How to get a food truck health permit on Maui

Where this comes from

The Department of Health's Food Safety Branch publishes a two page guide called "Mobile Food Establishments: How do I start one?" (PDF). The state calls a food truck a "Mobile FE", and the guide covers lunch wagons, trailers and push carts. Everything below is from that guide unless it says otherwise.

Some of the state's documents are several years old, and rules change. Treat this as a map and call the Maui office before you spend money on it.

First, a support kitchen

Every truck works with at least one support kitchen, sometimes called a commissary. The guide is direct about the rules:

• The support kitchen needs its own current Food Establishment Permit.
• It has to be able to "support" your truck, and the inspector decides that from your business plan, your menu, and the kitchen itself.
• Your home kitchen does not count. The guide answers that question with one word: "No."
• You can use more than one support kitchen.

If somebody else owns the kitchen, you also file a Support Kitchen Use Agreement (PDF), signed by the kitchen's owner, saying what you do there and when. The guide says it has to be updated every year when the kitchen's own permit renews. That is an easy one to forget in year two.

Then the truck itself: plan review

If the truck is being built or bought and the Department of Health has not approved it before, you send in plans with an Application for Plan Review. The plans do not have to be drawn by a professional, but they do have to be to scale, with a top view and a side view showing the sinks, the equipment and the service window.

Notice the order. The guide says that once the plans are approved, the truck "can be constructed, purchased or set-up". Approval comes first. If you are looking at a used truck, ask the seller whether the Department of Health has approved it before you hand over any money.

Alongside that goes the Application for Food Establishment Permit for the truck, with your menu. The fee depends on what you serve and how you prepare it, so read the current fee schedule rather than a number on somebody's blog, including this one.

What the inspector will look at

These are the equipment rules the guide spells out. Your inspector may ask for more, depending on the menu.

The rule that surprises people

Everything you use for the food has to be on the truck or attached to it. The guide names serving tables, hibachis and coolers as things that are "not allowed to be set on the ground" outside the truck, and it answers "Can I cook outside of my lunchwagon?" with "No." A trailer hitched to the truck may be allowed, for cooking only.

So a cooler of drinks on the grass next to the window is exactly the kind of thing to ask the inspector about first.

The inspection, and then parking

The guide is clear that both the truck and the support kitchen need a passing inspection before the truck "can operate for business".

The health permit does not say where you can park. The Department of Health says so itself: it issues the food permit, but every truck also has to follow the rules of other agencies. On Maui, that means checking with Maui County about where you can sell.

Who to call

The Food Safety Branch lists its Maui office at 54 High Street, Room 300, in Wailuku, phone (808) 984-8230. The Maui and Molokai permit application (PDF) is on the state's site.

We are a web design shop, not your permit adviser. Confirm anything that matters with that office before you build or buy.

After the permit

The permit gets you open. It does not tell anybody where you are today. We wrote about why "food trucks near me" never shows your truck and why your menu should not be just a photo. Both are free to fix. A website is the part that we sell, and you can see the sites we have built for Maui trucks first.