Area fire departments have banded together to launch a coordinated food truck inspection program to improve safety among food trucks, April 22, 2026. PC: Fox 11 Online
APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Northeast Wisconsin food trucks can get one fire inspection accepted across multiple communities under a new program.
The Appleton Fire Department, in collaboration with eight other fire departments in the region, launched a coordinated food truck fire inspection program to improve safety and streamline inspections for mobile food vendors.
The program allows operators to complete a single fire safety inspection that is recognized across participating communities, reducing duplicate inspections while maintaining consistent safety standards. Fire departments that will honor the inspections are Appleton, Fond du Lac, Fox Crossing, Grand Chute, Green Bay, Harrison, Kimberly, Neenah-Menasha and Oshkosh.
Inspections center around cooking equipment, fire suppression systems, fire extinguishers, generators and electrical safety.
“The things that we focus on for this are going to be fire extinguisher placements, your fire suppression systems, so your hood and exhaust systems, propane fueling, generators, stuff like that. General electrical equipment as well — use of extension cords is a pretty common violation,” said Alex Quintana with the Appleton Fire Department. “And then just general layout. Keeping things that are more of a risk of being combustible, keeping those away from open flames with the cooking equipment.”
Quintana said these are “the very same things” fire officials look for in a regular business with a kitchen in it. She said inspections make large events with lots of food trucks in a concentrated area safer for the community.
“I think this is a really big step toward working together as a community to gain compliance and fire safety. We’re not just talking about risk for firefighters if there is a fire. We’re talking about the risk for the business owners and the employees that are working in those food trucks in case of a fire,” she said. “Think about a lot of the food truck rallies that we’re seeing for some of these large community events.”
Last year at Octoberfest, we had, I want to say, about 30-40 food trucks on that one strip on College Avenue, and we have a rotation of about 300,000 people that come into that over the course of two days. That’s a lot of people that, if anything were to happen to a food truck, it’s a lot of people to try to clear out quickly, control panic and allow fire crews to come in and extinguish a fire. Taking all of that into account, even though it seems like a small thing, it can become a very big incident very quickly, so we’re trying our best to mitigate that and prevent that from even happening.
A fire inspection for food trucks is required by the state of Wisconsin. This program will do the inspections for free during the following dates and times:
April 28
- Noon-4 p.m.
- Fond du Lac Fire Department – Station #1
- 815 S. Main Street, Fond du Lac
May 14
- 1-5 p.m.
- Neenah-Menasha Fire Rescue – Station #36
- 1911 Manitowoc Rd., Menasha
May 19
- 2-6 p.m.
- Green Bay Metro Fire Department – Station #9
- 3100 Eaton Rd., Green Bay
If the food truck passes inspection, it will receive a sticker that is supplied through the program.
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