Glossary: Commissary Kitchen Requirement
Health departments typically require food trucks to operate out of a commissary kitchen for daily tasks—cleaning, dry storage, and mandatory prep. Your restaurant’s main kitchen usually doesn’t satisfy this legal requirement.
Quick check before you commit: Bring your truck’s equipment list and walk the commissary space. Verify water heater capacity, grease trap size, and shelf depth for your most-used ingredients. If the space forces you to reorganize your flow or store items outside your temperature control range, keep looking. The right commissary should feel like an extension of the truck, not a separate hurdle.
This term and 30+ others are defined in the Chef-to-Food-Truck-Owner Transition Glossary, a fixed digital download designed to cut through the operational language of the move.