Less than three weeks before the state of Texas is set to take over food truck permitting, Waco-area operators remain in the dark about how they’ll be affected and worry their permitting fees will soar.
Starting July 1, the state of Texas will begin to issue a universal state health permit for mobile food vendors, replacing a patchwork of local health permits that has burdened vendors operating in multiple cities and counties.
Vendors must apply for the new state permits before July 1, even if they have a valid McLennan County permit, but the three food truck operators interviewed for this story said they were unaware of the deadline.
Locally, the Waco-McLennan County Public Health District expects to continue inspecting food trucks under a contract with the state, though no agreement has yet been signed.
“The assumption is that the vast majority of them will be assigned back to us to inspect if we get this collaborative agreement with the state in place,” said Stephanie Alvey, health district director.
In the meantime, Alvey said the health district is attempting to contact business owners about the impending application deadline.
While the new permits may help vendors who operate in multiple counties, health district officials expect those who operate only in McLennan County to see a jump in permitting costs. For those who cook in their truck or trailer, fees could skyrocket.
Food truck owners who do business only in this county will see a significant increase in permitting costs, from $258 to around $1,500 for vendors that cook on the truck.
Even local health district officials are unsure what the resulting system will look like in practice. Details on matters such as how state fees are assessed, which vendors will need commissary kitchens and where health inspections will take place remain nebulous less than a month before rules go into effect.
“I just want clarity, man. There’s just too much going on,” said Aniceto Charles Jr., owner of East Waco’s Tru Jamaica Restaurant and a food truck by the same name.
A tough year
The higher permit fees will hit Waco’s food trucks just as rising fuel and food prices combine with declining retail spending across the city, a trend highlighted by Waco city staff in a meeting this month.
Since the beginning of the year, Charles estimated a $25,000 to $30,000 drop in revenue compared to the same time last year, mostly from catering jobs drying up in Waco.
He managed to reopen his brick-and-mortar restaurant last year after a 2022 structure fire, but spending hundreds more on annual permits and inspection fees for the food truck wasn’t part of the budget.
“In this economy, every penny, every dollar counts,” Charles said.
The lack of clarity on the new rules is making matters worse, vendors told the Bridge. “The whole thing has just been weird this whole year,” said Devin Li, owner of the Cha Community dumpling food truck as well as two brick-and-mortar locations in Waco under the same brand. “It’s causing people to be anxious.”
Alvey, the health district director, said the state has not provided a contact to the district who can answer vendors’ questions. DSHS did not respond to Waco Bridge phone and email messages seeking information about the state permit and fees. Like Charles, Li has noticed a sharp decline in nonprofit and institutional catering requests, amounting to some $30,000 to $40,000 in lost revenue.
Neither owner was aware that the state application is due by July or that their local health permits would expire next month.
District officials said they’ve tried to spread the word. “Some (vendors) check email regularly, some of them don’t,” Alvey said. “But we’ve been trying our best to get in contact with them and make sure that everybody’s aware.”
Li said he can’t locate any communications from the health district informing him of the deadline.
“I don’t think any of us knew,” he said.
One size fits some
The burden many Waco vendors are facing with the new permitting system is an unintended consequence of the solution lawmakers were seeking to a problem in West Texas.
Texas Rep. Brooks Landgraf, an Odessa Republican, introduced the bill in 2025, responding to permitting struggles for vendors in the four-county Midland-Odessa area.
Vendors were on the move between the two cities and catering to oil workers deep in the Permian Basin. That made the patchwork of health districts an expensive and time-consuming headache for food trucks to navigate, according to a legislative analysis of the bill. Alvey said the same conditions likely apply to vendors in areas such as Dallas-Fort Worth. But in Waco, most food trucks and trailers don’t leave the city — some don’t even leave the block.
Yajaira Gallegos is one of the Waco food truck owners who said she would benefit from the new rules. She and her family own the Taquisa Waco food truck and Route 77 Food Truck Park and Bar off La Salle Avenue. The Gallegos family stations its food truck in different cities throughout Central Texas each week. “It definitely works for the food trucks that are moving around … (because you do) not have to pay in every little town,” Gallegos said. “But it’s not really useful to a food truck that’s not moving around.”
Health permit fees just to serve in Marlin in neighboring Falls County could cost Gallegos more than $3,000 a year if the family sold there weekly, she said, pulling up a spreadsheet of each jurisdiction’s permit fees. But Gallegos will need to file her application with the state before she can take advantage of the new universal permit. She was similarly unaware of the upcoming deadline to file.
What comes next
The Waco City Council will formalize changes to its local health permit and mobile vendor ordinances at its June 16 meeting.
The new law will prevent Waco from enforcing parts of its open-air vending ordinance that mandate food trucks keep a 100-foot distance from restaurants selling similar goods.
But it won’t negate additions to the ordinance last year that created new restrictions on food trucks that rarely move, including limits on shade structures, utility hookups and seating. That ordinance is related to city planning and zoning rather than health inspections.
Waco also will continue to require a mobile vending permit, which comes with a $200 fee.
