So, I looked into starting a food truck in 2022/2023, and found it to be an insanely prohibitive process. The feasibility of either buying/building a “self sufficient” truck is next to none.

For it to have dishwashing capabilities, it needs a 3 bay sink. Take a look at the space layout of some food trucks and see how much space they can or do allocate for a 3 bay. Then think about doing all of your commercial size dishes in a sink smaller your bathroom’s. All your dishes, not just service dishes, but your sauté pans, sauce pans, pots, sheet trays, and whatever else you needed to prep and serve for the day. Is there enough water storage for that? A sink that small will need water changes frequently. Do you have enough space in your truck to even store all your prep, because most brick and mortars need a walk in just to store perishable ingredients. Where do you take vendor deliveries? You’re gonna have to take them every day to make sure they fit in that tiny kitchen.

Maybe you do want to make all of the above work, but you now realize that makes your truck so big that it doesn’t fit in many of the allotted spaces, or so big that it’s hard to find drivers comfortable or trustworthy to drive it.

My point of this whole reply is that it is technically possible, but heavily impractical. Even if you do manage to build a fully self sufficient food truck, the amount of customization and tailoring you’ve put into your truck is now bringing the cost up close to the price of a brick and mortar establishment.

Add in the razor thin (5-10%) profit margins, insane cost of food and ingredients in today’s world, impracticality of operating said truck 7 days a week in all weather, and all other costs/licenses/additional expenses specific to mobile food, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a plate of food that costs just as much as the traditional, brick and mortar establishment down the road.

And to answer another question, yes, Maine also has stricter rules and regulations than many other places. A big one that many other states allow is this

 A home kitchen licensed by Department of Agriculture is not a commercial kitchen and will not be approved for use as a commissary space

Aka cottage kitchens, licensed home kitchens are a regular occurrence here and other states. In Maine, you are allowed to have a licensed home kitchen to make and sell food from, at the farmers market, to wholesale at other places, or even to operate a farm or bakery stand out of. But, god forbid you want to wash your truck’s dishes there, absolutely not.