lap before it closed. Nocco said that there was difficulty keeping costs down and profit up for a food truck when he had to cater to college students, and that another area may have been better, given the abundance of trucks in the University area.
“If you like (a food truck), support them and realize how hard those people are working, because it is not just sitting in a car for hours, it is manual labor at its toughest,” Nocco said.
Lezcano said he wished that representatives from the state government, rather than the city government, had met with food truck owners to introduce the policy.
“(My favorite part is) sharing with people every day (and being a) server for the community,” Lezcano said. “The most important (thing) for me is (to) guide the people here (to) know the Venezuelan food — (that) is gratification for me, for sure.”
Editor’s Note: News Desk Editor Lizzie Bassett and General Multimedia Producer Julia McConnell contributed to the reporting of this article.
Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin
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