Food Truck Interior Design

Food truck interior design is the work of fitting a commercial kitchen, a crew and a service counter into a box that’s often under 8 feet wide. A good interior has clear work zones, an aisle you can pass through while someone is cooking, surfaces an inspector can wipe clean, enough light to see the food, and a hood that pulls heat and grease out before it builds up.

Health codes set the floor for most of these choices, and they vary by state and county. The numbers below come from the FDA Food Code and named health departments. Use them to plan, then confirm with yours.

How should a food truck interior be laid out?

Split the space into four zones:

1. Cold storage and prep: refrigerators, the sandwich prep table and dry storage.
2. Cooking: griddle, fryer, charbroiler or range, all under the hood.
3. Service: the window, the counter and the point of sale.
4. Cleaning: the hand sink, the three-compartment sink and the water heater.

Food should move in one direction, from cold storage to prep to the cooking line to the window. Dirty utensils should go the other way, back to the sinks, without crossing the pass. The FDA Food Code wants a hand sink placed for convenient use in prep, dispensing and dishwashing areas, so in a long truck that can mean a sink near the line, not just one at the back.

The food truck layout ideas page shows how these zones fit in a single-line, galley and L-shaped plan.

How much room does the crew need?

In California, occupied mobile food facilities need at least 30 inches of unobstructed aisle and 74 inches of clear height over the aisle. The Los Angeles County plan check guideline repeats both, and it also asks for at least 20 inches of linear counter space for each piece of food equipment.

Step vans don’t leave much slack. On a Morgan Olson body the clear space between the rear wheel boxes is 41 inches, and the inside is 86 or 93 inches wide. Put 30-inch-deep refrigeration on one wall and 30-inch-deep cooking on the other and a 93-inch interior is left with about 33 inches of aisle, before wall panels.

Before you commit, drag the equipment onto a plan in the food truck layout maker and watch the clearance readout. It measures the gap between items as you move them and flags overlaps.

What should the walls, floor and ceiling be made of?

Codes describe performance, not brands, and health department guides ask for much the same thing:

• Texas DSHS: walls and ceilings smooth, easily cleanable and light in color.
• Maricopa County, Arizona: floors, walls and ceilings smooth, easy to clean, durable and nonabsorbent.
• Los Angeles County: impervious, smooth, cleanable floors, coved up the wall at least 4 inches where floor meets wall.

Stainless steel is the standard behind and around cooking equipment and on counters. Commercial sinks like the Advance Tabco K7-CS-21 are built from 18 gauge, type 304 stainless. Many builders use other smooth, washable wall panels away from the heat. Whatever you choose, seal seams so grease and water can’t get behind them, and ask your health department to approve the finish schedule before installation.

Does food truck equipment need to be NSF certified?

Usually, yes. The NACCHO mobile food unit factsheet lists “all equipment ANSI/NSF approved” as a plan review item, and Maricopa County says all equipment must be commercial and NSF/ANSI approved. NSF certification shows that a piece of equipment meets a sanitation standard for food use. Household refrigerators and residential griddles usually won’t pass.

Installation counts too. Los Angeles County wants countertop equipment sealed to the counter or set on 4-inch legs, and floor equipment secured to the floor or on 6-inch legs, so the space underneath can be cleaned.

How much light does a food truck need?

The FDA Food Code 2022 sets three levels in section 6-303.11:

• At least 50 foot candles (540 lux) at surfaces where employees work with food or with knives, slicers and similar equipment.
• At least 20 foot candles (215 lux) at handwashing and dishwashing areas and inside reach-in and under-counter refrigerators.
• At least 10 foot candles (108 lux) in dry storage, and in other areas during cleaning.

Maricopa County and NACCHO both repeat the 50 foot candle figure. South Dakota also wants lights shielded so a broken bulb can’t drop glass into food. Light strips under the hood and over the prep counter usually do more than a single ceiling fixture.

How do you ventilate a food truck?

The Food Code asks for mechanical ventilation strong enough to keep heat, steam, smoke and fumes from building up, and for hood systems that don’t drip grease or condensation onto food. Over grease-producing equipment, most states go further. Iowa’s fire marshal requires a Type I hood with a UL 300 suppression system for new mobile vendors doing commercial cooking. South Dakota requires a Type I hood with removable metal grease filters. King County, Washington requires a hood over any grease-producing equipment.

Size the hood to cover the whole cooking line. If you add a fryer later, it has to fit under the existing hood. Plan the generator and compressors away from food too; Los Angeles County wants them in an area completely separated from food prep and storage.

What other interior details matter?

• A cab wall or door. NACCHO’s checklist asks for the driving area to be completely separated from food prep by a wall or door.
• A second exit. Los Angeles County asks for a safety exit of at least 24 by 36 inches, opposite the main door or in the roof or rear.
• Storage. Los Angeles County sets minimums of 9 cubic feet of dry storage for limited prep and 20 cubic feet for full prep, plus 12 or 20 cubic feet of refrigeration.
• Restraints. Gas appliances should be secured so they can’t slide in transit, and fryers need a locked cover for hot oil while driving in King County.

Put these on the plan before you order cabinets. The how to design a food truck layout guide gives the full order of steps, and the maker exports a printable sheet you can hand to your builder.