country time lemonade creates "legal-aide" for kids

[Shodan]

@sachertorte

I absolutely agree with such regulations.
Restaurants are notoriously difficult businesses, and the success of a restaurant is rare. How would you feel if you signed a lease and went though all the expense to open a restaurant and then a month later a food truck plopped down in front of your storefront? Or worse, since food trucks are mobile, a fleet of unregulated food trucks descends upon you to drive you out of business?

If I were a restaurant owner, I would feel terrible. If I owned a food truck, I would feel good. If I were a customer, I could pick which business I wanted to patronize so I would feel better than I did if I didn’t have the choice.

Doesn’t that seem unfair?

No.

Food trucks have their own built-in advantages that make them dangerous to restaurants, and terms like “competition” lose meaning when one has to pay rent and the other doesn’t. I feel that part of allowing food trucks to exist in a city at all, is recognizing that a true “even playing field” would be to require all food establishments to be restaurants. Instead, there is a regulatory compromise that allows food trucks to exist. In a sense, food trucks are already cutting regulatory corners by not being restaurants.

Businesses having advantages and disadvantages, and letting customers pick what they prefer, is the definition of “competition”.

Outlawing food service establishments other than restaurants isn’t an “even playing field” - it is a monopoly.

Regards,
Shodan

[Malthus]

@CarnalK

There’s some city planning aspects to it as well. If you want a nice vibrant neighborhood with a couple of restaurants, having a bunch of food trucks come in and siphon off their lunch money could end up closing the restaurants and now there’s nothing there for the evening crowd.

Interestingly, the Competition Bureau addressed this exact point - and disputed it (with evidence).

Are mobile food services “unfair competition” to bricks‑and‑mortar restaurants?

Critics of mobile food services, including restaurant associations and owners (e.g., Ontario Restaurant, Motel and Hotel Association, Association des restaurateurs du Québec), have argued that mobile food services represent “unfair competition” to restaurants that pay high operating costs (e.g., high rent and start‑up costs). They argue that strict regulations should be in place to avoid direct competition between restaurants and mobile food services. On the other hand, supporters of mobile food services recommend avoiding regulations that unduly limit competition in this industry (e.g., Montreal Economic Institute, The Toronto food truck debate: More competition or legislated cartel?).

Generally speaking, the Bureau does not view competition from low cost business models as unfair or something that regulators should seek to discourage (see info box beside). Regardless, the Bureau found no clear evidence that shows detrimental impacts of mobile food services on restaurants. Rather than being “unfair competition”, mobile food services and restaurants largely reflect two different business models with different levels of investments and services.

In response to “unfair competition” concerns, cities have often enacted stringent operating requirements on food trucks, such as proximity requirements and limits on the number of food trucks in a given area as evidenced above in Table 1.

While mobile food services may compete with certain restaurants at the margin, the two categories are different in many ways. Unlike food trucks, restaurants tend to have a dependable location shielded from weather, seating, personalized services, alcoholic beverages, and other conveniences (music, bathrooms, etc.). Higher‑end restaurants offer many more experiences that cannot be replicated by mobile food providers.

In fact, some evidence suggests that mobile food services may be stimulating demand in the food service market by attracting new customers that would not have purchased food at all were it not for the food trucks. Indeed, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and as reported by The Economist, counties in the U.S. that experienced higher growth in mobile food services have also had quicker growth in their restaurant and catering businesses.

Promoting Fair Competition in the Restaurant and Mobile Food Industry

[CelticKnot]

@mhendo

…But this case shows precisely what’s wrong with some regulatory barriers: they are often mobilized in the name of naked economic protectionism rather than out of any real public need. The same thing happens with food trucks in cities all over the country. The biggest interest group behind draconian food truck regulations are brick-and-mortar restaurants who hate competition. I understand that it can hurt when someone else comes in and grabs some of your customers, but I’m not sure that the government should be in the business of playing favorites in the war over lunch.

There are similar issues in other trades. The example that comes to mind and has the most press is braiding hair. 1500 hours and $15,000 to get a license in many places. :eek:

[sitchensis]

@Little_Nemo

Okay, let’s do that.

A simple google search for “lemonade stand fined” revealed that there apparently have been four incidents of children’s lemonade stands being “fined” in America in the last twenty years. One in 2018, one in 2015, one in 2010, and one in 1998. (The actual fine was being told they needed to have a business permit.)

I’m not seeing a national crisis here. To me, this is pretty close to a made-up issue.

I believe that in the most recent story the Mom basically said that they just happened to decides to have a lemonade stand across the street in the park on Memorial Day weekend. Never mentioning the fact that there was an art show going on in the park with paid vendors. I guess it was just all a big coincidence.

[sitchensis]

@Shodan

Outlawing food service establishments other than restaurants isn’t an “even playing field” - it is a monopoly.

Are restaurants in your city required to provide restrooms to their customers? How about their employees?

[Malthus]

@sitchensis

Are restaurants in your city required to provide restrooms to their customers? How about their employees?

Again, this (implied) issue is addressed in the above-noted Competition Bureau report.

Restaurants simply have a different mix of services and amenities to food trucks; they by and large tend to serve different markets as a result - it is not, in fact, the case that food trucks merely ‘cannibalize’ the pool of brick and mortar restaurant customers.

Yes, restaurants are required to have washrooms for customers and food trucks, by their nature, cannot. No, this does not mean that the existence of food trucks is somehow “unfair” to brick and mortar restaurants, because the latter have expenses the former do not (any more than, say, the fact that such restaurants have to pay for the land they sit on). That makes as much sense as the food trucks complaining that they have to pay for gasoline and roadworthiness, and so the brick places are “unfair”.

They are simply different. They have different mixes of expenses, and to a great extent different customer bases as well.

[CarnalK]

@Malthus

Interestingly, the Competition Bureau addressed this exact point - and disputed it (with evidence).

http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/eng/04260.html#sec06

Nothing that you quoted actually addressed my point, actually. If an all day restaurant needs lunch business to support its existence and temporary lunch trucks steal that business, the neighborhood ends up with no evening restaurant.

[sachertorte]

I don’t know. I think asking someone who wants to compete with a restaurant to open a restaurant is hardly unfair.
To say that the expenses faced by a food truck are merely ‘different’ belies the fact that food truck expenses are lower, and the mobility of food trucks gives them predatory powers if not kept in check.
Sure, food trucks serve a purpose and can be good, but they need to be regulated. It seems crazy to me to allow food trucks to operate wherever they damn please.

[StraightTalk]

If I had kids, I just would not allow them to have a lemonade stand. I would be afraid of someone coming back and suing claiming that the lemonade made them sick.

A food truck regulation that would make sense would be around proximity to brick and mortar restaurants and the number of them in that proximity. The restaurant should have to suffer their entrance being crammed with food trucks.

Something like no food trucks within half a block of a restaurant. And no more than X food trucks within a square mile of a restaurant. I don’t know what X might be though.

[silenus]

Then you run into problems like a construction site across the street from a restaurant that opens at 5pm. Are food trucks made to keep away from the site and all that business when the restaurant isn’t even open? Regulations need to be very flexible and minimally intrusive.

As noted above, I think brick and mortar places and food trucks generally have different customer bases. Each can bring business to the other.

[sachertorte]

@silenus

Regulations need to be very flexible and minimally intrusive.

Sure. I think everyone can agree with that. Kind of like how all laws should be just and fair.
But the regulations have to exist, and what one thinks is intrusive, another will think is necessary.

[silenus]

Which is why we have local elections, and barring that avenue - knives and bats.

[Malthus]

@CarnalK

Nothing that you quoted actually addressed my point, actually. If an all day restaurant needs lunch business to support its existence and temporary lunch trucks steal that business, the neighborhood ends up with no evening restaurant.

I beg to differ.

Your point is that the food trucks are taking away customers the restaurants need to exist.

This is refuted by the Competition Bureau, who points out that the two types of establishments tend to have different customer bases. In fact, far from taking away customers, food trucks may add customers.

Food trucks tend to have different customer bases:

While mobile food services may compete with certain restaurants at the margin, the two categories are different in many ways. Unlike food trucks, restaurants tend to have a dependable location shielded from weather, seating, personalized services, alcoholic beverages, and other conveniences (music, bathrooms, etc.). Higher‑end restaurants offer many more experiences that cannot be replicated by mobile food providers.

Food trucks tend to add customers, not take them away:

In fact, some evidence suggests that mobile food services may be stimulating demand in the food service market by attracting new customers that would not have purchased food at all were it not for the food trucks. Indeed, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and as reported by The Economist, counties in the U.S. that experienced higher growth in mobile food services have also had quicker growth in their restaurant and catering businesses.

Your position amounts to insisting that your scenario is accurate - that lunchtime food trucks “must” be cannibalizing restaurant customers – despite evidence that, in general, this isn’t true. It’s a form of begging the question.

[sachertorte]

I’m not all that interested in doing a deep dive into the dynamics of food truck and restaurants. I will say though that correlation does not establish cause and effect. The existence of growing demand could very well benefit both restaurants and encourage food truck investment.

[Chronos]

How did we get onto the topic of food trucks, anyway? Is Country Time paying their legal fees, too?