On average, Buellton allows food trucks to set up shop within city limits between three to five times a year, according to Planning Director Andrea Keefer.
It’s no coincidence, she told the City Council, that those rare sightings align with Buellton’s Fall Festival, Wine and Chili Festival, and other annual gatherings.
“The city does not currently allow food trucks in Buellton except for permitted special events,” Keefer said at the council’s Sept. 28 meeting. “There are currently no zoning standards in the municipal code that address food trucks, which is what we’re trying to rectify here.”
Keefer said the hearing was aimed at gauging how council members felt about adopting a a food truck ordinance in the future and what parameters they would want to see enforced.
“Is there a desire to allow them in the city? … If so, where?” Keefer asked the council. “And under what conditions?”
Keefer presented different approaches to food truck zoning in nearby cities, including Santa Maria, Lompoc, and Santa Barbara.
Across the board, all three cities’ allow permitted food trucks to regularly operate on public streets and private property (in industrial and non-residential zones with the respective property owner’s permission).
Solvang’s current approach is identical to Buellton’s—it only allows food trucks to operate through a special event permit.
Councilmember Carla Mead said she would prefer to start with an ordinance that allows food truck operations in a couple of designated areas, including the Avenue of Flags commercial corridor.
“I think the thing that makes me nervous about this is how broad it can be,” Mead said. “A citywide ordinance when we’ve never done this before feels very scary to me, and I’d rather try it out in places we know it’s going to be successful, see what works, and then maybe broaden it.”
Councilmember Elysia Lewis described herself as “a stronger proponent for food trucks in more areas than not, with guardrails.”
“I don’t want it to be: Every corner we have a food truck, and it’s competing against our brick-and-mortar businesses and making life difficult or unprofitable for the businesses that currently exist,” Lewis said. “That being said, however, we do have a lot of up-and-coming businesses and locals who run food trucks.”
Lewis said she could imagine the desire for a food truck popping up a few days a week in the McMurray Road parking lot where Buellton’s Parks Plaza movie theater once stood.
“We know that the movie theater is going to become a medical complex. I could very well see them saying: ‘Every Wednesday, or every Thursday, or every Friday, we invite a food truck,’ and that’s how someone gets lunch,” Lewis said. “I don’t want to be so prohibitive that we can’t do things like that.”
Mead said she appreciated Lewis’ comments, but still preferred starting with a more “geographic” approach, over adopting new citywide standards.
“At this point, and I think to Vice Mayor Mead’s discussion, I’d rather start small and allow us to figure it out as we go,” Mayor David Silva said. “I think it’d be a good way for us also to make the Avenue [of Flags] more desirable. If we only allow food trucks on the Avenue, and we’re trying to get more things on the Avenue, I think that’s useful.”
Councilmember John Sanchez said he worried that new zoning without case-by-case permit restrictions in place—similar to the special event permit route—would bring “a flood of food trucks” to Buellton. Councilmember Hudson Hornick was absent.
City Manager Scott Wolfe said, based on input from the council, staff would return with an ordinance draft that leaves room for “some expansion, … but [not] a free-for-all.”
The draft will also include potential enforcement measures.
“It might be ripe at the time we are looking at this to also bring forward an ordinance addressing … streetside vendors,” Wolfe said. “We can make a distinction between what falls under ‘food truck’ and what is a sidewalk vendor—how we address both of those.
“Then we can bring the various enforcement agencies—be it, the Fire Department, the sheriff’s department, or the Public Health Department—into the discussion,” Wolfe continued, “so we can adopt regulations they’re all comfortable with.”
This article appears in October 1 – October 8, 2026.
