// County-Level Permit Directory
The only county-by-county guide to mobile food vendor permits in the NKY/Cincinnati metro corridor — real fees, direct health department contacts, step-by-step instructions.
⚠ Cross-State Operators: Your Kentucky MFU permit covers all KY counties but is not valid in Ohio. Ohio operators need a separate MFSO license from their home-county health district. Read the full guide →
NKY Health covers Boone, Campbell, Grant, and Kenton counties under a single Mobile Food Unit permit — the highest-leverage license in the region.
Ohio's SB 150 statewide reciprocity means your home-county MFSO license works everywhere in Ohio — but the City of Cincinnati still requires its own registration on top.
Built for operators who need answers fast — not blog posts.
Print-ready guides you can take to your health department appointment or share with your business partner.
Written for operators — not lawyers. Plain English, real steps, no filler.
The Ohio River creates a daily permitting dilemma for NKY operators. Here's exactly what transfers, what doesn't, and the cheapest legal path to both states.
Your commissary agreement is the most commonly failed step in the NKY permit process. Here's what NKY Health looks for and how to get approved fast.
Since 2019, Ohio's statewide mobile food license means you don't buy a new permit every county. But there are important exceptions — especially in Cincinnati.
New city manager rules in late 2025 changed Downtown and OTR operations. Full breakdown of current zones, prohibited areas, and how to stay compliant.
A bad commissary agreement can get your permit denied. This guide covers what health departments require and what operators often miss.
A 2024 rule change created a 50%-off mobile food license for shelf-stable goods, baked goods, and certain farmers market vendors. Do you qualify?
Every fee, phone number, and procedural step on this site comes directly from county health department websites, published fee schedules, state agency documentation, and direct verification with local environmental health offices. We do not aggregate from third-party permit services or law firm blogs.
The NKY/Cincinnati corridor is one of the most complex permitting environments in the region because operators routinely cross state lines — and the two states have completely different licensing structures. Kentucky issues permits at the county health department level but they operate statewide. Ohio issues a home-district license that also covers the full state, but the City of Cincinnati adds its own overlay registration on top. Neither state's permit is valid in the other.
This directory exists to give operators one place to understand what they need, who to call, and roughly what it will cost — before they spend hours navigating fragmented government websites.