North Myrtle Beach spent Wednesday afternoon doing something it has never formally done: talking out loud about whether food trucks belong here at all. For a city that has no ordinance permitting them, and no shortage of neighbors who do, that conversation was overdue. But how the city arrived at the table — with a staff-drafted ordinance already in hand before restaurants or residents had weighed in — may say as much about North Myrtle Beach’s regulatory habits as anything decided about the trucks themselves.

A Draft Before the Discussion

The Aug. 5 workshop was the sole item on the agenda: a potential ordinance to establish food truck regulations in a city that currently allows none. City staff based its draft ordinance on other municipalities’ food truck frameworks, without input from food truck operators, restaurants, residents, or the broader business community. Council took no vote. Instead, staff handed council a list of questions to sort out: whether to allow food trucks at all right now, whether to cap the number of permits, how to structure fees, and how business licensing, fire inspection, food safety, and special event permitting would fit together. Alcohol sales were taken off the table outright, and any truck would need permission from the property owner where it parks. Councilwoman Jeri McCumbee recused herself from the discussion because her son-in-law owns a food truck.

That sequence — draft first, ask the public later — is a familiar complaint in North Myrtle Beach. It raises the practical question city staff themselves posed to council: how long does the back-and-forth of writing an ordinance, gathering restaurant and resident input, and revising take when the outreach comes after the draft instead of before it?

What the Neighbors Already Decided

North Myrtle Beach isn’t inventing this policy from scratch; it’s picking from choices its neighbors have already made. Myrtle Beach has permitted food trucks since 2017, tying each truck’s permit to a brick-and-mortar restaurant kitchen and barring them from setting up within 100 feet of an existing food service business without permission [MyHorryNews, 2017]. The city started with a cap of six permits, since expanded to 20, and this spring council debated loosening that ordinance’s language further amid complaints that the rules were confusing and overly restrictive [WMBF News, 2026]. Horry County, which approved food trucks back in 2015, imposes its own separation requirements and licensing steps, including hospitality fees and code enforcement permits for vendors [Horry County SC.Gov]. Aynor took the opposite posture this year, passing an ordinance explicitly welcoming food trucks onto public property and at businesses with owner permission, alongside a 1% hospitality fee — a move its chamber of commerce backed as a way to connect food trucks with existing businesses rather than wall them off [MyHorryNews, 2026].

North Myrtle Beach, in other words, has a menu of templates to choose from, ranging from Myrtle Beach’s restaurant-tied, distance-restricted model to Aynor’s welcome mat.

The Kayak Precedent

For residents watching this unfold, the sharper question may be what North Myrtle Beach does once it starts regulating an industry it once left alone. The city’s kayak vendors offer a cautionary case. After years of unregulated growth at the Cherry Grove boat landing, the city capped the number of kayak businesses allowed to operate there at six and required them to pay 10% of gross revenue generated at the landing — a policy one operator called “business killing” in a lawsuit filed against the city [MyHorryNews, 2022]. What began as a push to manage congestion ended, in the eyes of some operators, as a mechanism that shrank the field of who could compete at all.

That history is why the “unfair competition” concern raised repeatedly by council Wednesday cuts both ways. Ed Prince, owner of Prince Resorts, told council he didn’t believe food trucks would be held to the same cleanliness and trash standards his hotel operation follows, calling that a built-in advantage for the trucks. Cherry Grove citizen Tom Barnett offered a more measured take, calling the proposal a “can of worms” and cautioning that a municipality limiting competition between businesses invites legal risk — but he also said he didn’t think the idea itself was a bad one, and that the details could be hammered out.

That same competition worry has a recent precedent of its own in North Myrtle Beach: it echoes, almost point for point, the early pushback hotels raised when short-term rentals first began crowding into the lodging market here. Hotels argued they were carrying licensing, inspection, and tax burdens that short-term rental owners weren’t — the same asymmetry Prince is now describing between restaurants and food trucks. That fight took years to fully sort out through ordinances and state code, and it’s still not entirely settled. If North Myrtle Beach is running the same script again, the question isn’t just whether food trucks get approved, but whether the city has learned anything about how long — and how contentious — that kind of catch-up regulation tends to get.

Open Questions Still on the Table

Several practical questions remain unresolved. Whether food trucks would be allowed on private property — including in HOA communities such as Del Webb, which expressed interest — is still undecided. Cheryl Kilady of Destination NMB has offered to help coordinate a survey of restaurants and residents, though no timeline has been set for that outreach. Trash and parking impacts, along with a floated requirement that any food truck operator also own a brick-and-mortar restaurant, remain open items for staff to sort through before language comes back to council.

Where This Leaves North Myrtle Beach

No vote means no ordinance yet, and no ordinance means the timeline is genuinely unknown — staff has guidance, but not a deadline. What is clear is that North Myrtle Beach is choosing between two very different regional models, restrictive or welcoming, while carrying its own recent history of capping an industry once it started writing rules for it. Whether food trucks get a green light, a cap, or continue waiting at the curb likely depends on whether the outreach council asked for actually happens before the next draft is written.

Further Reading

• MyHorryNews, “Myrtle Beach joining food truck craze” (2017): https://www.myhorrynews.com/news/local/myrtle_beach/myrtle-beach-joining-food-truck-craze/article_143454f4-9fbd-11e7-b659-eb6921d2ef87.html
• WMBF News, “Myrtle Beach considers changes to food truck ordinance” (2026): https://www.wmbfnews.com/2026/05/05/myrtle-beach-considers-changes-food-truck-ordinance/
• MyHorryNews, “North Myrtle Beach gives final nod to new kayak fees; lawsuit filed to fight ordinance” (2022): https://www.myhorrynews.com/news/local/north_myrtle_beach/north-myrtle-beach-approves-kayak-fees-but-lawsuit-filed-over-them/article_905c7192-ca97-11ec-95e8-372746748687.html
• MyHorryNews, “Town of Aynor adopts new food truck ordinance” (2026): https://www.myhorrynews.com/news/aynor-adopts-new-food-truck-ordinance/article_0390bdbe-db29-40d1-a202-15b03547592f.html
• Horry County SC.Gov, “Obtaining a Vendor Permit”: https://www.horrycountysc.gov/departments/code-enforcement/permits/vendor/obtaining-a-vendor-permit/
• North Myrtle Beach City Council Workshop Agenda, Aug. 5, 2026