Shelby County Health Department, Environmental Health Division (Alabama Department of Public Health, Northeastern District field office)

Food Service / Retail Food / Mobile Food Unit Health Permit

A restaurant, coffee shop or food truck operating in Shelby County, and a childcare center that prepares or serves food on-site, needs a permit from the Shelby County Health Department's Environmental Health Division. This office is a field office of the Alabama Department of Public Health's Northeastern District, not an independent county health department — Jefferson and Mobile Counties are the only two in Alabama with that independent status, per the Jefferson County Department of Health's own history page — so Shelby has no local rule-making or fee-setting power of its own over this permit; the requirement and its structure come entirely from the statewide ADPH framework under Ala. Admin. Code ch. 420-3-22 and the FDA Food Code. The specific dollar amount Shelby currently charges is not published on the county's own Environmental Services page, and none of the fee-schedule PDF/page URL patterns that work for several other ADPH-administered Alabama counties returned a working Shelby page during this research. Call the Shelby County Health Department, 205-685-4178, for the current fee before budgeting for this permit. This permit is separate from, and required in addition to, the general county privilege license recorded above, which the ALDOR Handbook itself states cannot be issued without a Health Department certificate first.