How to get a coffee cart permit in Texas.

Texas changed on July 1, 2026, and most of the coffee cart advice on the internet has not caught up. House Bill 2844, passed by the 89th Legislature, replaced the city-by-city mobile food health permit with a single statewide license issued by the Department of State Health Services. Once you hold it, a city cannot bar you from operating or enforce a rule that conflicts with the state chapter.

If you ran a cart in Texas before this, the change is hard to overstate. The old answer was that Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and the rest each ran their own program, and working three metros meant three permits, three renewal dates and three inspection cycles. One DSHS license now carries the health side statewide. What the law does not do is abolish local health departments. Section 437B.002 lets an existing local program stand where it does not conflict with the state chapter, local authorities can still inspect under a collaborative agreement with DSHS, and the statute does not spell out whether a locality may charge its own fee. Call the health authority in each city you work rather than assuming there is nothing left to file.

What you are applying for is a Mobile Food Vendor license to operate a Food Vending Vehicle. DSHS grades it in three risk tiers. Type I is for operations with no time and temperature control for safety foods. Type II covers prepackaged TCS foods with limited handling, and TCS foods prepared to order. Type III is full preparation, cooking, holding and serving.

Milk is a TCS food, and an espresso cart steams it to order, so a coffee cart generally lands in Type II rather than Type I. Confirm your tier with DSHS before you pay, because the tier sets the fee and the inspection.

Fees are due when you submit the application, and they are tiered. Type I is $309 with no pre-licensing inspection fee. Type II is $618 plus a $400 pre-licensing inspection. Type III is $876 plus a $500 pre-licensing inspection. A coffee cart in Type II is therefore looking at roughly $1,018 to get licensed in year one.

Inspection fees after licensing are separate from the fees above, and they are not a single band. A routine inspection is $400 for Type II and $500 for Type III. Type I owes no routine inspection fee at all. Complaint and compliance inspections are charged separately at $300 for Type I, $400 for Type II and $500 for Type III.

Read that against what you were paying before. If you only ever worked one city, this is an increase. If you were permitting Austin and Houston and Dallas to chase bookings across the state, it is a straightforward saving, and it removes the per-city renewal calendar that made multi-metro work such a headache.

The license expires one year from the date of your successfully completed pre-licensing inspection, not one year from when you applied or paid. Plan renewals off the inspection date.

Budget separately for a central preparation facility if your operation needs one. DSHS rules govern the vehicle and its water and wastewater systems, and support-facility expectations are confirmed as part of pre-licensing, so ask DSHS what your specific setup requires rather than assuming the old city commissary letter still applies.