In Dallas, a cooler full of ice is not legal cold-holding at a festival. In Los Angeles County, it won’t get you through the night.
In Dallas, ice chests are not allowed for maintaining cold food temperatures — the guidelines require a mechanical holding unit in every booth. In Los Angeles County, ice will get you through the operating day, but potentially hazardous food has to go into mechanical refrigeration overnight.
Most vendors find this out from an inspector. I found it out a different way.
Years ago I had a kitchen on a lease and I didn’t have enough cold storage. Building more inside wasn’t doable. So I started digging, and what I found was that LA County would let me have cold storage on wheels. You can’t have it sitting on the ground. But if it’s on wheels and you move it, you can use it.
So I designed a couple of units myself, went to China, met with some factories, showed them what I wanted, and had them delivered. Two of them — a prototype for one model, and a regular 12-foot trailer on a standard piece of equipment.
Then one day my Sysco rep was out at the kitchen and said, “Hey Larry, what do you got out there?” I told him I built them. He said, “That’s really nice. I’ve got friends who’d like to use that. Do you ever rent that out?”
The rest is history. That’s how Keep It Cold started.
I’m telling you that because your cold storage problem and my cold storage problem are the same problem, and the answer turned out to be a regulatory one. What follows is every market we serve: who regulates you, what permit you need, what temperature you have to hold, and whether you can legally use an ice chest. Find your city.
One thing to clear up first, because people ask. The rule I found was about wheeled cold storage sitting at a permanent kitchen. If you’re renting for an event, the trailer arrives with your event and leaves with it, so the wheels take care of themselves — what you owe is the permit and the temperatures in your city’s block below. The one case worth a phone call is a long sit: if a unit is going to stay on one site for weeks rather than days, ask your department whether it should be listed on your application.
First, Find Out What You Are
Before any of this matters, you need to know which of two things you are. Almost every vendor I talk to gets this wrong, and it’s the difference between the rules that apply to you and the rules that don’t.
If you’re serving out of a booth or a tent at a festival — a fixed spot, for the run of the event — you are a TEMPORARY FOOD ESTABLISHMENT. That’s a category with its own permit, its own duration cap, and its own rulebook.
If you’re serving out of a truck or a cart that drives away at night, you are a MOBILE FOOD UNIT. Different permit. Different rulebook. Usually more expensive and more restrictive.
This isn’t a technicality. Here’s what it costs you if you mix them up.
In Nashville, Metro’s mobile food unit code restricts mobile units from expanding their capacity with add-on refrigeration. Read that as a festival vendor and you’d conclude you can’t put a rental freezer next to your booth. But that rule lives in the mobile-unit code, and Tennessee’s own regulations define the two categories separately: a mobile food unit is one “designed to be readily movable” (Rule 1200-23-1-.01(23)), while a temporary food service establishment is one that operates in conjunction with a single event for “not more than fourteen (14) consecutive days” (Rule 1200-23-1-.01(40)). Two legally distinct categories. If you’re a booth, the ban isn’t yours.
In Kentucky, a “statewide mobile food unit” is its own licensed category at a flat $200 annual fee (902 KAR 45:110 §1(7)), entirely separate from the temporary food service permit a festival booth needs (§1(8)).
In Denver, a mobile food unit cannot use a temporary license at all. You need the full mobile license, and in busy season that’s roughly a six-week lead time.
And starting July 1, 2026, Texas has a new one. House Bill 2844 created Health & Safety Code Chapter 437B — a state mobile food vendor framework administered by DSHS that preempts conflicting local regulation of mobile vendors (§437B.003). It’s aimed at trucks and carts. It does not reach festival booths. But if you run a truck in Texas, that’s a change that landed this summer and you need to know about it.
One honest caveat: if you’re a licensed food truck operator renting cold storage as overflow, you’re still a mobile unit. The mobile rules can reach you even though the trailer is parked. Everything above is about booth vendors. If you’re a truck, verify your own category with your health department before you rely on any of it.
Find Your Market
Jump to: Houston · Dallas ★ · Fort Worth · Austin · San Antonio · Corpus Christi · Nashville · Denver · Colorado Springs · Los Angeles · Long Beach · Pasadena · Louisville · Lexington · Indianapolis · Ohio
⚠ Rules verified as of July 15, 2026. Several state codes were renumbered in 2024–2025 when they adopted the 2022 FDA Food Code. Confirm with your local health department before your event; codes and fees change.
The short version, before you scroll: every market on this page holds cold TCS food at 41°F or below. What changes city to city is who permits you, what ice is allowed to do, and what happens overnight. California allows a 45°F daytime ceiling with limits; Dallas won’t let ice do the holding at all.
HOUSTON, TEXAS
Who regulates you: City of Houston Health Department, Bureau of Consumer Health Services
Permit: Temporary Food Event Permit — per booth, per day
How long: Texas pattern is 14 consecutive days
Cold-holding: “keep COLD foods at 41°F or below” (Houston Special Events Food Guidelines, item 9). Hot foods 140°F+.
Ice chests? Houston does NOT ban ice chests and does NOT mandate mechanical refrigeration — unlike Dallas. Mechanical is still the safe standard for a multi-day event.
Fee: Per booth, per day. Confirm current fee with Houston Health.
Check it yourself: Houston Special Events Food Guidelines
→ Refrigerated trailer rental in Houston
DALLAS, TEXAS ★ read this one even if you’re not in Dallas
Who regulates you: City of Dallas Code Compliance, Consumer Health Division. City Code Chapter 17.
Permit: Temporary Special Event Food Application — apply ≥5 business days before
How long: No single day cap. Dallas splits rules at 96 hours vs. four+ days.
Cold-holding: “All TCS foods requiring refrigeration must be stored at a temperature not to exceed 41°F or colder.” (Dallas Temporary Food Guidelines, Rev. 2021, §V.)
Ice chests? NO. Verbatim: “Ice chests are not allowed for maintaining cold food temperatures.” And: “Mechanical holding units are required in each booth.”
★ The local trap: This is the clearest statement in the country of where things are headed. A cooler of ice is not a cold-holding method in Dallas. It’s a beverage box.
Check it yourself: Dallas Temporary Food Establishment Guidelines
→ Refrigerated trailer rental in Dallas
FORT WORTH / TARRANT COUNTY, TEXAS
Who regulates you: Tarrant County Public Health, under Texas Food Establishment Rules (25 TAC Ch. 228)
Permit: Temporary Food Establishment Permit · How long: ≤14 consecutive days
Cold-holding: 41°F. Temporary-establishment rule is 25 TAC §228.222.
Ice chests? No statewide ban. Mechanical refrigeration is the safe standard.
Fee: Single-event ~$52; multi-event ~$200. Confirm with Tarrant County Public Health.
Check it yourself: Texas Food Establishment Rules, 25 TAC Ch. 228
→ Refrigerated trailer rental in Fort Worth
AUSTIN / TRAVIS COUNTY, TEXAS
Who regulates you: Austin Public Health, Environmental Health Services. City Code 10-3; state TFER Ch. 228.
Permit: Temporary Food Event Application → Temporary Food Booth Permit per booth · How long: 14 calendar days
Cold-holding: 41°F or colder. Can’t hold temp → food discarded 4 hours after removal from control.
Ice chests? Not addressed. Mechanical refrigeration is the safe standard.
★ In Austin, the EVENT ORGANIZER — not each vendor — obtains every booth’s permit. Different from Dallas and San Antonio. If you’re a vendor, confirm your organizer actually did it.
Fee: ~$50–65 per booth, plus a significant expedite fee inside 10 days. Confirm.
Check it yourself: Texas Food Establishment Rules, 25 TAC Ch. 228
→ Refrigerated trailer rental in Austin
SAN ANTONIO / BEXAR COUNTY, TEXAS
Who regulates you: San Antonio Metro Health District. FDA Food Code and City Code Ch. 13.
Permit: Temporary Food Establishment · How long: Max 14 consecutive days
Cold-holding: Perishable foods at 41°F or less, or 135°F or greater.
Ice chests? Not addressed. Mechanical refrigeration is the safe standard.
Fee: ~$50 per booth if paid ≥3 days before; multi-event option. Confirm with Metro Health.
Check it yourself: Texas Food Establishment Rules, 25 TAC Ch. 228
→ Refrigerated trailer rental in San Antonio
CORPUS CHRISTI / NUECES COUNTY, TEXAS
Who regulates you: Texas Food Establishment Rules (25 TAC Ch. 228) apply here the same as anywhere else in Texas, administered by your local health department.
Permit: Temporary Food Establishment · How long: 14 consecutive days
Cold-holding: 41°F. Temporary-establishment rule is 25 TAC §228.222.
Ice chests? No statewide ban. Mechanical refrigeration is the safe standard.
★ Straight with you on this one: we verified the Texas state rules above, but we have not worked through Corpus Christi’s local permit process, fees or lead time the way we did for the other markets on this page. Call your local health department and ask the two questions at the bottom of this section before you rely on anything here.
Why it’s here: This is where we build the trailers. Our factory is in Corpus Christi.
Check it yourself: Texas Food Establishment Rules, 25 TAC Ch. 228
→ Refrigerated trailer rental in Corpus Christi
NASHVILLE / DAVIDSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE
Who regulates you: TN Dept of Health, Rule 1200-23-1-.02(13) (temporary). Metro Public Health governs mobile units — different category.
Permit: Temporary food service establishment · How long: 14 consecutive days
Cold-holding: 41°F or below (Rule 1200-23-1-.02(2)(b)1).
Ice chests? No refrigeration ban. Ice for consumption must be from an approved source and protected.
★ Tennessee’s hot-holding number is 140°F, not the 135°F used almost everywhere else. If you work multiple states, that’s the one that will catch you.
Check it yourself: TN Rule 1200-23-1
→ Refrigerated trailer rental in Nashville
DENVER, COLORADO
Who regulates you: Denver DPHE / Excise & Licenses, applying CO retail food rules (6 CCR 1010-2)
Permit: “Restaurant temporary” license · How long: 14 consecutive days (§1-201.10(B))
Cold-holding: 135°F+ or 41°F or less — 6 CCR 1010-2 §3-501.16(A).
Ice chests? No explicit statewide ban for a booth — but 41°F “at all times” is the standard, and that’s the part people lose. Commissary decided case-by-case under §2.7.C.
★ Denver requires an Affidavit of Commissary, and a mobile food unit cannot use a temporary license at all — full mobile license, ~six-week lead in busy season.
Fee: Base + per-day; waived for qualifying nonprofits. Confirm current fees.
Check it yourself: Colorado Retail Food Establishment Rules, 6 CCR 1010-2
→ Refrigerated trailer rental in Denver
COLORADO SPRINGS / EL PASO COUNTY, COLORADO
Who regulates you: El Paso County Public Health — same state code as Denver (6 CCR 1010-2)
Permit: Retail Food Special Event Permit — Limited or Full Menu · How long: 14 days
Cold-holding: 41°F or below (§3-501.16(A)).
★ Colorado is not one market. Same code, same temps, same 14-day cap as Denver — but a completely different process. El Paso County runs a straightforward two-tier permit; Denver runs you through licensing with a commissary affidavit.
Fee: ~$250–425 by tier and event count. Confirm.
Check it yourself: Colorado Retail Food Establishment Rules, 6 CCR 1010-2
→ Refrigerated trailer rental in Colorado Springs
LOS ANGELES COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
Who regulates you: LA County DPH, Community Events Program. Includes the City of LA — no separate city dept.
Permit: Temporary Food Facility (TFF)
Cold-holding: 41°F general (H&SC §113996(a)). For a TFF, food may be held ≤45°F for up to 12 hours in any 24-hour period (§114343(a)). Publish 41°F as your safe harbor; 45°F/12-hr is the legal ceiling.
Ice chests? ★ DAYTIME ONLY. Per LA County’s TFF application: “potentially hazardous foods must be stored overnight under mechanical refrigeration.” Food held 42–45°F destroyed at end of operating day.
★ That overnight rule is the single most expensive thing on this page for a multi-day festival — and the one people are most surprised by.
Fee: FY25-26: TFF permits $59 / $82 / $116 / $184 by type; Community Event Organizer $358. Confirm.
Check it yourself: LA County Public Health — Community Events Program · California Health & Safety Code §114343
→ Refrigerated trailer rental in Los Angeles
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA
Who regulates you: ★ City of Long Beach Bureau of Environmental Health. It runs its OWN health dept. It is not LA County. Do not call LA County.
Permit: Temporary Food Facility (TFF)
How long: ★ Up to 25 consecutive/nonconsecutive days in any 90-day period (H&SC §113755) — notably longer than the 14-day cap elsewhere.
Cold-holding: 45°F or below (or 135°F+ hot). 41°F is always compliant.
Ice chests? Yes — Long Beach expressly lists “ice chests with ice, refrigerated trucks or refrigerators” as adequate. But food held at 45°F discarded at end of day.
Fee: ~$80–155; late penalty inside 7 days. Confirm.
Check it yourself: Long Beach Bureau of Environmental Health — temporary food · California Health & Safety Code §113755
→ Refrigerated trailer rental in the Los Angeles area
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA
Who regulates you: ★ Pasadena Public Health Dept. Also runs its OWN health dept. Not LA County.
Permit: Temporary Food Facility
Cold-holding: 41°F safe harbor; state 45°F/12-hr ceiling. Foods held ≤45°F destroyed at end of operating day unless continuously held ≤41°F under mechanical refrigeration (Community Event Requirements item 11).
Ice chests? Acceptable during the day; overnight the same mechanical-refrigeration rule applies.
Check it yourself: Pasadena Public Health — community event requirements
→ Refrigerated trailer rental in the Los Angeles area
★ THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA MAP — READ BEFORE YOU CALL ANYONE. “Los Angeles” is not one health jurisdiction. LA County DPH covers most of the county including the City of LA. Long Beach, Pasadena, and Vernon each have their own. Orange County is the OC Health Care Agency. Ventura is Ventura County Environmental Health. San Bernardino is separate again — the Inland Empire is not LA County. We researched LA County, Long Beach and Pasadena — not Orange, Ventura or San Bernardino — so we won’t publish numbers for them. Call the right one.
LOUISVILLE / JEFFERSON COUNTY, KENTUCKY
Who regulates you: Louisville Metro Dept of Public Health & Wellness (Temporary Food Permit).
Cold-holding: 41°F or below / 135°F+. KY adopts the 2013 FDA Food Code (902 KAR 45:005).
Ice chests? Not banned in Louisville’s guidance.
★ Louisville vendors have historically dealt with two departments — Public Health for the food permit, and Codes & Regulations for a separate city permit. We could NOT confirm the second permit from a primary public source. Call Louisville Metro Codes & Regulations directly — don’t assume the health permit is the whole story.
Fee: Health permit (902 KAR 45:110 §1(8)): $60 (1–3 days) / $90 (4–7) / $125 (8–14). Any city permit fee not published — ask.
Check it yourself: 902 KAR 45:110
→ Refrigerated trailer rental in Louisville
LEXINGTON-FAYETTE COUNTY, KENTUCKY
Who regulates you: Lexington-Fayette County Health Department (LFCHD)
Permit: Temporary Food Service Vendor permit (Food Service Regulation #19)
Cold-holding: Cold 41°F or below; hot 135°F+.
Fee: $60 (1–3 days) / $90 (4–7) / $125 (8–14) — statewide tiers (902 KAR 45:110). Confirm.
Check it yourself: Lexington-Fayette County Health Department — temporary food · 902 KAR 45:110
→ Refrigerated trailer rental in Lexington
INDIANAPOLIS / MARION COUNTY, INDIANA
Who regulates you: Marion County Public Health Dept, Food & Consumer Safety. State rule: 410 IAC 7-26.
Permit: Temporary Food Establishment license · How long: ≤14 consecutive days (410 IAC 7-26-124)
Cold-holding: 41°F or below / 135°F+ (410 IAC 7-26-213).
★ Indiana distinguishes booth vendors from mobile units. The “base-of-operation” commissary package binds MOBILE units (410 IAC 7-26-488), not stationary festival booths. Don’t let a mobile-unit requirement get pinned on your booth.
Fee: Not published at a reachable URL. Confirm with Food & Consumer Safety.
Check it yourself: 410 IAC 7-26
→ Refrigerated trailer rental in Indianapolis
OHIO
Who regulates you: Ohio Uniform Food Safety Code, OAC Ch. 3717-1 (Rule 3717-1-03.4, eff. Sept 5, 2024).
Permit: Two tracks — “temporary food service operation” and “temporary retail food establishment,” each capped by default at 5 consecutive days. Not renewable.
Cold-holding: 135°F+ or 41°F or less (OAC 3717-1-03.4(F)(1)). Frozen foods maintained frozen (3717-1-03.4(A)).
Fees: Set locally by each board of health — no statewide schedule (ORC 3717.25). Call your local health district.
Why it’s here: If you’re working the Kentuckiana circuit and you cross the river north, the numbers don’t change — but the paperwork does.
Check it yourself: Ohio Administrative Code Ch. 3717-1
→ Our Kentuckiana dealer delivers north of the river
If Your City Isn’t On This List
We cover fifteen jurisdictions because those are the ones we serve and could verify. There are thousands. If yours isn’t here, the rules still exist and you can find them in about ten minutes.
Start with who regulates you. It’s almost never the state — it’s your county or city health department, sometimes called environmental health, sometimes public health. Search “[your county] temporary food establishment permit” and you’ll usually land on the right page first try. If you get the state instead, look for the county link on that page.
Then get your category right, because it’s the mistake we see most. Booth at an event, you’re a temporary food establishment. Drive away at night, you’re a mobile unit. Different permits, different rules — and reading the wrong set is how people show up with equipment they aren’t allowed to use.
Then ask two questions. For cold storage, these are the only two that matter:
- At a multi-day event, is ice accepted as cold-holding for TCS food, or is mechanical refrigeration required?
- What has to happen to cold food overnight?
Ask them exactly that way. Every jurisdiction on this page differs on one or both, and those two answers tell you whether you need a trailer, what size, and for how many days. While you have someone on the phone, ask what the permit costs, how far ahead you have to apply, and whether they have requirements about where your ice comes from. Lead times on this page run from five business days to six weeks, so “early” means different things in different places.
And if you learn something about your market we should know, tell us. We’d rather have it right.
Sizing & Power
Sizing: how much cold storage do you actually need
Here’s the honest answer nobody in this business likes to give you: it depends. Not on some chart. On what you’re bringing. A shaved-ice booth and a burger truck can work the same crowd and need completely different cold storage, because one’s hauling flavor syrup and bagged ice and the other’s holding sixty cases of frozen patties that legally have to stay frozen all weekend.
So don’t guess, and don’t let anybody sell you a unit off a hunch. Our own event runs on a row of trailers, but that number grew over years of doing the same festival — it’s not a yardstick you should measure your one booth against. Yours is a different question, and it has a real answer.
🧊 We built a tool that gives it to you. Tell our Cooler Space Calculator what trailer size you’re looking at — 5-foot, 8-foot, 12-foot, or a custom box — and what you’re loading. It’s got presets for the stuff festival vendors actually haul: soda by the 24-pack, bottled water, bagged ice, frozen burgers, chicken, shrimp, ice cream tubs, kegs. It tells you how many cases fit, how to stack them two different ways, and what it all weighs — so you don’t blow past the trailer’s legal weight limit either. Plug in your load, get your size. Two minutes, no sales call required.
And if you get a number that surprises you, or you’re staging overflow behind a food truck and want a second opinion, call us. That part’s free. We’d rather talk you into the right size than the big one.
Power: what you actually need at your booth
Here’s the part nobody thinks about until the compressor won’t start: a refrigerated trailer needs the right power, and “there’s an outlet right there” is not the same thing as the right power.
What the unit needs is a standard 110V outlet — but on a dedicated, non-GFCI, 20-amp circuit. Say that to an event electrician and they’ll know exactly what you mean. Each of those three words is doing work:
Dedicated means its own breaker — not shared with your lights, your warmers, a tent blower, or the booth next to you. Electricians work to the 80% rule: on a 20-amp breaker you don’t pull more than 16 amps continuously. Our unit draws in the neighborhood of 16 to 17 amps when the compressor’s working — which lands right at the edge of what a 20-amp circuit is rated to carry all day. That’s exactly why it needs that circuit to itself. Share it with a food warmer or a lighting rig and you’ll trip the breaker mid-service — usually at the worst possible moment. And it’s one circuit per trailer — two units means two dedicated circuits, not one shared between them.
Non-GFCI is the one that catches people. GFCI outlets — the kind with the little reset button, common anywhere electricity meets water — read a compressor’s startup surge as a ground fault and cut the power. Your trailer goes warm and you don’t find out until the food’s already climbing. At a festival, a lot of the tie-in points event organizers hand you are GFCI-protected. Ask before you plug in.
20-amp is the size. Undersized and you’re back to tripped breakers.
If you don’t know what your booth’s power drop actually is, that’s a call to make before the event, not a thing to discover during it. If you rent from us, call us with what you’ve got and we’ll tell you straight whether it’ll run the trailer.
Cords
Every rental comes with a 50-foot, heavy-gauge (10-gauge), 110V extension cord — that covers most booth setups. Need more reach, we can add a second cord, but keep the total under about 75 feet. Use heavy-duty 12-to-10-gauge cord only. The thin orange cords from the hardware store cause voltage drop, which makes the compressor work harder and shortens its life. Keep it short when you can.
Generators — when the venue has no real power
Plenty of festival sites have no usable power at the booth. That’s what generators are for, and we’d rather you rent one from us than guess, because we know exactly what ours put out. Generator rentals start around $50/day (varies by dealer). If you’re sourcing your own, you need:
- At least 4,000 watts running capacity
- An output the compressor can start on — GFCI-protected outlets are the usual culprit when a unit won’t run off a generator, so check before you buy or rent, and call us with the model if you’re not sure
- Enough fuel for the full run of your event
Undersized or unstable power will damage the compressor — which becomes your problem, not just an inconvenience. When in doubt, call before delivery.
What happens overnight
Here’s the one nobody asks until it’s too late: plenty of events cut booth power at the end of the night. If your city requires mechanical refrigeration overnight — and in LA County it does — that requirement is worthless on a circuit somebody switched off at eleven.
So ask the organizer, in writing, whether your drop stays live overnight. If the answer is no, or nobody knows, then overnight is a generator with enough fuel to run unattended until morning.
And lock the trailer. They lock.
What happens if the power drops mid-event
We’re not going to leave you with a trailer full of warm food. If the power goes out:
- Keep the door shut. Every time it opens, cold air leaves.
- Check the breaker — nine times out of ten it’s just a tripped circuit.
- On a generator, check the fuel.
- Call us. We have dealers in your market and we can respond fast.
Why You Rent a Freezer (and How the Return Actually Works)
Here’s something most vendors don’t think about. The freezer isn’t just for the event. It’s what lets you order enough not to run out.
Running out is the real risk. Under-order and you’re finished — you can’t fix it at two in the afternoon. So you order a buffer. But without cold storage, that buffer is money you’re going to eat.
With a freezer, you don’t have to. Here’s the part most vendors miss: the “return” isn’t the trailer going back — it’s the unused frozen product going back to your food distributor for credit. Sysco, US Foods, PFG — they’ll generally take back unopened frozen product. So the cold storage doesn’t just protect your food during the event; it protects the money you tied up in the buffer you didn’t end up needing.
One important thing before you count on any of this: talk to your own food vendor first. Confirm their credit policy AND their pickup timing with your rep before the event — don’t assume. Everything here is our personal experience over years of running catering and festivals; every distributor and every account is different, and this is not automatic and not universal.
What it takes. Miss any one of these and there’s no credit:
- The boxes have to be unopened.
- The boxes have to be undamaged.
- It has to be verified against an inventory. Your distributor needs a list of what’s coming back.
- It has to stay frozen. Continuously. Truck to pickup.
That last one is the whole thing. “It stayed frozen” is only worth money if you can demonstrate it. A dated temperature sheet on the unit is that demonstration — see the last section. Same piece of paper, two jobs.
Here’s how we run it at our own event. We don’t leave the food on the truck for pickup. We bring it back to our own kitchen frozen, inventory it, verify it, and hold it in our own refrigeration while we’re calling for pickup later that week.
Now, one thing I have to be straight about, because our situation is not your situation. We own our refrigeration. So when the pickup takes two or three weeks — and it does — it costs us nothing to sit on it. If you’re renting a freezer, you’re paying for every one of those days. The credit has to be worth more than the extra rental, or you’re just moving money around.
So negotiate your pickup window before you rent, not after the event. And understand that two or three weeks of latitude comes out of a relationship built over years. If this is your first season, don’t assume you’ll get it.
One more thing. Your rental period is not your event period. We’re on site four days before anybody eats anything, and we’re holding returnable product for days after the last guest goes home. Count both ends.
What 14,000 People Actually Takes
Every year we produce the largest annual private event in Southern California. Roughly 14,000 people. Multiple days. Food across a very large piece of ground — full entertainment, themes, activities, surprises around every corner, families everywhere. Here’s what that takes on the cold side.
We’re on site four days before the event. Day one is laying out the location with flagging maps and confirming the plan we drew a month earlier. Whenever you come to a property of this scale, the county or the venue managers always throw a few surprises at you, and something always has to be adjusted. That’s just part of being an event company. You adjust.
The refrigeration runs hub and spoke. Sysco delivers in a full 18-wheeler — there’s no way our own trailers could handle all that food — and they drop it and leave it on site for three days. That’s the warehouse. Then we run units as base stations around the property, with at least one small unit adjacent to every food area for holding. If we’re doing a whole area of desserts and frozen novelties, there’s a freezer in that location. We resupply off the big trailer with runners and vehicles, and the whole thing runs on walkie-talkies.
One year Sysco delivered over 20,000 cases. I looked at my chef and said: not only do you have to worry about how to handle the food, you have to worry about how to handle the cardboard. We have extra bins just for that.
House power out there isn’t reliable. We tried it. So it’s always generators.
Now here’s the year worth telling you about. We knew the park was planning some reconstruction. What we didn’t know was that they’d start it one week before our event. We showed up and there was chain-link fencing around a third of the property we normally use, with heavy equipment parked in the middle of our area. The construction department had never told the Park Department. Nobody knew.
That was hard. That was really hard. My event staff and kitchen crew had to redesign the event the day before. And we did it — because we’ve been at that park enough years that we know it like the back of our hands. Where the flat areas are. Where the access is. Where the traffic flows.
Was everything placed exactly where we wanted it? No. It was off. But it was off in ways the client never saw. That’s a festival, not a catered lunch — people are walking around all day, food spread over a very large area, a lot of moving parts.
Here’s the lesson, and it’s the reason I’m telling you any of this: the plan is never the plan. I don’t know what will go wrong at your event. Neither do you. What I know is that if you don’t plan for the worst, it happens — and when you plan for every contingency, it never happens. What gets you are the unknown unknowns.
Which is exactly why our refrigeration is on wheels. If our cold storage had been a building, we’d have been finished that day. It’s on wheels, so we re-parked it and re-routed around the fence.
One more thing, because people always ask. A friend came out to look at the event one year and kept asking, do you rent this? do you rent that? I told him it’s easier for me to tell you the things that I rent than the things that I own. I own the tables. I own the kitchen equipment. Every canopy, every sign. Those are mine. But I didn’t start that way. I built it up over years, one piece at a time. I’ve never run this business highly leveraged. I bought my own equipment as I could.
That’s what renting is for, if you’re standing where I was standing when I started. You don’t have to make the investment to get the benefit of it.
If You’re the Organizer, Not the Vendor
Most of this page is written to the person in the booth. If you’re the one putting the event on, three things change.
The permits may be yours. In Austin, the event organizer — not each vendor — obtains every booth’s food permit. Other markets on this page put it on the vendor. Find out which one you are before you assume, because your vendors will assume you handled it.
The power math is per unit, and it adds up fast. Every trailer needs its own dedicated, non-GFCI, 20-amp circuit. Ten booths with ten trailers is ten dedicated circuits — not one big feed with ten outlets hung off it. On generator power it’s sized the same way, per unit. That’s a conversation with your electrician while you’re still drawing the site, not at load-in after the distro is run.
One large unit backing a whole vendor row is a real option. It’s how we run our own event: base stations around the property with small holding units out at the food areas. If you go that way, ask your health department whether shared cold storage needs to be listed on the application. We won’t tell you what they’ll say — departments differ, and it’s a two-minute question.
And call early. Fair season is when every trailer in a market is already committed, and the earlier you call, the more of your plan you get to keep.
The Thing That Actually Gets People
Last thing, and it’s free advice whether you ever rent from us or not.
What catches vendors usually isn’t the refrigeration. It’s the paperwork and the thermometer. Some people show up without their food handling certification. Some don’t have a thermometer at hand and get in big trouble for it. The inspector asks, and there you are.
Have your paperwork. Have a thermometer. Have it on you — not in a box somewhere in the back. Get one that reads in a few seconds and holds its accuracy down in the cold, because that’s the only kind worth having when an inspector asks you to prove your temperatures.
And write it down. On a one-day event nobody’s going to care. On day three, the question isn’t what the thermometer reads right now — it’s how you know it held overnight, and “it looked fine” is not an answer. A sheet taped inside the door with the time, the temperature and somebody’s initials, twice a day, takes four seconds and answers it completely.
One more piece of paperwork people forget: a lot of festivals want a certificate of insurance from every vendor, and some venues want rented equipment listed on it. Ask your organizer what they need before event week, not during it.
The cold storage is the part we can take off your plate. Get that right and the rest is just remembering to bring your paperwork.
Questions People Ask Us
Who gets the booth permit — me or the event organizer?
Depends on the market. In Austin the organizer pulls every booth’s permit; in Dallas and San Antonio it’s on you. Find your city above — and if you’re a vendor, confirm your organizer actually did it.
Can I just use ice chests?
Depends where you are, which is why this page exists. Dallas doesn’t allow ice chests for cold-holding at all and requires a mechanical unit in every booth. LA County allows ice through the operating day but requires mechanical refrigeration overnight. Most other markets here don’t ban them outright — but 41°F at all times is still the standard you’re held to, and a cooler of ice is a hard way to hold that for three days in August.
What temperature does cold food have to hold?
41°F or below in every market on this page. California allows up to 45°F for a limited window with conditions, and food held in that band gets discarded at the end of the operating day. Hold everything at 41°F and you’re compliant everywhere on this list.
What power does the trailer need?
A standard 110-volt outlet, on a dedicated, non-GFCI, 20-amp circuit — not shared with your lights, your warmers, or the booth next door. Say exactly that to an event electrician and they’ll know what you mean.
Will it run on a generator?
Yes, with the right one. At least 4,000 watts running capacity, and an output the compressor can actually start on — GFCI-protected outlets are the usual reason a unit won’t run off a generator. Call us with the model if you’re not sure, or rent one from us and skip the guessing.
Does it have to stay powered overnight?
Yes. And in some markets, LA County among them, overnight mechanical refrigeration is the rule rather than a preference. Confirm with your organizer that the circuit stays live after the gates close, because plenty of events shut booth power down at night.
Do I need a refrigerator or a freezer?
Anything that has to stay frozen — ice cream, novelties, cased frozen product you’re planning to send back for credit — needs a freezer. Everything else is a 41°F cold-holding question. Plenty of operations need one of each; at our own event the dessert and frozen-novelty area gets its own freezer while the rest runs off refrigerated base stations. Then the calculator handles size.
What if my city isn’t on this list?
The rules still exist and you can find them fast — see “If Your City Isn’t On This List” above. Short version: your county or city health department regulates you, get the booth-versus-mobile category right, and ask two questions — whether ice counts as cold-holding at a multi-day event, and what happens to cold food overnight.
Ready to size your unit?
About the Author
Larry Klein — Founder & CEO, Keep It Cold°. Larry has spent more than thirty years producing live events, from the theme-park era at Lion Country Safari and the Irvine Meadows Amphitheater to the large-scale corporate events he still runs today as Team Play Events, feeding crowds of up to 14,000 people. He designed Keep It Cold’s first refrigerated trailers himself in SketchUp, after years of not being able to find cold storage that worked on an event site. The company launched in 2020, refrigerated Moderna vaccine for the Corpus Christi vaccine super-site the following year, and since May 2022 has built its own trailers and its own refrigeration units in Corpus Christi, Texas. Keep It Cold rents refrigerator and freezer trailers across 13 metros in six states. The longer version of that story is on our About page.
