Every figure on this page links to the organization that produced it, and each was re-checked against that source before publishing. How food trucks, food carts and other mobile food vendors use video, and the numbers behind the trade: our YouTube Data API read of the 559 most-viewed ‘food truck’, ‘food truck business’ and ‘street food’ videos and of a year of uploads from the U.S. vendors among them; BLS and Census counts of mobile food businesses in the U.S., Florida and Palm Beach, Broward and Martin counties; Florida’s food truck licences from the state’s own annual reports and licence files; city permit counts from open data; who works on food trucks and what they earn; what the 2022 Economic Census says food trucks sell; menu prices from the CPI; what Portillo’s, Krispy Kreme and other companies told the SEC about their trucks, and our count of annual reports that say “food truck”; peer-reviewed studies of food truck hygiene and of where mobile vendors sell; Florida, FDA and city rules for food trucks; and where the popular food truck numbers came from.
In our November 11, 2026 read of YouTube’s 559 most-viewed ‘food truck’, ‘food truck business’ and ‘street food’ videos, food trucks, carts and vendors speaking as themselves drew 7.6% of on-topic views. Travel and street-food vloggers filming vendors drew 60.6% and food creators 18.7%. (Mark Studios)See details
One vendor channel carried most of that: a Washington, D.C.-area food truck’s customer-story shorts drew 4.6% of on-topic views, and without it vendors drew 2.9%. (Mark Studios)See details
YouTube’s ‘food truck’ results are noisy: 28.5% of the videos in that list were off-topic, mostly toy trucks, cartoons and kids’ songs, and they drew 59.9% of the list’s views. (Mark Studios)See details
Videos of 60 seconds or less were 33.5% of the on-topic videos and drew 43.6% of their views. The 11 U.S. vendor channels in the sample uploaded 4,293 videos in a year; the median channel posted 156. (Mark Studios)See details
Florida had 11,197 active food truck licences in fiscal year 2025-26, up from 2,569 in 2013-14, a 335.9% rise; food trucks went from 5.3% to 16.4% of the state’s food service licences. (Florida DBPR)See details
Florida’s licence files listed 449 current food trucks in Palm Beach County, 472 in Broward and 75 in Martin in November 2026: 28.5, 23.4 and 45.1 per 100,000 residents, against 43.5 statewide (our count). (Mark Studios, from Florida DBPR)See details
BLS counted 12,663 U.S. mobile food services establishments with employees in 2025 (NAICS 722330, which also counts ice cream trucks and street carts), up 314.1% from 3,058 in 2014; Florida had 1,344. (BLS)See details
In 2023, 87.4% of U.S. special food services businesses (food trucks, caterers and food service contractors together) had no paid employees: 6.9 owner-run businesses for every employer. (Mark Studios, from Census)See details
Food trucks were 44.0% of the new food service licences Florida approved in fiscal year 2022-23 (2,488 of them), more than new seating restaurants. (Mark Studios, from Florida DBPR)See details
The repeated “60% of food trucks fail within three years” has no food truck study behind it: it borrows a 59 percent three-year figure from a 1996-1999 study of Columbus, Ohio, restaurants. BLS finds 68.8% of new accommodation and food services employer locations still open after three years. (Mark Studios)See details
Who gets the views on YouTube's most-viewed food truck and street food videos?
Creators filming vendors, not the vendors. In our November 11, 2026 YouTube Data API read of the most-viewed videos for 'food truck', 'food truck business' and 'street food', travel and street-food vloggers filming vendors drew 60.6% of the on-topic views and food creators and reviewers drew 18.7%. Food trucks, carts and mobile vendors speaking as themselves drew 7.6%, and one channel, Flavor Hive, a food truck brand in the Washington, D.C. area, drew 4.6% of the on-topic views with three customer-story shorts, 61.1% of all vendor views. Without it, vendors drew 2.9% (our calculation).
This is a view-sorted global search snapshot, not a census of food truck video: we took YouTube's 200 most-viewed results for each phrase that day, 559 unique videos from 370 channels with 6.66 billion lifetime views (6,655,629,963). 490 of them were about food trucks, food carts, street food or the mobile food business, and they drew 73.5% of all views in the sample; the median on-topic video had 2,828,589 views (our calculation).
Who uploaded it
Channels
Share of on-topic views
Food trucks, carts and mobile vendors speaking as themselves
Brands, truck and cart builders, sellers and lenders
21
0.6%
News, TV and media
20
0.5%
Food-truck business educators and coaches
9
0.1%
Personal and family uploads (withheld)
5
0.2%
Vendors uploaded 40 of the on-topic videos. The three most-viewed channels, all street-food channels, drew 34.4% of the on-topic views and the ten most-viewed 56.7% (our calculation). Each phrase pulls a different crowd. In the 'food truck' list, vendors drew 34.7% of the on-topic views. In the 'street food' list, vloggers drew 74.8% and vendors 0.0%: a street-food video there is a creator filming a cart or stall, not the vendor's own channel. In the 'food truck business' list, business-interview and general creators drew 41.7% and truck and cart builders and sellers 12.4% (our calculation).
How much of YouTube's "food truck" results is about real food trucks?
Less than three quarters of the videos, and well under half of the views. 28.5% of the unique videos YouTube returned for 'food truck' on November 11, 2026 were off-topic, mostly kids' toy food trucks, cartoons and songs, plus food truck games and cartoon and film clips. They drew 59.9% of that list's views. In all, 39 videos in the sample were kids' entertainment or family toy play with a toy or pretend food truck, and 39 were set as made for kids. The 'food truck business' (3.7% off-topic) and 'street food' (3.5%) lists were almost all on topic (our calculation).
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Where are the channels behind the most-viewed food truck videos?
Mostly outside the United States. Channels placed in the United States by their own text or country setting drew 20.9% of the on-topic views in our November 11, 2026 sample, from 71 channels; channels that state no country drew 16.6%, and channels placed in other countries drew the rest. 11 vendor channels were U.S.-placed, and they drew 6.0% of the on-topic views (our calculation). Only 1 channel names a Florida place: Sunshine's Hotdogs, a hot dog cart in Daytona Beach. Its two sample videos had 511,574 views between them. No channel names Palm Beach, Broward or Martin County.
How long are the most-viewed food truck videos, and what are they about?
A third are a minute or less, and those draw the most views. 33.5% of the on-topic videos in our November 11, 2026 sample ran 60 seconds or less, and they drew 43.6% of the on-topic views. The median short one had 3,497,196 views, against 2,535,155 for the median longer one. 25.0% of the vendors' own videos were that short (our calculation).
Food leads the titles: 171 on-topic titles named a dish, a drink or the menu, with 37.2% of the on-topic views. 77 carried a price or money figure, from a $0.25 snack to a '$40K/Month' business claim (18.8% of views). 124 named the business, how to start one, its cost, income or profit, but they drew only 2.4% of the views. 44 named a truck or cart build, a fabricator or a vehicle tour (0.8%); 21 named a working day, a shift or a rush on the truck (1.1%), 15 of them the vendors' own; and 7 named an event, festival, fair, night market or food truck park (0.8%). 63 carried a #shorts tag (12.1%). 76.9% of the on-topic videos were published in 2024 or later (our calculation).
How often do U.S. food trucks post on YouTube?
Often. The 11 U.S.-placed vendor channels in our sample uploaded 4,293 videos in the year to November 11, 2026; the median channel uploaded 156, and 10 of them posted at least weekly on average. This is a short list from one search, not a survey of U.S. food trucks. Two channels posted 77.4% of those uploads: 303 In the Cut, a Las Vegas restaurant and food truck business, uploaded 2,045, and The Homedog LLC, a hot dog cart in South Central Pennsylvania, uploaded 1,279 (our calculation).
Across each channel's 50 most recent uploads of that year, the median upload had 31,671 views, 38.0% ran 60 seconds or less, and 34.4% named a dish, a drink or the menu in the title. Flavor Hive's median recent upload had 135,262 views. Sunshine's Hotdogs, the Daytona Beach cart, uploaded 162 videos in the year, with a median of 26,224 views (our calculation).
Method and limits: YouTube Data API, read November 11, 2026, three search phrases, global (no region filter). We did not watch the videos; channel classes were set by hand from each channel's own text, and the uploader decides the class, so a street-food vlog counts as the vlogger's even when the vendor fills the frame. We do not name private vendors filmed by creators. Personal uploads by private people and family channels featuring a named minor are published as counts only, 20 videos in all, with no title, channel, date or views; shares on this page include their views. YouTube's uploader label for altered or synthetic content was absent on every video in the sample. The data are in youtube-videos.csv, youtube-channels.csv and youtube-us-food-truck-channels.csv.
What do U.S. studies find when they watch food truck and cart vendors at work?
Observers keep finding hand-hygiene slips at New York City carts. A 2003 Cornell study, which put the number of mobile food vendors operating in New York City at over 4,100, watched 10 processing vendors in midtown Manhattan for 20 minutes each and saw 67% of them touch served food with bare hands (Public Health Reports, Burt et al.). In a 2015 William Paterson University study of 100 Manhattan food carts, vendors did not change gloves in 56.9% of 1,804 money exchanges, a share that ranged from 46.6% at breakfast carts to 63.7% at lunch carts (Journal of Community Health, Basch et al.). The same team watched 495 money transactions at 25 vendors near five Manhattan hospitals in 2016 and saw seven glove changes; 76% of the 25 one-dollar bills they collected carried 400 to 42,000 bacterial colony-forming units (Journal of Community Health, Basch et al.).
Outbreaks tied to mobile food are documented but rare in the literature. In Alberta, Canada, an October 2010 to February 2011 outbreak of 91 Salmonella Enteritidis infections was first linked to food bought from worksite lunch trucks; investigators traced it to a catering company that supplied the trucks, not to the trucks' own kitchens (MMWR, CDC). A 2015 study of 244 foodborne illness outbreaks in Georgia from 1998 to 2010, drawn from CDC's Foodborne Outbreak Online Database, compared festivals (mobile food sources) with group gatherings and found more hospitalizations from group-gathering outbreaks than from festival outbreaks (Journal of Environmental Health, Wilson).
The kitchen air inside a truck is a worker-safety question too. A 2020 pilot study that sampled the air in two U.S. food trucks during work shifts detected formaldehyde in every sample, at 7.16 to 53.68 µg/m3 (Workplace Health & Safety, Phillips and Oh).
We found no peer-reviewed study in PubMed that compares health-inspection violation rates of U.S. food trucks with those of restaurants. The best-known comparison, a report by the Institute for Justice, could not be read: ij.org answers scripts with a Cloudflare challenge, so it is left out.
What do studies find about where mobile food vendors sell and what they serve?
Mobile vendors are hard to count and move often. Researchers who walked every street in the Bronx in 2010 found 372 mobile food vendors in carts, trucks and stands (Public Health, Lucan et al.). Only 34% of them had visible permits or licences, weather decided whether 86% of those interviewed went out to work, and 75% of those who answered felt most comfortable speaking Spanish (Lucan et al.).
Vendors near schools sell a lot to children. In spring 2008, researchers watching mobile vendors near six Oakland, California, schools for 37 hours counted 1,355 items sold to 1,195 people (American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Tester et al.), and 56% of the transactions involved children with no adult present (Tester et al.). A 2010 review of mobile vending rules in 12 U.S. cities found wide variation in where vendors may park and what they must sell (American Journal of Public Health, Tester et al.).
Food truck menus lean unhealthy, though most trucks offer something lighter. A 2019 Oakland University survey of 41 mobile food vendors in Michigan found 76% named low customer demand as the biggest barrier to healthy items (BMC Public Health, Reznar et al.); 72% offered at least one healthy item, but only 20% of all their menu items were rated healthy (Reznar et al.). The same team's 2020 analysis of 725 menu items from all 78 food trucks in the Detroit area rated 24.6% of items healthy, and 70.5% of the trucks offered at least one healthy item (Current Developments in Nutrition, Reznar et al.).
Healthier menus are possible but sell slowly. In a 2013-2014 Los Angeles pilot with Latino food trucks (loncheras), the new healthier meals made up 2% of audited orders, even though 97% of surveyed customers said they would recommend and buy them again (Public Health Nutrition, Cohen et al.). A 2021 study of taste testing and menu prompts at a weekly Buffalo, New York, food truck event involved seven trucks and 179 surveyed patrons (Public Health Nutrition, Bleasdale et al.).
New York City's permitted produce carts are the clearest test of a city using mobile vendors on purpose (context: carts, not food trucks). In Green Cart neighborhoods, the share of stores and carts selling fruits and vegetables rose from 50% in 2008 to 69% in 2011 (AIMS Public Health, Farley et al., NYC Department of Health), but a 2011 study found Bronx Green Carts covered only about 57% of high-need areas (Journal of Urban Health, Lucan et al.).
We found no peer-reviewed study in PubMed that measures how food trucks use Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or other social video. The only food truck paper we found on the subject, a 2022 French study of food trucks during COVID-19 lockdowns, describes social media use from focus groups and a survey but publishes no usable figure on it.
What do food truck hygiene studies outside the United States find?
Studies abroad, offered here as context only, find uneven hygiene on trucks and stands. A 2018 Paris study inspected 120 mobile food establishments, 22 of them food trucks, and found none entirely hygienic; 65% were satisfactory on production and distribution hygiene (Journal of Food Protection, Czarniecka-Skubina et al.). A 2021 study checked 550 randomly selected street food vendors in trucks and stands across 10 Polish cities (Foods, Wiatrowski et al.), and a 2023 follow-up swabbed five food-contact surfaces in 20 Polish food trucks (Foods, Wiatrowski et al.). In the UK, a 2009 study sampled 1,258 mobile food vendors and found a documented food safety management system at only 40.1% (International Journal of Environmental Health Research, Little and Sagoo).
Customer surveys abroad show regular use and hygiene worries. In a 2019 study of 133 food truck customers in Brazil's Federal District, 96% ate from food trucks once or twice a week, and poor vehicle hygiene (30%) was the main reason given for skipping a truck (Nutrients, Isoni Auad et al.). Saudi researchers surveyed 921 food truck customers online in September-November 2021 (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Alhashim et al.) and 500 adult customers in the Makkah region in March-October 2025 (Foods, Farrash et al.) about food safety knowledge.
How many people work on U.S. food trucks, and what are they paid?
Private mobile food services establishments (NAICS 722330, which also counts ice cream trucks, mobile canteens and street carts) employed an annual average of 47,111 workers in the United States in 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), which counts jobs covered by unemployment insurance (BLS). That was 263.8% more than the 12,950 of 2014 (BLS) (our calculation). Average annual pay was $27,072 per employee in 2025 (BLS), before inflation and counting part-time and seasonal jobs as whole jobs.
The trucks are small employers. In 2025 the code averaged 3.7 employees per establishment (our calculation, from QCEW). The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns counted 38,438 paid employees at U.S. mobile food services establishments in the week of March 12, 2023 (Census), and the 2022 Economic Census counted 29,169 in March 2022 (Census). Owners who pay themselves no wage are in none of these counts; see the nonemployer figures below.
How many food truck jobs are there in Florida and in Palm Beach, Broward and Martin counties?
Florida's private mobile food services establishments (NAICS 722330, which also counts ice cream trucks and street carts) employed an annual average of 3,707 workers in 2025, at an average annual pay of $29,307, per BLS QCEW (BLS). The three South Florida counties below are small: each count is a QCEW 2025 annual average of private jobs covered by unemployment insurance.
Pay sources for the table: Palm Beach (BLS), Broward (BLS) and Martin (BLS). With so few jobs in each county, one large employer can move a county's average pay by thousands of dollars from year to year.
Which jobs do food truck workers do, and what do they earn?
BLS does not publish occupations for mobile food services on their own. The closest table is special food services (NAICS 722300), which also holds food service contractors (cafeterias in schools, hospitals and offices) and caterers, so contract food service dominates it. In May 2025 that industry had 817,540 wage and salary jobs, with a median annual wage of $38,080, per BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) (BLS) (BLS). Fast food and counter workers were the largest group, at 152,120 jobs (BLS), or 18.6% of the total (our calculation). OEWS counts wage and salary workers only; self-employed owners are excluded.
Occupation, U.S. special food services (NAICS 722300), May 2025
The OEWS wages include tips only where the employer reports them as wages.
How have restaurant and quick-service meal prices changed?
Meals bought away from home cost 49.3% more in 2025 than in 2015, by the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), and limited service meals and snacks, the quick-service category closest to food truck food, cost 53.5% more (our calculation, from BLS annual averages). The food away from home index averaged 256.101 in 2015 (BLS) and 382.378 in 2025 (BLS). The limited service meals and snacks index averaged 163.340 in 2015 (BLS) and 250.785 in 2025 (BLS).
Over the latest 12 months the rise slowed. From September 2025 to September 2026, food away from home rose 3.5%, from 385.451 (BLS) to 398.783 (BLS), and limited service meals and snacks rose 3.2%, from 252.169 (BLS) to 260.209 (BLS) (our calculation). BLS did not collect October 2025 prices during the 2025 shutdown, so no 12-month change exists for October 2026. BLS publishes no food-truck-only price index; these indexes price meals from every kind of seller.
How many food trucks are there in the United States?
The United States averaged 12,663 private mobile food services establishments with employees in 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) (BLS). NAICS 722330 (Mobile Food Services) is the food-truck code, but it also counts ice cream trucks, mobile canteens and street carts. The count is up 314.1% from 3,058 in 2014 (BLS) (our calculation). Trucks run by owners with no employees are not in QCEW; they are counted separately below.
The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns, which counts establishments with paid employees in March, shows the same climb over a longer run. It counted 12,487 U.S. mobile food services establishments in 2023 (Census), against 2,520 in 1998 (Census), 1,984 in 2008 (Census), 3,281 in 2013 (Census) and 5,970 in 2018 (Census). That is a rise of 395.5% since 1998, 529.4% since the 2008 low and 109.2% in the five years from 2018 (our calculation). 10,062 of the 2023 establishments had fewer than 5 employees (Census), or 80.6% (our calculation).
How many food trucks are there in Florida and in Palm Beach, Broward and Martin counties?
Florida averaged 1,344 private mobile food services establishments with employees in 2025 (NAICS 722330, which also counts ice cream trucks and street carts), per BLS QCEW (BLS). That was 10.6% of the U.S. total and 249.1% more than the 385 of 2014 (BLS) (our calculation). Florida had 5.73 such establishments per 100,000 residents, against 3.70 for the United States (our calculation, from QCEW and Census population estimates).
Establishment counts are private NAICS 722330 establishments with employees (QCEW annual averages; County Business Patterns, week of March 12). Changes and per-100,000 rates are our calculation. Martin County's high rate rests on 16 establishments, so a few openings or closures move it a lot. BLS withheld Martin County's 2014 employment but printed the establishment count.
How many food businesses are run by owner-operators with no employees?
Most of them. In 2023, 87.4% of U.S. special food services businesses had no paid employees: 381,492 nonemployer businesses (Census) against 55,221 establishments with paid employees (Census), or 6.9 nonemployers for every employer (our calculation, Nonemployer Statistics 2023 against County Business Patterns 2023). The Census Bureau's Nonemployer Statistics, built from IRS business tax records, does not publish mobile food services (722330) on its own; its finest food-truck category is special food services (NAICS 7223), which also holds caterers and food service contractors. So these counts are an upper bound for owner-operated trucks and carts, not a food truck count.
In Florida the share was higher: 91.6% in 2023, 38,785 nonemployers (Census) against 3,558 employer establishments (Census), or 10.9 for every employer (our calculation).
The newest count, for 2024, is 406,608 U.S. special food services nonemployers (Census), 140.7% more than the 168,907 of 2013 (Census) (our calculation). Together they reported $11,593,835 thousand (about $11.6 billion) in 2024 receipts (Census), an average of $28,514 per business (our calculation): most are side or part-time businesses.
Per-100,000 rates are our calculation from Nonemployer Statistics 2024 and Census Vintage 2025 population estimates for July 1, 2024.
How much do U.S. food trucks sell?
U.S. mobile food services establishments with paid employees (NAICS 722330, which also counts ice cream trucks and street carts) had $3,019,256 thousand (about $3.0 billion) in sales in 2022, according to the 2022 Economic Census (Census). The census counted 10,155 such establishments (Census), an average of $297,317 in sales each (our calculation). Sales rose 156.0% from $1,179,202 thousand (about $1.2 billion) in 2017 (Census), before inflation, while the number of establishments rose 94.9% from 5,211 (Census) (our calculation). Owner-only trucks are not in these totals.
Florida's 964 mobile food services establishments with paid employees (Census) sold $274,551 thousand (about $274.6 million) in 2022 (Census), 9.1% of the U.S. total (our calculation).
Most of the money is food sold from the vehicle. Meals, snacks and other food dispensed via mobile vending made up 75.4% of the industry's 2022 sales, per the Economic Census product lines (Census). Food and drink prepared for catered events made up 6.5% (Census): many trucks also cater.
How many new food businesses survive one, three and five years?
BLS does not publish survival rates for food trucks. Its Business Employment Dynamics (BED) program publishes them by sector, and the closest is accommodation and food services (NAICS 72), which includes restaurants, bars and hotels as well as food trucks and counts only establishments with employees. Of the NAICS 72 establishments that opened in the year ended March 2025, 85.3% were still operating a year later, in March 2026 (BLS). Of those that opened in the year ended March 2023, 68.8% were still operating three years later (BLS), so 31.2% had closed (our calculation). Of the March 2021 cohort, 56.3% were still operating after five years (BLS), so 43.7% had closed (our calculation). Of the March 2016 cohort, 42.9% survived ten years (BLS).
None of these rates supports the popular claim that most food trucks close within three years. They describe all new accommodation and food service locations with employees, not food trucks alone, and owner-only trucks are not in BED.
How many food trucks are licensed in Florida?
Florida's Division of Hotels and Restaurants counted 11,197 active mobile food dispensing vehicle licences in fiscal year 2025-26 (July 2025 to June 2026) (DBPR annual report). The division licenses each vehicle, so this is a count of trucks, trailers and similar units, not of businesses: an owner with three trucks holds three licences. Hot dog carts are a separate rank, with 603 active licences the same year (DBPR annual report).
Mobile food dispensing vehicles made up 16.4% of Florida's 68,360 active public food service licences in fiscal year 2025-26 (DBPR annual report) (our calculation). Seating restaurants still held the most, with 47,401 licences (DBPR annual report). The division also recorded 7,115 temporary food service event licences that year, the permits vendors use for fairs and festivals (DBPR annual report).
On November 9, 2026, DBPR's own licence files listed 10,201 mobile food dispensing vehicle licences in "Current" status and 512 current hot dog cart licences (our calculation from DBPR's public licence extract). That count is lower than the annual report's 11,197 because it leaves out licences DBPR marks delinquent and is taken five months later.
How fast has the number of food truck licences grown in Florida?
Active mobile food dispensing vehicle licences in Florida rose 335.9% in twelve years, from 2,569 in fiscal year 2013-14 (DBPR annual report) to 11,197 in fiscal year 2025-26, by the Division of Hotels and Restaurants' annual counts (our calculation). Over the same years all public food service licences rose 40.6%, from 48,611 to 68,360 (DBPR annual report) (our calculation). So the mobile share of food service licences went from 5.3% to 16.4% (our calculation). In the latest year the count grew 7.2% (our calculation). Hot dog carts did not grow: 656 licences in fiscal year 2013-14 against 603 in 2025-26 (DBPR annual report).
Fiscal year (July to June)
Active mobile food dispensing vehicle licences, Florida
New licences show the same pull. DBPR approved 2,488 new mobile food dispensing vehicle licence applications in fiscal year 2022-23, more than for new seating restaurants; mobile units were 44.0% of all new food service approvals (our calculation from DBPR's new establishments file). Between July 1 and November 10, 2026 it approved 1,018 new mobile food dispensing vehicles, again more than new seating restaurants, 43.3% of new food service approvals (our calculation from DBPR's new establishments file).
How many food trucks are licensed in Palm Beach, Broward and Martin counties?
DBPR's licence file listed 449 current mobile food dispensing vehicle licences in Palm Beach County, 472 in Broward County and 75 in Martin County on November 9, 2026 (our calculation from DBPR's District 2 licence extract, by DBPR's own county code). The county is the licensee's address of record, often a home or commissary, because the vehicle moves.
Per resident, that is 28.5 licences per 100,000 people in Palm Beach County, 23.4 in Broward and 45.1 in Martin, against 43.5 for Florida as a whole (our calculation, using Census Bureau Vintage 2025 populations of 1,575,726 (Census), 2,013,317 (Census), 166,272 (Census) and 23,462,518 (Census) on July 1, 2025). Broward and Palm Beach have about half the statewide rate.
The annual report gives the same picture for the three counties together. DBPR's District 2 (Broward, Martin and Palm Beach) held 966 active mobile food dispensing vehicle licences in fiscal year 2025-26 (DBPR annual report), up from 262 in fiscal year 2013-14 (DBPR annual report). That is 25.7 per 100,000 residents, against 47.7 for Florida in the same report year (our calculation).
How many food truck permits do big cities issue?
Cities count far fewer licences than Florida does, because most of them license the business or the vending spot, not every vehicle in a state. Chicago's Business Licenses dataset, read on November 11, 2026, listed 193 Mobile Food Licenses in force (distinct licence numbers, status active, not yet expired) (our calculation from the City of Chicago's open data). Of those, 131 were for preparing food on a mobile food truck; the rest cover frozen dessert carts, packaged-food carts, dispensers of pre-wrapped food and produce stands (our calculation).
Chicago created the Mobile Food License in 2012 and issued 390 new ones with a 2012 start date. New issues then fell: 53 in 2019, 20 in 2020 and 49 in 2025 (our calculation from the City of Chicago's Business Licenses dataset, by licence start date; Chicago licences run two years, so renewals are not counted here).
San Francisco Public Works' Mobile Food Facility Permit dataset, read on November 11, 2026, listed 162 approved truck location permits, held by 20 truck operators (our calculation). Each row is a permitted location, so one truck can hold several. Santa Clara County's Approved Mobile Food Operations dataset listed 962 approved mobile food operations with permits running to December 2026 or January 2027, a count that includes stadium and event carts as well as trucks (our calculation from Santa Clara County open data).
New York City, Los Angeles and Austin publish no current mobile food vendor permit dataset on their open data portals as of November 11, 2026. New York's mobile food vending licences and permits are issued by the Health Department, and none of its open datasets lists them; Austin's "Mobile Food Vendors" dataset holds ordinance areas, not permits, and was last updated in 2020.
Why do food truck counts differ so much?
Each counter counts something different, and in Florida the licence count is several times the employer count. The state’s Division of Hotels and Restaurants counts each licensed vehicle, while BLS and the Census Bureau count employer establishments in mobile food services (NAICS 722330, which also counts ice cream trucks and street carts), so an owner who works alone, or a business that runs several trucks from one base, is not a separate establishment. Nonemployer Statistics counts businesses with no paid employees, but only for the wider special food services group (NAICS 7223), which also holds caterers. Compare a count only with the same series.
Counter
What it counts
Period
Florida
Palm Beach
Broward
Martin
Florida DBPR, current licence file
Licensed mobile food dispensing vehicles, status ‘Current’
For the U.S. as a whole, BLS counted 12,663 mobile food services establishments with employees in 2025, County Business Patterns 12,487 in 2023 and the Economic Census 10,155 in 2022. No national count of licensed food trucks exists, because licences are issued by states, counties and cities.
How often do public companies mention food trucks in their annual reports?
133 Form 10-K annual reports filed from 2001 to 2025 contained the phrase “food truck” or “food trucks”, by our count with the SEC’s EDGAR full-text search (our calculation). 51 companies filed them (our calculation). None of the 10-Ks filed from 2001 through 2012 used the phrase; the first came in 2013 (our calculation), from The Grilled Cheese Truck, a Los Angeles food truck operator that had become a public company through a shell. Before that, only 3 older-form annual reports, one 10-K405 in 2001 and two small-company 10-KSB reports in 2006 and 2007, used the phrase (our calculation).
The count rose from 2 filings in 2013 to 10 in 2016 and peaked at 21 in 2022 (our calculation). It then fell to 15 in 2023, 13 in 2024 and 10 in 2025, with 5 filed from January 1 to November 11, 2026 (our calculation). Over the seven years 2013-2019 there were 54 such 10-Ks; over the six years 2020-2025 there were 79 (our calculation). In 2019 the count was 10 (our calculation).
How we counted: we queried EDGAR full-text search (efts.sec.gov) on November 11, 2026 for each exact phrase, read every page of hits, and counted each Form 10-K once by its filing year, even when the phrase appears in several of its documents. EDGAR full-text search covers filings from 2001 on. The count leaves out private companies, which include almost every food truck operator, and other wordings such as “food cart” or “mobile food”. The per-year counts, filer names and query links are in edgar-food-truck-10k-counts.csv.
Which companies mention food trucks in their 10-Ks, and why?
28 Form 10-K filings filed from January 2024 to November 11, 2026 contained “food truck” or “food trucks”, from 15 companies (our calculation). We read the passage around every mention and gave each company one class. Only 5 of the 15 run food trucks or carts themselves or through franchisees: Portillo’s, Krispy Kreme, Nathan’s Famous, Flanigan’s and BurgerFi (our calculation). That is 33.3% of the companies (our calculation).
3 build or upfit food trucks: Cenntro, Samsara Luggage and Ilustrato Pictures; the last two describe the same vehicle converter (our calculation).
3 named food trucks as a landlord matter, a food truck tenant or food trucks as a lease amenity (our calculation).
3 mentioned food trucks only as a staff perk, such as food truck days at the office (our calculation).
FAT Brands named them only in a director’s biography.
No 10-K in the 2024-2026 sample named food trucks as a competitor in its risk factors, and none came from a shell company planning a food truck business. The passage, class and filing link for each of the 28 filings are in edgar-food-truck-10k-contexts.csv.
Two examples from the other classes: Broad Street Realty, a shopping-centre landlord, wrote that “One of the month-to-month lease relates to a tenant with a food truck and therefore has no gross leasable area” (Broad Street Realty Form 10-K, 2024). Cenntro, an electric commercial vehicle maker, says customers can upfit its LS450CC cab-chassis “into a food truck” (Cenntro Form 10-K, 2024). The converter that Samsara Luggage bought had built specialist vehicles, including “mobile food trucks”, for more than 15 years, for buyers in the Middle East and North Africa (Samsara Luggage Form 10-K, 2023).
What do restaurant chains with food trucks tell the SEC?
Portillo’s, the Chicago hot dog and Italian beef chain, ran one food truck, its only non-traditional location, beside 102 restaurants at December 28, 2025 (Portillo’s Form 10-K, fiscal 2025). It uses the truck for marketing. Its fiscal 2023 10-K says it drives awareness “by utilizing our Beef Bus food truck to promote new restaurants, and by producing creative and engaging marketing content” (Portillo’s Form 10-K, fiscal 2023). For a 2023 burger launch in Bacon, Indiana, it served food from the truck to invited digital content creators and press, and says the event gave it “several months’ worth of digital content” (Portillo’s Form 10-K, fiscal 2023). Its fiscal 2024 10-K lists a visit from “The Beef Bus” among its grassroots field-marketing efforts (Portillo’s Form 10-K, fiscal 2024).
Nathan’s Famous says its carts, kiosks and modular units carry only the core menu, but “Our food trucks may carry the full Nathan’s Famous menu” (Nathan’s Famous Form 10-K, fiscal 2026); it gives no count of trucks. Flanigan’s, a South Florida restaurant and liquor store chain, uses a 6,000 square foot building in Fort Lauderdale for offices, a warehouse and “covered parking for our food truck” (Flanigan’s Form 10-K, fiscal 2025). BurgerFi listed a Florida subsidiary named BF Food Truck, LLC (BurgerFi Form 10-K, fiscal 2023, Exhibit 21.1).
What do the filings say about food trucks, social media and video?
Several food companies say they use trucks to make content, but none gives a view count or a separate video budget. Beyond Meat wrote in its 2021 10-K that its food trucks run sampling “while being leveraged for content creation, PR activations and QSR / influencer campaigns” (Beyond Meat Form 10-K, 2021). It listed “food truck tours in selected cities, our first Reddit AMA, our presence on TikTok” among its campaigns (Beyond Meat Form 10-K, 2021). Shake Shack ran its “first-ever West Coast food truck” at Los Angeles spots in summer 2021 to build awareness there (Shake Shack Form 10-K, 2021). Discovery listed “The Great Food Truck Race” among Food Network’s primetime series in its 2021 annual report (Discovery Form 10-K, 2021).
The one public company whose whole business was food trucks leaned on social media. The Grilled Cheese Truck said its business model “implements the use of social media and location booking to secure sales at each stop” (Grilled Cheese Truck Form 10-K, 2014). It reported over 150,000 total followers on platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as of April 2015 (Grilled Cheese Truck Form 10-K, 2014), a self-reported total that may count the same person twice. It credited “The Food Network, The Cooking Channel” and websites with promoting the trade through shows and TV series (Grilled Cheese Truck Form 10-K, 2014).
What did the only public food truck operator report?
Other small filers show how thin public food truck income was. Royal Bakery Holdings recorded $402 in royalty fees from a sub-franchisee’s food truck and restaurant in 2015 (Royal Bakery Holdings Form 10-K, 2015). Muscle Maker Grill said some franchisees use grab-and-go coolers as well as food trucks (Muscle Maker Grill Form 10-K, 2019). Suppliers name trucks as customers: Smart & Final ran 66 Smart Foodservice warehouse stores at the end of 2018, aimed at restaurants, caterers and businesses “such as food trucks and coffee houses” (Smart & Final Form 10-K, 2018).
Can a Florida city or county require its own food truck permit?
No. Since July 1, 2020, Florida law has barred cities, counties and other local governments from requiring a separate food truck licence, registration or permit, or charging their own permit fee. Section 509.102 of the Florida Statutes, created by chapter 2020-160, Laws of Florida (Florida Legislature), says local governments may not require any licence other than the state licence under s. 509.241 (Florida Legislature) or any fee other than the state fee under s. 509.251 (Florida Legislature). They also may not ban food trucks from their whole jurisdiction. This section is statute and rule text as read on November 11, 2026. It is a plain summary, not legal advice.
The preemption was section 75 of a broad deregulation act (Laws of Florida), Committee Substitute for House Bill No. 1193 (Laws of Florida). The Governor approved it on June 30, 2020 (Laws of Florida), and it took effect on July 1, 2020 (Laws of Florida).
The section's only later amendment is chapter 2023-48 (Florida Legislature), which brought temporary commercial kitchens under the same preemption.
Local governments keep the power to regulate how food trucks operate, such as where they park and when they sell. Only licences, registrations, permits and fees are preempted.
A temporary commercial kitchen helping a licensed restaurant may stay on the restaurant's premises for 60 consecutive days (Florida Legislature). During a renovation it may sit off the premises, within line of sight and no more than 1,320 feet away (Florida Legislature). Otherwise it may not stay in one place for more than 30 consecutive days (Florida Legislature).
What does a Florida food truck licence cost?
A Florida mobile food dispensing vehicle licence costs $347 a year, under the Division of Hotels and Restaurants' fee rule, Florida Administrative Code 61C-1.008 (flrules.org). That is more than the $242 a year for a permanent restaurant without seating (flrules.org). A new licence or a change of owner also costs a $50 application fee (flrules.org).
A food truck falls under chapter 509 because s. 509.013(5)(a) defines a public food service establishment as any building, vehicle, place or structure where food is prepared, served or sold for immediate consumption (Florida Legislature).
The statute caps the yearly licence fee for any public food service establishment at $400 (Florida Legislature). The application fee may not exceed $50 (Florida Legislature). A truck that applies 6 months or less before the annual renewal period pays half the licence fee (Florida Legislature).
The division must inspect each licensed establishment at least once and not more than four times a year on a risk-based schedule (Florida Legislature).
Managers have 30 days after hiring to pass an approved food protection test (Florida Legislature). Other food service staff must be trained and certified within 60 days (Florida Legislature), and the certificate lasts 3 years (Florida Legislature).
Florida's food truck rule, Florida Administrative Code 61C-4.0161, was last amended effective May 16, 2024 (flrules.org). The oldest version listed on flrules.org took effect in 1998 (flrules.org). Its text requires a food truck that is not self-sufficient to work from an approved commissary and report to it daily when operating, and it limits hook-ups to an outside utility system to a single day's operation. Florida's food service rules adopt the FDA Food Code's 2017 edition (flrules.org), not a later one.
What does the FDA Food Code say about food trucks?
FDA's model Food Code, now in its 2026 edition (FDA), sets plumbing rules for a "mobile food establishment": a food establishment on a vehicle, portable structure or watercraft that moves as part of its routine operation. The Food Code binds only where a state or city adopts it, and Florida still uses the 2017 edition.
A mobile unit's sewage holding tank must be 15 percent larger than its water supply tank (FDA).
The holding tank must slope to a drain at least 25 mm (1 inch) in inner diameter, with a shut-off valve (FDA).
The water tank inlet must be 19.1 mm (three-fourths inch) in inner diameter or less, with a hose fitting that cannot be used for anything else (FDA).
Do big cities cap food truck permits?
New York City does. In 2022 the city capped mobile food vending permits for public streets and sidewalks at 5,100, of which 2,800 were citywide, according to the city Health Department (NYC Health). That cap covers carts and trucks alike. The city's own pages were read on November 11, 2026. The NYC Administrative Code and Chicago Municipal Code are hosted on a site whose robots.txt bars AI agents, so the code text itself was not read.
Local Law 18 of 2021 authorized 4,450 more permits over ten years (NYC Health), released through 445 supervisory licence applications a year (NYC Health).
New local laws will add 11,000 more permits (NYC Health). From July 1, 2026, the city is offering 2,200 new supervisory licences a year for 5 years (NYC Health).
Chicago has no cap on its food truck licences, but it does limit where trucks can park. A food truck may not park within 200 feet of the main customer entrance of a street-level restaurant, except between 12 AM and 2 AM, according to the city's licensing page (City of Chicago).
A truck may stay up to 4 hours in any one block, or the posted parking limit if shorter (City of Chicago).
No sales between 2 AM and 5 AM, except at food truck stands where they are specifically allowed (City of Chicago).
A Mobile Food Dispenser licence costs $700 (City of Chicago). A Mobile Food Preparer licence costs $1,000 (City of Chicago).
A truck may carry no more than 40 pounds of propane at any time (City of Chicago).
What rules cover a food truck's videos, reviews and influencers?
The FTC's Endorsement Guides, 16 CFR Part 255, in their current form date from July 26, 2023 (eCFR). They cover a creator's paid food truck review, a sponsored event reel and a free meal given to an influencer alike: a connection between the creator and the truck that viewers would not expect has to be disclosed clearly. Text as read on November 11, 2026; not legal advice.
The FTC's Consumer Reviews and Testimonials rule, 16 CFR Part 465, took effect on October 21, 2024 (Federal Register). It bans fake reviews and the purchase of fake views, followers and likes.
A knowing violation can cost up to $53,088 per violation (eCFR).
On YouTube, a creator who features a sponsorship must tick the paid promotion box, which adds a disclosure label at the beginning of your video, in YouTube's words (YouTube Help).
Music is the common problem in menu reels and event clips. YouTube adds new tracks to its free Audio Library twice a month (YouTube Help).
What do the popular food truck numbers really say?
Four numbers travel through food truck business plans, lender pages and marketing guides: that 60% of food trucks fail within three years, that the industry is worth a set number of billions, that video lifts conversions 80%, and that a truck spends $28,276 a year on permits. We traced each to the oldest source we could read and say below what that source measured. Food Truck Empire, a food truck site often cited for these numbers, bars AI agents in its robots file, so we did not read it.
“60% of food trucks fail in the first three years”
We found no study of food trucks behind this number. Every repeater we could read says it borrows a restaurant rate. ProfitableVenture, a business-ideas blog, says food trucks have a significant failure rate, with 60% closing within three years (ProfitableVenture), and on the same page that figures from average restaurants indicate 40% of food trucks are still operating after three years (ProfitableVenture). Epos Now, a point-of-sale seller, credits a newspaper with the line that 60% of restaurants close within three years of opening (Epos Now) and from it assumes 40% of food trucks succeed after three years (Epos Now). Clicklease, an equipment-leasing company, goes the other way: it says a frequently cited Square study found a food truck failure rate of around 25% over three years (Clicklease), against roughly 60% for traditional restaurants (Clicklease). We found no Square study with that figure.
The restaurant rate itself has a real source, and it measured something narrower than “fail”. In September 2003 Ohio State University announced H.G. Parsa’s study of restaurants in Columbus, Ohio, which used health department data on more than 2,439 restaurants (Ohio State University). About 26 percent failed in the first year (Ohio State University), and the cumulative rate for 1996-1999 was 59 percent (Ohio State University). Parsa’s review of other studies put restaurant failure closer to 60 percent or less after three to five years (Ohio State University), and the release cites a 1991 study by Michigan State and Cornell professors that found 57 percent over three years (Ohio State University). In the 2005 journal article, 59.74 percent of the Columbus restaurants had changed ownership or closed within three years (Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly). A sale to a new owner counts as a failure in that study, so the rate is a turnover rate. It counts sit-down and fast food restaurants in one city in the 1990s, not food trucks.
For a national survival rate, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Business Employment Dynamics tables follow new establishments year by year; for employer locations in accommodation and food services (NAICS 72, which includes food trucks but is not limited to them), 68.8% of those opened in the year to March 2023 were still open three years later, so 31.2% had closed (our calculation). Use instead: “No study of food truck survival backs the 60% figure; it comes from a 1996-1999 study of Columbus, Ohio, restaurants that found 59 percent closed or changed hands within three years.”
“The food truck industry is worth $X billion”
Each version is a modelled estimate, and they measure different things. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, a business-group foundation, says the industry is estimated to have reached $2.7 billion in revenue in 2017 (U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation). Its March 2018 Food Truck Nation report compares that with $650 million a few years earlier, a point its chart labels 2014 (Food Truck Nation). Trade press credits this pair to a 2012-2013 forecast by Emergent Research for Intuit; we could not read that original, and the report gives no source for the $2.7 billion. In September 2017 FoodTruckr, a food truck owners’ blog, wrote that sources conflict but average around $2 billion for 2017 (FoodTruckr).
IBISWorld, a market-research seller, is the other common source. Its own pages refuse scripted readers, so we quote it only as others printed it. The Food Truck Nation report relays IBISWorld growth of 7.9% a year since 2011 (Food Truck Nation) and a count of 3,703 trucks at the end of 2016 (Food Truck Nation), taken from tax filings of companies that select NAICS code 722330 (Food Truck Nation), mobile food services, which also counts ice cream trucks and street carts. It also relays IBISWorld’s forecast that growth would slow to 0.4% a year through 2020 (Food Truck Nation). In 2026 repeaters print different IBISWorld totals: B2B Reviews, a software-review site, gives $2.8 billion in revenue (B2B Reviews) and more than 92,000 businesses (B2B Reviews), while Clicklease credits IBISWorld with more than $1.4 billion a year (Clicklease).
The “global” numbers are a different market again. Mordor Intelligence, a market-research seller, puts the world food truck market at USD 4.41 billion in 2025 (Mordor Intelligence), measured as the value of food and beverage sales by trucks selling ready-to-eat food, excluding caterers and nonmotorized carts (Mordor Intelligence). Global Market Insights, another seller, puts it at USD 6.4 billion in 2025 (Global Market Insights) and names truck builders as its market leaders, with over 3% share in 2025 (Global Market Insights), which suggests it sizes truck building, not food sales. A global figure smaller than or close to a U.S. figure is a sign that the definitions differ, not that the market shrank. The government count is the 2022 Economic Census sales total for mobile food services (NAICS 722330, which also counts ice cream trucks and street carts): $3.0 billion ($3,019,256 thousand) from employer establishments. Use instead: name the counter and the definition, for example “IBISWorld, a market-research seller, estimates U.S. food truck revenue at about $2.8 billion (2026, as reported by B2B Reviews)”, and prefer the Census count of mobile food services sales.
“Video lifts conversions 80%”
The figure is a best case from one video vendor, EyeView, about a client website, not a food business. In February 2009 EyeView’s blog said viewers of its videos for one client, UMOO, were 80% more likely to become depositing users, comparing viewers with non-viewers (EyeView, archived), which does not test what adding a video does. By August 2010 Unbounce, a landing-page software seller, wrote that a study by eyeviewdigital.com showed video on landing pages can increase conversion by 80% (Unbounce, archived).
The larger later evidence points the other way. Unbounce’s own 2021 analysis of about 35,000 customer landing pages in each of three periods (Unbounce) concluded that video appears to have a minimal or negative impact on landing-page performance (Unbounce). Its April 2025 article of landing-page examples still says landing pages with video can increase conversions by 80% (Unbounce). Firework, a video-commerce software seller, tells food and beverage marketers that video can boost conversion rates by up to 80%, without naming a study (Firework). We found no conversion test by a food truck or a restaurant. Use instead: “Unbounce’s 2021 study of about 35,000 landing pages per period found video had a minimal or negative effect; we found no conversion test by a food truck.”
“A food truck spends $28,276 a year on permits”
The number is real but is a 20-city average of more than permit fees. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation says that, on average, starting and running a food truck for one year means spending $28,276 on permits, licenses and ongoing legal compliance (U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation) and completing 45 separate government-mandated procedures (U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation). The average comes from its 2018 Food Truck Index of 20 large cities, built by ndp|analytics from each city’s rules and fees. It is not an owner survey; the Foundation surveyed 288 food truck owners separately for first-hand accounts (Food Truck Nation). Most of the total is the yearly operating part, which was highest in Boston at $37,907 and lowest in Portland (Food Truck Nation), and its subcomponents include insurance and taxes as well as licences and permits (Food Truck Nation). Repeaters drift from it: Homebase, a scheduling and payroll software seller, cites the study for first-year costs in major markets starting at $15,000 (Homebase). Use instead: “Across 20 large U.S. cities in 2018, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s index put a food truck’s first-year regulatory costs, including insurance and taxes, at $28,276 on average; Florida law now limits local permits and fees for mobile food dispatching vehicles (see the rules section).”
We started from the questions people search for about food truck video statistics and looked for the organization that actually produced each answer. Every figure on this page sits in an evidence ledger with its source, the exact table or paragraph it came from, the measurement period, the population measured, and the date we checked it. This edition holds 440 figures from 60 publishers.
On November 11, 2026, each sourced figure on this page was re-fetched with the fetch cache cleared and matched against the recorded wording: BLS establishment and pay counts (Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages open data files), occupation wages and consumer prices (through the BLS data API), and Business Employment Dynamics survival tables (through an Internet Archive capture, because bls.gov refuses scripts); Census County Business Patterns, Nonemployer Statistics, the 2017 and 2022 Economic Census and population estimates (through the Census data API and data files); the Florida Division of Hotels and Restaurants’ annual reports and public licence files; the Florida Statutes, the laws of Florida and the Florida Administrative Code; city open data from Chicago, San Francisco and Santa Clara County (through their Socrata APIs) and the New York City and Chicago licensing pages; the FDA Food Code; eCFR and the Federal Register; YouTube Help; SEC filings on EDGAR; market-research sellers and blogs quoted only as repeaters in the origins section; and journal abstracts (PubMed records re-read through NCBI’s E-utilities, because the pages answer scripts with a bot check). Our YouTube figures come from the YouTube Data API, our licence counts from the Florida licence files and our filing counts from EDGAR full-text search. We left out sources whose terms or robots rules bar automated access or AI agents: Food Truck Empire, IBISWorld (it refuses scripts, so its estimates appear only as others printed them), Square, the Institute for Justice’s food truck study (its site answered with a bot check), the city code libraries American Legal and Municode, and several news and trade sites. Nothing here is legal, tax, health or business advice.
We only cite the producer: government agencies, regulators, company filings and official posts, and the survey owner's own report. We do not cite statistics roundups, Statista-style aggregators, or salary sites without a public method. We did not bypass paywalls or sign-up forms; where a full report was gated, we used only the figures its publisher states publicly.
Figures marked "our calculation" are arithmetic on the cited numbers, and anyone can reproduce them:
count of rows in hrfood1-7.csv with License Type Code 2014 and Rank Code MFDV and Primary Status Code 20 (Current); delinquent licences (code 45) excluded
count of rows in hrfood2.csv with Rank Code MFDV and Primary Status Code 20 and Location County Code 60 (Palm Beach); the location address is the licensee's address of record (often a home or commissary) since the vehicle moves
count of rows in hrfood2.csv with Rank Code MFDV and Primary Status Code 20 and Location County Code 16 (Broward); the location address is the licensee's address of record (often a home or commissary) since the vehicle moves
count of rows in hrfood2.csv with Rank Code MFDV and Primary Status Code 20 and Location County Code 53 (Martin); the location address is the licensee's address of record (often a home or commissary) since the vehicle moves
count of rows with License Type Code 2014 and Rank Code MFDV in DBPR's new establishments extract (plan review + initial licence, and initial licence only)
count of rows with License Type Code 2014 and Rank Code MFDV in DBPR's new establishments extract (plan review + initial licence, and initial licence only)
count(distinct license_number) in force, grouped by business_activity; activities naming a Mobile Food Truck or Mobile Food Vehicle/Truck that prepares food
This edition contains no Mark Studios customer data.
Limitations
Food truck counts differ by counter. Florida licenses each vehicle. BLS and the Census Bureau count establishments with paid employees in NAICS 722330, Mobile Food Services, which also counts ice cream trucks, mobile canteens and street carts, and treats a business running several trucks from one base as one establishment. Compare a count only with the same series.
No food truck owner-operator count exists. Nonemployer Statistics does not publish NAICS 722330 on its own; its nearest group, special food services (7223), also holds caterers and food service contractors, so its nonemployer share is an upper bound for food trucks, not a food truck figure.
Survival rates are not for food trucks. BLS Business Employment Dynamics publishes survival for accommodation and food services as a whole (NAICS 72), and only for establishments with employees.
Wages cover more than food trucks. OEWS publishes occupations for special food services (722300), where caterers and contract cafeterias hold most of the jobs.
Licences are not businesses. A Florida mobile food dispensing vehicle licence covers one vehicle, trailer or cart; one owner may hold several. We counted current licences in the state’s download files by DBPR’s own county code. City permit counts follow each city’s rules: a San Francisco truck may hold several location permits.
Our YouTube read follows YouTube’s ranking. The 559 videos are what YouTube’s search returned for ‘food truck’, ‘food truck business’ and ‘street food’ (the top 200 results for each, sorted by views, with no country filter) on November 11, 2026. It is not a census of food truck video, and a global view-sorted search does not surface local trucks. View counts are lifetime snapshots and include paid views. We read titles and channel text, not the videos themselves. For the three busiest U.S. vendor channels we read views and lengths for each channel’s latest 50 uploads only. Personal uploads and channels featuring children are published only as a class and counts.
Filings count words. EDGAR full-text search finds a phrase, not a topic, and covers filings from 2001 on. We read every hit from 2024 to November 11, 2026 by hand.
Few studies look at food trucks themselves. We found no peer-reviewed study comparing U.S. food truck and restaurant inspection results, and none measuring food trucks’ use of social video. Studies outside the U.S. are labelled as context. Each study is labelled with its year, place and sample. Rules are reported as we read them on November 11, 2026; this is not legal advice. Every “earliest we found” in the origins section rests on web pages, trade press and journal databases; newspaper databases were not searched.
How to cite this page
For a single figure, cite the original publisher named next to it, and link here if the verification trail is useful to your readers. Each figure has its own anchor, so you can link straight to it, for example https://www.markstudios.com/research/food-truck-video-statistics#REG-001. To cite the page as a whole:
Mark Studios. "Food Truck Video Statistics." Last verified Nov 11, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/food-truck-video-statistics
APA
Mark Studios. (2026, November 11). Food truck video statistics. https://www.markstudios.com/research/food-truck-video-statistics
MLA
“Food Truck Video Statistics.” Mark Studios, 11 Nov. 2026, www.markstudios.com/research/food-truck-video-statistics.
Chicago
Mark Studios. “Food Truck Video Statistics.” Last modified November 11, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/food-truck-video-statistics.
BibTeX
@misc{markstudios_food_truck_video_statistics_2026,
author = {{Mark Studios}},
title = {{Food Truck Video Statistics}},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
url = {https://www.markstudios.com/research/food-truck-video-statistics},
note = {Last verified 2026-11-11}
}
Our calculations and the evidence table are free to reuse with attribution and a link to this page. Each underlying figure remains the claim of its original publisher, and some publishers ask for a link when their figures are reused.
Florida Department of State (Florida Administrative Code, flrules.org); rule adopted by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, Division of Hotels and Restaurants, Florida Administrative Code Rule 61C-1.008 License Fees (2023-08-24). Accessed 2026-11-11.
Florida Department of State (Florida Administrative Code, flrules.org); rule adopted by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, Division of Hotels and Restaurants, Florida Administrative Code Rule 61C-1.001 Definitions (2026). Accessed 2026-11-11.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FDA Food Code (2026). Accessed 2026-11-11.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FDA Food Code 2026 (2026). Accessed 2026-11-11.
Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly (Parsa, Self, Njite & King; The Ohio State University), Why Restaurants Fail (2005-08). Accessed 2026-11-11.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation (business-group foundation; repeater of a market estimate), Food Truck Nation (2018-03). Accessed 2026-11-11.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation (business-group foundation; report by ndp|analytics, survey by Argive), Food Truck Nation (2018-03-16). Accessed 2026-11-11.
We re-verify every figure quarterly and when a major source publishes a new edition. The next scheduled review is February 2027. Corrections go to contact@markstudios.com.
Nov 11, 2026: First published with 440 figures from 60 publishers, each checked against its original source.
Frequently asked questions
How many food trucks are there in the United States?
No agency counts food trucks directly. BLS counted 12,663 private mobile food services establishments with employees in 2025 (NAICS 722330, which also counts ice cream trucks, mobile canteens and street carts), and the 2022 Economic Census counted 10,155. Owners who work alone are not in those counts, and one establishment can run several trucks.
How many food trucks are there in Florida?
Florida’s Division of Hotels and Restaurants counted 11,197 active mobile food dispensing vehicle licences in fiscal year 2025-26, and its licence files listed 10,201 current ones on November 9, 2026. Each licence covers one vehicle. BLS counted 1,344 mobile food services establishments with employees in Florida in 2025.
How many food trucks are in Palm Beach, Broward and Martin counties?
Florida’s licence files listed 449 current mobile food dispensing vehicle licences in Palm Beach County, 472 in Broward County and 75 in Martin County on November 9, 2026, by our count.
Do 60% of food trucks fail in the first three years?
We found no study of food trucks behind that figure. Repeaters borrow a restaurant rate, and the oldest source we reached is Ohio State’s 2003 release on H.G. Parsa’s study of Columbus, Ohio, restaurants, which found 59 percent closed or changed hands within three years. For all U.S. accommodation and food services employer locations, BLS finds 68.8% still open after three years.
How big is the food truck industry?
The 2022 Economic Census counted $3.0 billion ($3,019,256 thousand) in sales by U.S. mobile food services establishments with paid employees. Market estimates such as IBISWorld’s $2.8 billion, as reported by B2B Reviews, are modelled by sellers, and global figures measure different markets.
Can a Florida city require its own food truck permit?
No. Since July 1, 2020, s. 509.102 of the Florida Statutes has barred cities and counties from requiring a separate food truck licence or permit or charging a fee beyond the state licence fee under s. 509.251. The state’s yearly licence fee for a mobile food dispensing vehicle is $347.
How do food trucks use YouTube?
In our November 2026 read of YouTube’s most-viewed food truck videos, vendors speaking as themselves drew 7.6% of on-topic views; travel and street-food vloggers drew 60.6%. The 11 U.S. vendor channels in the sample posted 4,293 videos in a year, and 38.0% of their recent uploads ran 60 seconds or less.
