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Comment by joonix | Hacker News Reader

And yet the filthy vendor carts (not trucks) are everywhere you look, spewing their putrid clouds of smoke over passing pedestrians, without any requirement to display sanitation inspections (I'm not sure they are even subject to inspections).

If you want a food truck you should go out to a city with friendlier regulations and where you would provide more novelty by being a more unique thing. Then again I'm not a big fan of these new wave food trucks anyways, they are always supremely overpriced. If I'm eating out of a truck, it's because I want to pay less than sitting at a restaurant.

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> "If I'm eating out of a truck, it's because I want to pay less than sitting at a restaurant."

Disagree heavily. If I'm eating out of a truck it's a demonstration of the complete failure of local brick and mortar businesses.

What, do people really think I like standing in line baking in the hot summer sun for 20 minutes so I can have a decent lunch?

Around where I work, if you subtract the food trucks you have crappy delis and greasy steam table places. I gladly pay brick and mortar prices (and more!) for good quality food, and the food trucks are the only ones willing to deliver the product.

There's nothing about "comes from a truck" that makes food inherently worth less. The food I get from food trucks is almost always far better than equivalently-priced choices from brick and mortar shops in the area.

The beauty of it is that when I worked in SF the flood of food trucks seemed to get restaurants in the area to up their game. In this case the food trucks improved the landscape for consumers across the board, and injected much needed competition where there was none before.

>There's nothing about "comes from a truck" that makes food inherently worth less. The food I get from food trucks is almost always far better than equivalently-priced choices from brick and mortar shops in the area.

Of course there is. When you sit down at a B&M restaurant, you are renting space from them. You get a table to sit and eat for as long as you want. They provide you with non-plastic silverware and linens that they later have to wash. Air conditioning. Lighting. Waiters. Bus boys. The restaurant has to factor this into their prices, a food truck does not.

If I'm eating out of a truck, it's because I want to pay less than sitting at a restaurant.

Given that comment, my assumption would be that you haven't eaten at many food trucks in NYC. The food at some is downright delicious, while others it is crap. If I'm eating at a truck, it's because either (a) I need something super fast and the truck is closest/fastest, or (b) I like what the truck sells, or (c) I like the idea of portability and I don't want the only other portable options, or (d) the smell of the grill attracted me, or (e) etc... None of that equates to paying more/less than I should anywhere else.

Interesing. Emitting Grill smell is an externality that should be taxed.

It's not so much the grill smell as it is the grill smoke. A lot of kebab stands in NYC cover half the intersection in a thick haze. It's mouth-watering when you're hungry, and annoying when you're not.

Personally I don't care that the trucks emit smells, but if they're injecting so much smoke into the atmosphere that I can barely see, that's no longer cool.

Maybe you should have to pay to avoid grill smells?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem

"If I'm eating out of a truck, it's because I want to pay less than sitting at a restaurant." I'm eating out of a truck because I want the food they provide. If a food truck provides better food than a restaurant, I don't mind paying more.

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