From the Texas Tribune: Texas to launch a statewide food truck permit on July 1

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Eloisa Schessler and her husband started Eloisa’s Kitchen Food Truck in Dallas to help their daughter. Their daughter had suffered a head injury, and had become a shell of her former self. They worked diligently to create a small business where their daughter not only serves as the sous chef, but she also is responsible for the entire creative design of the truck. Slowly, they started to see their daughter revert back to her former self.

But government red-tape is preventing her food truck and others from growing. The family wants to travel to other cities to serve their food, but each city requires them to apply for a permit, which is not only very costly, but requires the family to take the day off of work to do another city’s inspection.

. . . But House Bill 2844, which passed last year and goes into effect July 1, could relieve the Schessler family and the statewide food truck industry from some of the financial pressure.

The new state law outlines that the Department of State Health Services (DSHS) will create a statewide operating permit that will apply to any food truck in Texas. Currently, food truck owners must pay each city’s permitting fees to operate there, which can cost several hundreds of dollars per jurisdiction, even though inspection requirements are largely the same across cities and counties. Consequently, food truck owners have said they feel discouraged from traveling to other places to sell their food, suppressing their business growth.

. . . Some cities oppose the new statewide license because without their authority, both cities and counties fear they may lose control of how their mobile food trucks operate in their locations. Local governmental entities control where and when the food trucks operate in their jurisdiction, but they won’t be able to collect permit and inspection fees anymore.

- House Bill 2844