The money

Permit costs, with the honesty label on

Most “food truck permit cost” pages on the internet print a confident national range assembled from other pages' guesses. We print verified schedules, label everything else, and would rather show you a gap than a guess — a wrong fee in your budget is worse than an admitted unknown.

Texas — verified from the DSHS Mobile Food Vendor Guide (October 2026). Type I (prepackaged, low-risk): $309 application. Type II (limited prep): $618 application + $400 pre-licensing inspection = $1,018 to open. Type III (full cooking): $876 + $500 = $1,376 to open. Renewals run $300–$850 a year; routine or complaint inspections add $300–$500 when they happen. Before HB 2844, one Amarillo vendor reported paying about $3,000 a year across overlapping city and county permits — the statewide license is, for multi-city operators, a pay cut.

The human alternative — priced. In Denver, the local association's own page puts permitting consultants at $500–$1,500. In Texas, the incumbent permit service charges $49 for a consultation, $99 for a pre-inspection review, $397 for a guided application, and $1,200 to file everything for you — Texas only. Those are real, useful services for operators who want a human. They are also 17 to 41 times the price of this kit, which exists for operators who would rather read the map themselves.

The costs nobody lists: commissary rent (the biggest recurring line, set city by city — there is no honest national number, which is why we don't print one); event and temporary permit fees per event; fire-system servicing and extinguisher tags; and the day of sales you lose to every inspection appointment. The kit's fee worksheets exist so these stop being surprises: what you paid, to whom, and when it comes due again.

For every other state's verified schedule, see the state table — where a fee row is still being verified, the row says so instead of inventing a number.

Included in the $29 FoodTruckCleared Kit

  • Permit Path sheets for all 51 jurisdictions: who issues your permit, the step sequence, the commissary rule, and the local layer that survives — one printable sheet per state
  • The Texas HB 2844 transition guide: DSHS license types and fees, the inspection-queue playbook, and the exact answer to give a city still demanding its retired permit
  • Reciprocity playbooks for Colorado, Utah, and Oklahoma: the document packet, the 14-day clocks, and the copy-delivery errand, state by state
  • The commissary agreement template: a fill-in agreement with the sections health departments look for, plus how to find and negotiate a commissary in a new city
  • Inspection checklists: the health walk-through and the fire walk-through, in the order inspectors actually move around the truck
  • The event and temporary-permit pack: an application tracker, the questions to ask an organizer before you pay a booth fee, and the mass-gathering notice rules
  • Fee worksheets and a renewal calendar: what you paid, to whom, and when it expires — so no permit ever lapses silently

Get the FoodTruckCleared Kit — $29

One payment of $29. No subscription. The kit is a web page you can return to and print — Permit Path sheets for all 51 jurisdictions, the Texas transition guide, reciprocity playbooks, the commissary agreement template, inspection checklists, the event pack, and fee worksheets.