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Council asks staff for ordinance drafts after extended discussion of mobile food vendors
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Summary
After a detailed staff presentation and broad council feedback, Morgantown council directed staff to pursue outreach and draft ordinance updates on hours, locations, permits and enforcement for mobile food vendors; no formal ordinance vote occurred.
MORGANTOWN — City staff briefed the Morgantown City Council on Jan. 6 about options to revise the city’s mobile food vending program and sought council feedback before drafting ordinance language.
Staff said current city ordinances generally prohibit business in the public right-of-way without a permit, the Morgantown Parking Authority manages the program, and permit regulations were updated in January 2025 to a monthly permit with explicit cleaning requirements. “We have ordinances in place that generally prohibit public right of way to be used for business without a permit … the Morgantown Parking Authority currently manages that program,” a staff presenter said.
Council members raised several recurring concerns: fairness to downtown brick-and-mortar businesses; the geographic spread of nightly vendors; trash and grease disposal; parking space impacts; and the dated nature of maps used to manage vendor locations. One councilor urged concentrating vendors in a constrained, rotating location to create a destination and reduce competition with established restaurants.
Suggestions from council included designated daytime locations (for example at the Farmer’s Market pavilion or Courthouse Square for lunch programming), limited nighttime zones, a rotating “pop-up” cluster with electrical hookups, stricter permit compliance tied to enforcement (including suspension or refusal of future monthly permits), and outreach to vendor operators to identify practical solutions for grease disposal.
Multiple councilors supported the vending program as a pathway for cooks to test concepts before investing in brick-and-mortar businesses, while also urging tighter controls to protect existing downtown businesses. Staff and the city attorney said they will work with parking authority staff and stakeholders to draft clearer permit requirements and enforcement procedures and return ordinance drafts to council.
Because this was a feedback session, no ordinance was adopted. The city attorney requested that staff begin drafting ordinance language and perform stakeholder outreach; council directed staff to return with proposed ordinance language for future consideration.
