How to vet a Florida food truck before booking an event.

Vetting a Florida food truck or caterer before an event is not optional. The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) publishes every licensed vendor inspection history, and insurance carriers increasingly expect event organizers to review that history before signing a contract. The process below takes about fifteen minutes and protects you from the cost of a mid-event shutdown or a post-event liability claim.

Step 1: Confirm the DBPR license is active

Every mobile food vendor operating in Florida must hold an active DBPR license. Food trucks operate under license type 2014 (Mobile Food Dispensing Vehicle, or MFDV). Caterers operate under license type 2013 (CATR).

Go to myfloridalicense.com and search for the vendor by business name or license number. The record shows the license status (active, expired, delinquent), the licensee of record, and the license expiration date. A license that is expired, delinquent, or null-and-void disqualifies the vendor on its own. No other steps are needed.

Step 2: Request a current Certificate of Insurance

Ask the vendor for a Certificate of Insurance (COI) showing general liability coverage and product liability coverage. Minimum thresholds most venues require:

• General liability: $1,000,000 per occurrence, $2,000,000 aggregate
• Product liability: included under general liability, or separately scheduled
• Additional insured: your venue and, where applicable, your event organizer

If the COI is missing, expired, or lacks your venue as additional insured, a foodborne illness incident at your event may not be covered by the vendor policy. Your own general liability will not close that gap. Chubb, the largest publicly traded P&C insurer in the U.S., explicitly flags vendor due diligence as a prerequisite for coverage (see our article on insurer expectations around vendor vetting).

Step 3: Pull the DBPR inspection record

A license confirms the vendor paid a fee. An inspection record tells you what happened at the window.

DBPR conducts routine, complaint-driven, and follow-up inspections throughout the life of the license. Each inspection generates a record: the date, the outcome, the specific violations found, and any enforcement action taken. These records are cumulative. A truck that passed its last inspection may still carry a history of repeated violations spanning years.

You can pull the raw inspection data from the DBPR portal. For a consolidated report with a 0-100 risk score, a letter grade, a violation breakdown by severity, and a trend chart, search the vendor at venumark.com. Reports are $9.99 each. First report is free with code FIRSTFREE.

Step 4: Check for recent high-priority violations

DBPR classifies every violation into one of three severity tiers:

• High-priority: directly contributes to foodborne illness or adulteration. Examples: improper temperature control, cross-contamination, employee hygiene failures, rodent or insect activity, unsafe sources of food.
• Intermediate: does not directly cause illness but creates conditions where it can occur. Examples: inadequate handwashing facilities, missing manager certification, dirty surfaces.
• Basic: general sanitation, recordkeeping, or maintenance issues that are not immediate food safety hazards.

High-priority violations are the ones that should change a booking decision. Recent ones (last 12 months) matter most. Recurring ones across multiple inspections matter even more because they signal an operational pattern.

Florida tracks more than 82,000 violations across 16,000-plus licensed vendors. Roughly 4,866 of those vendors carry at least one high-priority violation. That is nearly one in three.

Step 5: Ask the vendor about their record

Raise specific violations with the operator directly. Do not be accusatory. You are checking for two things:

• Accountability. A vendor who says the summer they lost their fridge compressor, and walks through what they did to fix it, is very different from one who blames the inspector.
• Corrective action. Look for evidence the issue was addressed: equipment replaced, staff retrained, SOP updated.

Clean follow-up inspections after a rough stretch are a good sign. Repeat violations in the same category over consecutive visits are a bad sign.

Step 6: Document everything in the vendor file

Save the following to your event vendor file:

• Screenshot or PDF of the DBPR license verification
• Copy of the current COI with your venue named as additional insured
• The VMScore compliance report (PDF)
• A dated summary of the pre-booking conversation, including any commitments the vendor made about corrective actions

If an incident happens post-event, this file is the first thing your insurance carrier and any plaintiff attorney will ask for. Having it complete is the difference between "we did due diligence" and "we assumed."

Red flags that should end the conversation

• License is expired, delinquent, or null-and-void
• No COI, or COI does not list your venue as additional insured
• Multiple high-priority violations in the last 12 months with no evidence of corrective action
• Emergency order of suspension or closure on the inspection record within the last 24 months
• Operator refuses to discuss the inspection record or dismisses it as "just paperwork"

Frequently asked questions

Related resources

• Florida DBPR Inspection Guide: how the system actually works
• The inspection record your vendor hopes you never read
• Your insurer expects you to vet food vendors
• Browse licensed vendors by city: Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, or any of 30+ Florida cities
• FAQ: how VMScore works and what DBPR tracks