North Myrtle Beach City Council will sit down Wednesday, August 5, at 1:30 p.m. for a workshop with a single item on the table: whether the city should finally write rules for food trucks [NMB City Council Workshop Agenda, 2026]. The discussion, open to the public and streamed live, carries a weight beyond its bare-bones agenda language. North Myrtle Beach is now one of the last sizable municipalities on the Grand Strand without a formal framework for mobile food vendors — a gap that has become harder to ignore as neighboring towns, from Myrtle Beach down to tiny Atlantic Beach, have all found their own ways to let food trucks park, sell, and pay their way into the local economy.
What’s Actually on Wednesday’s Agenda
The workshop notice itself is sparse: council will discuss “a potential ordinance to establish regulations for the operation of food trucks within the City of North Myrtle Beach [NMB City Council Workshop Agenda, 2026]. No draft ordinance language has been made public ahead of time, and workshops by design are conversations among council members and staff rather than votes — public comment is only allowed if council chooses to authorize it for that item [NMB City Council Workshop Agenda, 2026]. Residents expecting a finished policy Wednesday should adjust those expectations: this is the starting gun, not the finish line. But the fact that council is opening the conversation at all signals that the city’s current silence on food trucks — which has effectively kept them out of daily operation within city limits — is no longer viewed as sustainable.
How Myrtle Beach and Horry County Got Here First
North Myrtle Beach isn’t wading into unfamiliar territory; it’s arriving late. Myrtle Beach adopted its first food truck ordinance in 2017, restricting trucks to a limited number of permits tied to brick-and-mortar partnerships, and converted that framework into a “pilot program” in 2019 that has barely changed since [WMBF News, 2026]. This spring, city council and the planning commission revisited that language, weighing whether to drop the pilot framing, raise the 20-truck cap, and open more areas of the city to trucks [WMBF News, 2026]. The debate exposed a familiar tension: food truck advocates argue the current rules are so confusing and restrictive that operators sometimes hold permits they never use, while council members like Mike Lowder have pushed back on behalf of tax-paying, brick-and-mortar businesses that made permanent investments in the city [WMBF News, 2026; WPDE, 2026].
Horry County, meanwhile, has leaned even further toward restriction. Under county ordinance, food trucks must set up at least 300 feet from the entrance of any brick-and-mortar restaurant — a rule some operators say makes it nearly impossible to work the busiest commercial corridors [AOL/Sun News, 2026]. Conway has carved out more breathing room by comparison, allowing trucks the flexibility to move between locations rather than locking them to a single approved spot [AOL/Sun News, 2026]. The pattern across the county’s larger governments has been the same for a decade: protect the existing restaurant tax base first, and open the door to mobile vendors only in careful increments.
The Small Towns Are Moving Faster
What complicates North Myrtle Beach’s position is that some of the county’s smallest, least-resourced governments have moved past that caution entirely. The town of Aynor recently adopted a new food truck ordinance that its own chamber of commerce framed as an economic development tool, allowing trucks to operate on public property or partner with local businesses under a $500 annual license [MyHorryNews, 2026]. Unincorporated Garden City ran a season-long welcome program this year, inviting food trucks to operate from April through Labor Day weekend for a $25 fee [Horry County SC.gov, 2026].
And then there’s Atlantic Beach — a town of fewer than 200 year-round residents, without North Myrtle Beach’s tax base or staff capacity. Its 2026 Bikefest drew 26 separate food vendors under an established town vendor ordinance, part of an event that generated roughly $88,000 in revenue for the town [WPDE, 2026]. A town with a fraction of North Myrtle Beach’s budget has built a working permit system for mobile food vendors; North Myrtle Beach, by contrast, is only now scheduling its first real conversation about whether to have one at all.
What’s Actually at Stake for Residents
The substance of Wednesday’s discussion matters more to residents than the novelty of the topic. Every version of a food truck ordinance elsewhere in the county has had to answer the same three questions: how many trucks, how close to existing restaurants, and where on public versus private property. How North Myrtle Beach answers those questions will shape whether trucks show up mainly at city-sanctioned events, as they largely do now, or become a fixture along commercial corridors and near beach access points where demand is highest. It will also determine whether the city collects any permit revenue from an activity that, by several regional counts, already involves more than a dozen operators based in or serving the North Myrtle Beach area [Roaming Hunger, 2026]. Right now, without a formal ordinance, the city has limited tools to regulate where those trucks set up, inspect them, or collect fees — a regulatory blind spot that cuts both ways for vendors and for the brick-and-mortar businesses worried about competition.
Conclusion
Wednesday’s workshop won’t settle North Myrtle Beach’s food truck question, but it will show which direction council is leaning: toward Myrtle Beach and Horry County’s cautious, incremental model, or toward the more permissive approach smaller towns like Aynor and Atlantic Beach have already adopted. For a city that markets itself heavily on tourism and dining variety, being the last major Grand Strand town without any food truck framework is a distinction that’s becoming harder to spin as deliberate caution rather than simple delay. Residents who want a say in where that balance lands should tune into Wednesday’s livestream — and watch for whether council authorizes public comment on the spot.
Further Reading
- North Myrtle Beach City Council Workshop Agenda, August 5, 2026 — Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/live/mB1VFe7-oqs
- “Myrtle Beach considers changes to food truck ordinance,” WMBF News, May 5, 2026: https://www.wmbfnews.com/2026/05/05/myrtle-beach-considers-changes-food-truck-ordinance/
- “Myrtle Beach leaders weigh changes to food truck rules,” WPDE, May 6, 2026: https://wpde.com/news/local/myrtle-beach-leaders-weigh-changes-to-food-truck-rules-planning-commission-05062026-permanent-businesses-high-traffic-board
- “Where are the food trucks in the Myrtle Beach, SC area?,” AOL/The Sun News, 2026: https://www.aol.com/where-food-trucks-myrtle-beach-100000320.html
- “Town of Aynor adopts new food truck ordinance,” MyHorryNews: https://www.myhorrynews.com/news/aynor-adopts-new-food-truck-ordinance/article_0390bdbe-db29-40d1-a202-15b03547592f.html
- “Food Trucks wanted in Garden City for Summer 2026,” Horry County SC.gov, March 16, 2026: https://www.horrycountysc.gov/news/articles/food-trucks-wanted-in-garden-city-for-summer-2026-apply-today/
- “Atlantic Beach council reviews Bikefest 2026 revenue, safety concerns and future planning,” WPDE, June 2, 2026: https://wpde.com/news/local/atlantic-beach-council-reviews-bikefest-2026-revenue-safety-concerns-and-future-planning-06022026-participation-north-myrtle-beach-stampede-evaluated-life-threatening
- Guide to North Myrtle Beach, SC Food Trucks, Roaming Hunger, April 2026: https://roaminghunger.com/food-trucks/north-myrtle-beach-sc/
