Startup Food Fight: Truck vs. The City | Hacker News Reader

Startup Food Fight: Truck vs. The City

technori.com

28 pointsrobbiea10 comments

The food trucks have disrupted the sit-down restaurant business in some cities. I liked this brief post about trucks in downtown LA near the Fashion Institute (FIDM) because it gets in to several aspects of the disruption:

http://blogdowntown.com/2011/01/6013-food-trucks-near-fidm-s...

* The fight over parking spaces (food truck employees "reserving" street parking with their own cars, in advance of a later arrival of the food truck itself)

* Parking tickets as equivalent of rent

* Increases in options and quality

* Disruption of incumbent and lazy chains

I find it interesting that you can sue the legislature to strike down a law.

Never heard of the judicial branch?

That's kind of a really disappointing one sided view of the subject which I doubt is due to ignorance.

People get poisoned and sick from unregulated food outlets People want regulated food outlets People get government regulations Brick and mortar restaurants have to support those regulations = expense Brick and mortar restaurants have to pay local taxes as commercial establishments Food Trucks show up and have none of these expenses = lower prices = take marketshare!

Food Trucks are great. They're disrupting an existing process. So either give them roughly the same rules as the restaurants (regulations and taxes) or reduce those on the restaurants. Just don't advocate that these are all just rules that have nothing in mind except to target food trucks. That's insulting to folks intelligence.

Did you read the article? The health and welfare provisions of the law aren't being contested-just the part where its illegal for anyone other than an established restaurant or agent of an existing restaurant to operate a food truck. The rules requiring safe food handling and preparation are not the issue.

Agreed, parent post is battering a strawman, with no bearing on the article at all. On an unrelated note, I don't really get why people get so excited about food trucks. The food isn't any less expensive, nor of necessity any better, than that from a stationary location.

Food trucks aren't better than gourmet restaurants, but they are substantially better than the status quo in many areas.

In downtown San Francisco, where I used to work, food trucks are a huge hit because they are remarkably better than the bad delis, greasy spoons, and franchised soup-n-sandwich joints that litter the downtown core, all of which serve strictly mediocre and uninspired food.

People want good, gourmet food even while at work, but the market in many areas has failed to provide this. The extremely sizable real estate capital requirements (as well as the fact that your revenue is strictly limited to lunch-only) prevents a lot of competition from entering. Food trucks on the other hand neatly sidestep a lot of the real estate capital requirements, as well as open the businesses up for dinner-time revenue. Most trucks head off to more residential neighborhoods once they're done the lunch rush.

Food trucks also offer an opportunity to change things up often. Off The Grid in SF is a gathering of food trucks at fixed locations, with a rotating lineup (and some perennial faces), which helps lend variety without a bajillion more restaurants opening up.

I did read the article. Thank you for asking. Imagine a discussion like this:

"People want food trucks!" "Ok, let's allow existing restaurants to roll them out as we know they already have all the processes in place around support for hygienic food preparation and delivery. As for these new food trucks, we'll have to work out how to ensure they also follow these processes, how we'll license them and how we'll tax them so it's a fair playing field." It's not hard to reconcile that with the following opaque wording from the article:

"It doesn’t have anything to do with protecting the public’s health or safety – that’s covered in other provisions of Evanston’s food- truck ordinance." So is Evanston regulating food trucks to protect the public's health or are they not?

"So is Evanston regulating food trucks to protect the public's health or are they not?"

Yes, they are. They also arbitrarily prevent anyone other than brick-and-mortar restaurant owners from operating a food truck. That was the whole point of the article.

There was a recent article {can't find it right now} which talked about the lack of understanding of the meaning to Restaurant Gradings in New York City. A, B, C etc.

There are many rules which determine a restaurant's grade and having some technical issue could degrade a restaurant at the same time, while having an A grade doesn't mean that the person cooking your food won't pull a funny one.

So your point about "people want regulated food outlets" is kind of like the blind asking for a light.

Food consumption tends to be an individual opinion, especially in different cultures.

Your point about having everyone play by the same rules does make sense and that is what the article is trying to say in some ways.

*fixed formatting

Reply on news.ycombinator.com