For Pita’s Sake, Leave the Food Trucks Alone
Annual industry revenue is nearing $1 billion, with at least 4,000 outposts. Regulators are lining up.
What’s for lunch? There’s no easy answer in the Courthouse neighborhood of Arlington, Va., and that’s a good thing. The blocks surrounding the metro are a hot spot for food trucks, with up to seven different vendors setting up shop on weekdays. The lineup changes daily, offering customers an array of inexpensive and innovative food—there’s a Mongolian-Russian-American fusion truck, for instance.
Yet some of the local restaurants want to start a food fight. Last month representatives from roughly a dozen eateries met to discuss their opposition to the food trucks. They’re cooking up a list of policy demands to present to local officials in the coming months, proposals that are likely to include restrictions on when and where the truck operators can ply their trade.
It remains to be seen whether this campaign will succeed, but there is reason to worry. Across the country, politicians and bureaucrats have put speed bumps—and even walls—in the way of food trucks, and the restrictions go far beyond the understandable health and safety rules.
People order food from the BBQ Bus food truck during lunch at Farragut Square in Washington, DC.PHOTO: SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The regulatory system in Arlington is relatively sensible. Food-truck operators must abide by a four-page document that limits where they park and for how long—two hours, max. It also lists the licenses the trucks must acquire and how often they must renew them. The health license requires an annual inspection. Checking all the regulatory boxes can be time-consuming and expensive, but it is still simple enough that food trucks have established havens in several areas around town.
Lunch seekers in other cities—New York, for instance—aren’t so lucky. A 2013 report in the New York Times Magazine found “numerous (and sometimes conflicting) regulations required by the departments of Health, Sanitation, Transportation, and Consumer Affairs.” Some overtly discriminate against food trucks. For example: Each food-truck employee must obtain a Health Department certification—a lengthy process—even though traditional restaurants need only one licensed employee.
Spotty enforcement is another problem. Trucks in some neighborhoods such as Midtown South are frequently ticketed while others rarely have run-ins with the law. The report’s author ultimately concluded “it is nearly impossible (even if you fill out the right paperwork) to operate a truck without breaking some law.” Tellingly, one of the city’s food-truck operators found it easier to open a bricks-and-mortar restaurant.
Philadelphia’s vendors must carefully read a 20-page list of prohibited streets, including the entirety of customer-rich Center City. Other locales prohibit trucks from operating within a certain distance of traditional restaurants. Las Vegas once had a 1,320-foot restriction but has since lowered it to a still-high 150 feet.
Chicago’s ban is slightly worse, at 200 feet. But food trucks there must also install GPS trackers so regulators can monitor them for infractions—the definition of bureaucratic micromanagement. That’s still better than Palm Springs, Calif., where food trucks are banned outright.
The list goes on. Yet customers want more access to food trucks, not less. Even in the face of regulatory hurdles, food trucks have averaged close to 10% revenue growth a year for the past half-decade, according to the market research firm IBISWorld. Annual food-truck revenue is now closing in on a billion dollars, with at least 4,000 operating nationwide.
Much of this growth happened after the Great Recession, which created an untold number of would-be restaurateurs who couldn’t put down the capital it takes to open a restaurant. Ché Ruddell-Tabisola, a food-truck owner in Washington, D.C., told me that he and his partner wanted to open a butcher shop in 2011 but couldn’t get a half-million dollar loan. Instead, they borrowed $98,000 to start BBQ Bus. Four years later, they operate both the truck and a kitchen at a local brewery.
Mr. Ruddell-Tabisola told me that some two dozen food trucks in the D.C. area have taken that route, opening traditional restaurants after finding sidewalk success. Ditto for food trucks elsewhere—Korilla BBQ in New York City, for one. And while some bricks-and-mortar owners fear that food trucks are eating into their bottom lines, the restaurant industry is still expected to surpass $700 billion in revenues this year, up from $683 billion last year and $585 billion in 2010.
In other words, the restaurant industry is thriving—and food trucks boost the foot traffic that helps everybody. The more vibrant and diverse the lunch scene in Arlington becomes, the more likely my co-workers and I are to step outside to grab a bite. Or take Farragut Square in Washington, D.C. This food-truck hot spot is now the go-to destination for lunchtime downtown. As a result, four new bricks-and-mortar restaurants have opened in the past few years.
Such is the beauty of healthy competition. Whether in Arlington or anywhere else, it makes little sense for local politicians to drive food trucks out of town.
