Phoenix Journal · Extraction
A trailer or gazebo is still a commercial kitchen in the eyes of the law, carrying almost every gas, fire and food safety duty a fixed restaurant does. Here is the compliance sequence for mobile and street-food operators, in the order it matters.
Mobile & street-food compliance
A trailer, a converted horsebox or a gazebo with two burners is still a commercial kitchen in the eyes of the law - and it carries almost every duty a fixed restaurant does.
The romance of street food is the low barrier to entry: a griddle, a good idea and a pitch. The reality behind the hatch is a stack of obligations that do not shrink just because your kitchen has wheels. You are handling LPG a few feet from the public, running hot extraction in a confined space, and cooking on equipment that spends its life being towed, jolted and rained on. Regulators know this, and mobile units are inspected against the same food safety and gas law as any bricks-and-mortar operation.
The good news is that the requirements are knowable and largely one-off or annual. Get them in order once, keep the paperwork current, and compliance stops being a threat to your trading and becomes a quiet asset - the thing that gets you onto the better markets, past the event organiser’s checklist and through an environmental health visit without a cold sweat. Here is the sequence to work through, in the order it actually matters.
Tackle these in order. Each one is a gate the market organisers, your insurer or the local authority can and will check.
It is tempting to read that list and think it is scaled for a full restaurant plant room. The opposite is true. A street-food unit concentrates the hazards a large kitchen spreads out. The gas cylinders, the extraction, the fryer at frying temperatures around 180°C, the operator and often a queue of the public are all within a couple of metres of each other, behind a single serving hatch. There is rarely a second exit, and the whole thing is built into a shell that was never a kitchen to begin with. That density is exactly why inspectors and insurers take mobile compliance seriously rather than waving it through as a lesser version of the real thing.
The vibration of towing works against you, too. Joints loosen, hoses chafe, brackets shift and access panels rattle out of true in ways a static kitchen never sees, which is why the annual gas check and your own pre-service walk-round genuinely earn their keep. The same movement, plus the sheer intensity of cooking output relative to a small canopy, means grease loads up quickly - so the interval between extraction cleans on a busy trailer can be shorter than a light-use restaurant, not longer. Where a fixed system might carry a proportional interlock and CO₂ monitoring designed to a formal specification, your job is to prove the equivalent outcome for a unit the formal standards deliberately leave to the mobile codes: gas that cannot run without ventilation, air that actually moves, and grease that does not build to a dangerous level.
Compliance also unlocks trade. The better markets, festivals and private events now ask for your gas certificate, public liability cover, food hygiene registration and, increasingly, extraction cleaning evidence before they confirm a pitch. Membership bodies such as NCASS exist partly to help caterers assemble exactly this pack. Treat the documents as a portfolio you keep current rather than a scramble you do the night before, and you spend less time chasing paperwork and more time cooking.
Everything above comes down to a short list of live documents and safe habits. Keep these three numbers in your head, keep the certificates behind them in date, and the rest of mobile compliance tends to fall into place around them.
None of this is a reason to stay off the pitch - it is what keeps you on it. A tidy compliance pack protects your customers, satisfies the organisers who book you and gives your insurer no reason to argue if the worst happens. The single item caterers most often let slip is the extraction, because a small canopy hides its grease well until it does not.
Questions
Yes. If you cook on LPG in a mobile catering unit you need a current mobile catering gas safety certificate, commonly the CP44, renewed every year by a Gas Safe registered engineer who holds the right mobile catering qualifications. Fixed-kitchen standards such as BS 6173 exclude mobile and temporary units, so the work is carried out to the mobile guidance under Liquid Gas UK Code of Practice 24 instead - but the annual certificate is not optional.
Clean to the recognised grease standard, TR19 Grease, at a frequency that matches how hard and how greasy you cook rather than a fixed calendar date. A compact canopy over a busy griddle or fryer loads with grease quickly, so intervals on a hard-working trailer can be shorter than a light-use restaurant, not longer. Keep the cleaning certificate and before-and-after photos, because markets, event organisers and insurers increasingly ask to see them.
Where you run a deep-fat fryer you need a fire extinguisher with a Class F rating of at least 75F, plus a fire blanket within easy reach of the hob. Extinguishers should be serviced annually and labelled in line with BS 5306. Everyone working the unit should know where the equipment is and how to use it before an incident, not during one.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
The right kit only helps if the system stays clean. Phoenix degreases canopies, filters and ductwork to TR19 Grease - UK-wide, overnight.