Every permit, license, and fee you need to start a food truck or farmers market business — with a link to the official government page each number came from.
Built for food trucks, trailers, carts and food stalls at farmers markets, plus cottage food operations. Not for craft or other non-food vendors.
Starting a food business means assembling facts from a dozen government websites that don’t reference each other — your Secretary of State, a county health department, a state agriculture department, a city fire marshal. Search for shortcuts and you get blog posts with fees that are two years stale.
Two real examples, both found while building this kit. Texas abolished city-by-city food truck permits on July 1, 2026 and replaced them with a single statewide license — dozens of guides still tell you to apply to Austin or Houston. And a widely-repeated claim credits Ohio’s statewide license recognition to a bill number that doesn’t exist.
So this kit does the boring thing properly: every fee, agency, and law was checked against an official government source, and that source link sits next to the number so you can confirm it yourself in one click.
LLC filing fee and what it costs to keep the entity alive, which agency issues your mobile food permit and what it charges, the cottage food law with its real current cap, and sales tax — with the official source beside every number.
Where to file, where to apply, where the fee schedule lives, where to register for sales tax — the specific page, not a department homepage. Where a state devolves permitting to counties or municipalities, the kit links the official directory so you can find yours in one step.
The things no fee schedule tells you: that California's $800 franchise tax is due even at zero revenue, that New York City's official $200 permit has a years-long waiting list, that Tennessee charges a separate $300 state fire marshal permit, that Texas replaced every city permit with one statewide license on July 1, 2026.
The ten steps carry your state's exact form, fee, agency and link on each line. The order is the free part; the destinations are not.
Every line item with its frequency, as a PDF page and a spreadsheet — for quoting real numbers instead of guessing from blog posts.
The questions to ask a commissary before signing, what to have ready before applying to a market, and exactly what your insurance agent needs from you.
The free guide explains the rules. The kit is the thing you actually work from — and the difference is mostly the hours it saves you hunting down where to do each step.
| Free guide | Kit | |
|---|---|---|
| The rules, fees, and agencies for your state | ||
| Direct link to every form, portal, and fee schedule | — | |
| The official source printed beside every number | — | |
| A printable checklist in dependency order | — | |
| Startup cost worksheet (PDF + spreadsheet) | — | |
| Commissary, market, and insurance question lists | — |
Each kit covers one state completely — the permits, fees, agencies, and forms that apply to you, and nothing you’ll never use. $39 each.
Don’t see your state? More are being verified — the free state guides cover all 50 in the meantime.
It isn’t legal or tax advice, and it can’t be — requirements vary by county and city even inside one state, and they change. What it does is put the right agency, the right fee, and the official source in front of you so you spend your time applying instead of searching.
One PDF for your state, every number sourced, every form one click away.
Choose your state — $39