In some communities there are growing battles between established restaurants and food trucks. Some cities ban them altogether. Some set limits on where they can set up.
What do you all think?
Well to me a food truck and a brick and mortar are 2 different things. I go to a sit down restaurant for the experience. I stop by a food truck if I want something different or quick. Also food trucks can work events.
I can see the restaurants view though. Here they are paying rent, taxes, required to have bathrooms, etc… and then he has this guy sitting out front taking away his customers (well he thinks that).
A real estate developer rents space to restaurants. He doesnt make any rent off a truck sitting in the street.
As someone who greatly enjoys eating, competition of this sort means more options, tastier food, and cheaper menus, in general. I’m sure it’s difficult for many existing business owners, but that’s the (moderately regulated) free market. When utilizing reasonable regulations like safety, health, and labor rights requirements, I believe a free market solution works best for providing liesure and dining services to the public.
When I lived in the San Fernando Valley (Los Angeles), a street near my house was a Friday gathering spot for lunch trucks. Between 6 PM and Midnite, each side of the street would lined with lunch trucks.
I had some great food. It was where I had the Dee Snider burger at Grill 'Em All.
Burger, sriracha sauce, bacon, peanut butter and jelly.
AWESOME!
The pushback against lunch trucks doesn’t come from the public, but from restaurants. While I love the trucks, they do have a point. They poach a spot that the restaurant is paying rent and taxes on, the street congestion (and parking) hurts them and …well, we get lots of trash and people urinating in the street. Hand to God, it happens.
I do not think they should be banned, but I think there is a place for them. Special locations, and make them clean up the trash.
No problem with them. I’ve been to many food trucks that are anything but quick and often not cheap.
Most I’ve been to either set up outside bars and breweries on the owner’s consent, or in centralized areas with a bunch of other trucks. It’s doesn’t build good will to compete with a restaurant.
When you step back and think about it, aren’t we all running to try and make our society better? Aren’t we all trying to make life for American families better? While we all have our differences, we can agree that America is a great country, and I believe Americans are wise enough to put our petty differences aside and come together for the kind of solutions that will move our country forward.
Yes it does. We receive numerous complaints every day about trucks that are parked in locations on the street that make it difficult for drivers to make left and right turns. Motorists are forced to edge far out into the intersection because the trucks are blocking the view of oncoming cross traffic.
Many operators of these trucks think they are taking advantage of ordinances that allow novelty vendors (i.e. ice cream trucks) to stop and service customers. Those ordinances allow for brief pauses at legal parking locations, servicing of present customers, and then to move on. They do not allow for the vehicle to remain past 300 seconds with the engine or other mechanicals on. legally that is no longer a parked vehicle it is a stopped vehicle which is a different and more serious violation than a parking ticket.
These operators have also been parking near busy bus stops which causes pedestrian congestion as well as making it difficult for buses to pull back into traffic.
They also have been parking, for hours at a time, at locations not zoned for business, once again attempting to use the novelty truck ordinances which specifically do not allow for that.
When there were just a few of these things it wasn’t much of a big deal. But now that they have proliferated our community, yeah, some tightening up of regulations has to be done. Not bans, mind you.
Some of these operators have contracted into agreements with existing brick and mortar stores to park in the corner of their lots and it has worked out well.
I like them. I don’t really care what restaurants think. But the already mentioned issues with parking, traffic, are real and should be addressed. I’m not sure how places address them. DC I think has site permits?
I don’t have a problem with the idea of food trucks - I’ve gone to what I can best describe as "food truck festivals " where there are a variety of trucks in one location. There are I think two problems with food trucks. One is that they compete with restaurants . I live in NYC and there are lots of food carts, but they mostly don’t compete with restaurants - not too many restaurants serve hot dogs or hot pretzels or piraguas or “lamb over rice” ( yes, some do but the carts are ubiquitous and appear in neighborhoods where there are no such restaurants ) or …
Food trucks as far as I can tell are another story - wafels and steaks and Indian food and burgers and shepherd’s pie and… Those trucks are competing with restaurants in a way the carts don’t since the"Wafels and Dingus" truck might park near a diner that sells waffles or an ice cream place that uses fresh waffle cones. Second problem is they take up parking spaces- which the carts don’t. Which means in a lot of neighborhoods the complaints will not only be from restaurants, but other stores and residents. I’d be pretty annoyed if a food truck was taking up a couple of parking spaces on my street regularly.
I’m in Portland OR, which is food cart utopia, basically. Most of the trucks are located in designated “pods,” parking lots specifically set up for them and they pay rent and utilities and the like. The actual, mobile food truck is more unusual–those you mainly see around lunchtimes at big employers with a ton of employees and not a lot of restaurants around, like some of the factories on Swan Island. Those guys wheel up, line up, serve quick lunches and are gone in a couple hours and the shift workers love them because otherwise there’d be slim pickin’s for food on their half hour lunch break. Most of the more mobile food trucks tend to serve tacos, lotta great taco trucks in this town.
The cart pods are a different story and I have to say some of the most innovative food imaginable is being whipped up in itty bitty trucks all over this city. Without the high barrier to opening a brick and mortar sit down restaurant the cooks can innovate, try new menu items and perfect their craft on the fly and that means we the consumers get some absolutely outstanding food at good prices. I’m for 'em, if I didn’t have Poco India I’d be PISSED!
In the Milwaukee article the OP linked to it sounded like the concerns were more about congestion, parking, and traffic problems and not so much concerns about competition from local brick-n-mortar restaurants.
My workplace schedules a “food truck” day once a summer where half a dozen trucks are invited to set up in our parking lot and the company picks up the tab for our 1000 employees.
Our local amusement park also has certain events where food trucks set up inside the park for business which is great since the amusement park food is horrible.
It also seems like the goal of some of these food trucks is to get successful enough to eventually open a brick-n-mortar location. Rusty Taco and ChileLime started out as food trucks in our area.
here in la county they wouldn’t bother with banning them and they don’t really bother enforcing the rules they do have unless someone gets sick … there selling drugs or guns ect or they tie up traffic…
I went to a wwe wrestlemania in the early 90s at the la sports center where the nba team that’s not the lakers (edit:the clippers)played and they had sooo many food trucks and homeade pop up things …
like a pick up truck that had a grill bolted to the back and a freezer/fridge that ran on a generator and some Hispanic guy was making tacos and stuff pretty much home made style … I ordered a dozen “real” tacos for about 5 bucks and he threw on cheese he grated by hand in front of me for free
I joked about needing a license and the usual paperwork I said" I wont say anything if you don’t " he laughed and said if he had to pay all of that my tacos would be about 20 bucks ……
A. A motorized food wagon may locate in the public right-of-way subject to the following conditions:
1. A motorized food wagon shall not operate within 300 feet of any school grounds, park, playground, or City-operated recreation center.
2. A motorized food wagon shall not operate within 100 feet of any street intersection controlled by a traffic light or stop sign.
3. In addition to the above, a motorized food wagon must comply with the following regulations, depending upon the type of use in which it is located:
a. **Residential Use Area**.
i. In a residential use area, a motorized food wagon shall move not less than 400 feet at least every 30 minutes and may not return to a previous location or within 400 feet of a previous location on the same calendar day.
ii. Permitted hours of operation are from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
iii. A motorized food wagon may not be located within 400 feet of another motorized food wagon.
b. **Commercial Use Area**.
i. In a commercial use area, a motorized food wagon shall move not less than 400 feet at least every three (3) hours and may not return to a previous location or within 400 feet of a previous location on the same calendar day.
ii. Permitted hours of operation are from 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m.
iii. If a motorized food wagon is located in a commercial use area and is within 400 feet of a residence, it shall comply with the requirements listed above for residential use area.
c. **Industrial Use Area**.
i. In an industrial use area, a motorized food wagon may operate 23 hours a day.
ii. If a motorized food wagon is located in an industrial use area and is also within 400 feet of a residence, it shall comply with the requirements listed above for residential use area.
4. No motorized food wagons shall be located or maintained on public property, including bicycle pathways, inconsistent with any other City regulations.
B. A motorized food wagon may locate on private property subject to the conditions listed in Section 16.80.020(B)(4 ) of this code. (Prior code § 7-049.5)
I hadn’t been aware of the 100 foot setback from signals and stop signs thing. Since most blocks are 300 feet long, that would put most trucks midblock.
I thought about this thread when I was walking to the grocery store today and passed a strip mall with a food truck doing brisk business (and the mouthwatering aroma almost made me ditch the store.) All the stores in the strip mall were closed. If food trucks aren’t causing traffic issues and don’t park in restaurant parking lots (which I think they must have permission to do, as it’s private property, right?), then what’s the harm?
A few years ago on the Allegheny River we saw a pontoon boat converted into a Barbecue Boat, basically a floating food truck. They had a couple grills and a big sign. We always plan ahead and bring plenty of food, so we did not try the food boat that day. Never saw that boat again, although it may be that they found a busier pool (the Allegheny River we boat on is a series of locks and dams, forming consecutive pools).
On vacation in St Martin there is an Ice Cream Boat owned/operated by two women. They approach a beach and anchor. People wade out and buy frozen confections. I’ve wondered how they get by. Their boat has a huge outboard that must eat up gas. Few people buy ice cream from them, preferring to wade out and take pictures instead.
) But no more than that.
