What permits are needed for a food truck in Virginia

Posted by Damian Roberti on May 20, 2022

What permits are needed for a food truck in Virginia

What permits are needed for a food truck in Virginia? So if you're looking to create a food truck business in Virginia, you've come to the right place. And of course, the right channel and food truck freaks. This episode, we're going to get into what permits and licenses you will need to get up and running in Virginia to create your mobile food truck business. And we're going to get right into it, guys.

All right. So welcome back, food truck freaks. This is the food truck's premier food truck entrepreneur channel here on YouTube. We are going to dive into all kinds of topics and resources and great information to help you get your food truck business up and running. In this particular video. We're going to dive into the state of Virginia. If you're looking to create a food truck business there, we're going to give you some rundowns of what you'll potentially need for permits and licenses, as well as insurance and a handful of other great resources. So welcome to food truck freaks. If this is your first video, definitely hit the subscribe button guys, because you're going to have a ton of resources at your fingertips here on food truck freaks. And we're going to get into this right now. So the first thing you need to know is that Virginia has a handful of unique requirements when it comes to mobile food businesses.

What permits are needed for a food truck in Virginia

So the first thing you're going to definitely need is your E I N. As with everything, as far as businesses are concerned, the IRS will need to know what you're doing and if you're making enough money to actually get taxed on it, you need to have an employer identification number. That's what an EIN is. It's basically you go into the IRS website and you can apply for this. It takes about two to three minutes. It doesn't take very long. It's free. It's not something that costs you anything. But you definitely need this EIN number. It's kind of like a social security number for your business in a sense, which will distinguish your business. When you come to filing taxes every year, as you begin to make a profit, you're going to pay taxes on that profit. Also, for purposes of having employees and everything, running your business with the legality end of it, with the IRS, the E is definitely a necessity.

The second thing you're going to need, of course, is a business license. With any food business, or actually with any mobile business, food truck business in general, you're going to have to have a business license from the city or the county, depending upon where you are within the city or county. That's always something that's very unique about them. In the United States, it's going to be dependent upon where you actually start your business. If you're in the city limits or county limits, you need to get a business license in order to do that. Now,

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What permits are needed for a food truck in Virginia

One thing you need to be aware of if you're going to have a mobile food truck business is that this is pretty universal. In most states, when you cross over the line from one city or county to the next, you may actually be required to also get a business license in the second county. You're going to be doing business in most cities and counties, and you're driving all over. Once you cross into a different city or county, they're going to want to have a business license from you. That's one of the really unique things about food trucks. A lot of new food truck entrepreneurs are not aware of it. They don't know that. And they're not aware of the fact that you're going to need to get that. And when you do, you're going to have to also make sure that you may or may not have to collect taxes on behalf of that city or county too.

So double check with the city that you're getting your initial business license in and say, Hey, if I cross over the city limits, do I need to apply for that, that city, city or town as well? And will they also need that for business license to go there? Number three, your valid driver's license. So you're going to need to get a valid driver's license for your food truck. Make sure that if you have any employees and down the road, I know that you will, even if you're hiring a cousin or a friend or a family member, it doesn't matter if they are going to be driving your food truck, you need to make sure they have a valid driver's license. Keep in mind that that food truck is your business. And that is business on wheels. And as it drives around, it has the potential to get into accidents.

What permits are needed for a food truck in Virginia

There could be some malfunctioning that causes some type of accident or even a fire within the unit itself. If someone's driving and doesn't have a valid license, that's going to come all the way back to you, the food truck owner. So you want to make sure who's ever behind the wheel. If it happens to not be you on certain days, or maybe there's an event that you can't make it to, but you've got an employee who's going to take the truck. They have to have a valid driver's license. Next up is the seller's permit. You need to make sure that you're not paying taxes twice on your ingredients. And here's what I mean: a lot of newbies to the food truck industry and the food truck business will go out and buy ingredients. You know, you're talking about ingredients like vegetables, proteins, meats, foods, anything that's food related or ingredient related, and you're buying it from a supply store. Make sure that they're not going to charge you tax at the checkout.

That means that you're going to collect tax during the transaction between you and your customer on the final product that you create with the ingredients, but you don't want to get taxed twice on the ingredients. Hopefully that makes sense. Make sure you get that seller's permit. It's also known as a reseller's license in some states. So double check and make sure that your city or county is aware that you're going to apply for one of those as well. All right, next up is a food handler's permit. Yes. So you need to make sure that you've got a food handler's permit. Most cities and counties will also require you and your employees to If you've got food truck employees, they're going to have to take that course. And normally it's like a serve-safe. I believe it's the name of the company. You're going to need to take that course and then take the exam to get certified. And then that way, you know how to handle food, process food, package it, and, of course, store it, take it out, clean and sanitize your equipment. These courses are pretty well understood across the board as far as what's going to be needed for preparing and making food products. Okay, The following step is

What permits are needed for a food truck in Virginia

All right. So the permit from the health department, that's a pretty standard health department permit that you get pretty much for any food operation. Of course, with food trucks in the state of Virginia, you'll definitely need to get that as well. So all food trucks must obtain a food establishment permit from the Fairfax County health department. And of course, applications are applications. You can send that in via mail or you can do it online. The food safety section also requires that the following apply to food establishment permits for food trucks: you have to actually complete a food establishment permit application. You must also have plans that are equipped for your equipment and specifications, as well as menus for the food truck, which is something that Virginia does not require.to be submitted a current list of all individuals who will work on the food truck and, of course, proof of their certified food manager card for each of those employees as well.

Just like I had mentioned before, you'd have to make sure that they get that you also need to have an inspection of the food truck. Your actual mobile food unit is scheduled and completed. The application fee for that is about $80. So it's not very expensive. Most everything that I'm telling you about is not. You're going to talk about maybe a hundred to $125. Some of these are absolutely free. Of course, like the E, you can apply for that for a free fire certificate. So a fire inspection is normally also required by the specific city. So, once you apply to the city within Virginia, you will most likely have a fire inspection. This is actually just for the safety of the ovens. By making sure that electrical wiring throughout the unit is done properly, securely mounted in place generators. If they happen to be gas or propane generators, make sure they're functioning properly.

What permits are needed for a food truck in Virginia

What they're looking to do is make sure that there's no potential for fire hazard. You know, it's also going to be most likely that you're going to have about two fire extinguishers on the unit. Most units, depending on the size, will, of course, require a couple of fire extinguishers. And that's always just a good safety measure to have on hand to keep everybody safe. Now, the next thing is that food trucks are permitted to sell food in what are known as three different types of locations in Virginia. Locations of designated right-of-waySo that is an area within the street zoning area. It's allowed for you to park your food truck there. The second one is a private property. So food trucks may park on and, of course, VIN on private property, office parks, shopping centers, et cetera, only when both parties, the property owner and the food truck, have obtained permits from the Fairfax County department of planning and development.

Now, what that means is that you can do parties, you can cater events, you just need to make sure that you get the right permits and make sure that you're in the right zoning area to actually operate that. But private property is perfectly fine. By the way, when I'm done with the video, go down below the links. By the way, in the description, there'll be a handful of links dedicated directly to the state of Virginia food trucks. So you can learn more about this. You can dive into a little more research as well. We always try to give you a lot of resources here on Food Truck Freaks. So check out those links down below. They're going to take you over to some additional information as well. So next up, of course, you have a brand. Now, if you're going to have a logo for your food truck and you're going to have some type of brand, you're going to create a branded look, which, of course, every food truck does, so you want to protect your trademark.

What permits are needed for a food truck in Virginia

You wanna apply for a trademark. Now, trademarks don't happen very quickly. So this is something that normally once you apply for this through the S PTO office, which is the United States patented trademark office, they're going to take a process of about six to eight months to go through and search for that trademark and then either issue it or deny it one or the other, but get that started as soon as you can, because it takes around six to eight months to get that up and running and get either an approval or denial for that. So the branded trademark for your food truck is so that you should do super early on now, food, truck insurance. Yes, you do. Of course have to have food truck insurance. Now I'm not a salesman for insurance. I'm not gonna give you a quote of a policy, but I could tell you this, that normally the food truck insurance policies run roughly around a 900 to about 15, 1600 a year, somewhere around there.

That's not very expensive for operating a food truck. Many food trucks are now doing over six figures a year. So keep that in mind that you will need to have some type of food, truck insurance policy in Virginia for your food truck business, definitely something you wanna dive into. So that's a wrap up a real, real quick rundown to give you an understanding of basic permits and licensing. That's gonna be required in Virginia. Check out. Like I said before, I've got a lot of more detailed information down below. And of course our blog on our, on our website has more information for starting a food truck business in Virginia. If you have any questions about the food truck, industry or business in general, let us know down below. We love to create new content here on food truck freaks. We're a new channel to food truck entrepreneurs here on YouTube, but we're not new to YouTube. We actually have several other channels that are dedicated to food entrepreneurship. You may wanna check them out. Our one channel marketing food online. We've got about 50 or 60 videos there for food truck businesses as well. So definitely check out, subscribe to both those channels and you can get additional resources, absolutely free. I'll see you guys on the next video.

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