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Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Question(s)

What is it about food trucks that distinguishes them as a "new and burgeoning industry" requiring a change to existing mobile vending laws? That's not a rhetorical question. I honestly don't know what's happened that brings forth the claim that regulations are "out of date."

It's fine with me if your answer is as simple as it's a change in popular fashion.  Because beside that I don't notice any fundamental advance in technology or business plan.  We're still just selling prepared food out of a truck, right?

Not saying there's anything wrong with it but when they start talking about changing laws because of "innovations" that aren't all that obvious, I start to wonder what else might be going on.

Update: Here's part two of this question.  Would any proposed change to mobile vendor regulations seem different to you if the beneficiaries would be corporate rather than Mom & Pop operators?

Chains like Taco Bell, Applebee's and Sizzler have each rolled out their own food trucks, the report says. Some of them hand out small samples for free, others sell their fare. Like their independent predecessors, many of the corporate food trucks tap Twitter and Facebook to generate buzz for the vehicles and decide where and when to hit the road.

Corporate food trucks are still rare. Only 6 percent of quick-service restaurants and 4 percent of fast-casual restaurants operate food trucks, according to a recent National Restaurant Association survey.

But big brands are increasingly finding food trucks to be effective marketing tools and "rolling test kitchens” for experimentation with new items, one Sizzler business development manager told AdWeek.
And here's part three of this question. What if such regulatory changes paved the way for Sizzler or Taco Bell to become the official city-sanctioned mobile vendor at every Second-Line parade

Upperdate: Is Stacy Head this dumb?

And Head believes the food trucks would be an asset in areas of the city where residents do not have a lot of places to eat, areas she calls "food deserts."

"What a wonderful place for two or three mobile food vendors to go, so that people can come out and walk around their neighborhood and enjoy an evening out.  More eyes on the street, more people walking around their neighborhood in the evening leads to a safer place," said Head.

First of all, a "food desert" is typically defined as an urban area deficient in access to fresh healthy groceries. There are "food deserts" with plenty of cheap unhealthy fast food around. That is, in fact, part of the problem.  In any case the trucks aren't asking to go to these places and serve healthy meals. They're asking to sell luxury food items at local hot spots. Stacy Head either knows this and is grasping for a distracting feel-good selling point, or is even dumber than we thought she was.

3 comments:

Owen Courrèges said...

Jeff,


Question #1: Why are the laws out of date?


They're not really out of date; they're just overly restrictive and designed to protect brick-and-mortar restaurant operations to the detriment of consumers. New Orleans has a long, dark history of protecting favored business interests. Just look at Lucky Dog, our "officially sanctioned weiner cartel."


Question #2: What if the beneficiaries are national chains?


I actually believe that non-chain food truck operators will always dominate, at least in New Orleans. Although New Orleans has nationwide chain restaurants, the market here tends more towards either individual restaurants or small chains. I mean, we'd have to have actual Taco Bells around before we'd need to start worrying about Taco Bell food trucks (and Sizzler doesn't operate in the South except in Florida).


In any event, if the big boys do want to move in and they provide a product that the market desires more, I'm not averse to national chains having food trucks. It's just not something on my radar as a major threat to local start-ups.


Question #3: Should Stacy Head be talking about "food deserts?"


Well, Head might have been talking colloquially and didn't realize that "food desert" was a specific term in this context. However, I would observe that if we loosened food truck regulations, we'd probably start seeing them in more places than local hot spots with a greater variety of foods. Local hot spots are just the low-hanging fruit, but if competition increases you'll see more than than just a food truck outside the Rusty Nail.


In short, I think it's legitimate to argue that looser food truck regulations could provide more and better food options in certain locations where the market won't support brick-and-mortar restaurants.

Megan Braden-Perry said...

I agree with you on that food desert thing. As much as I love the 7th Ward Hot Sausage Man outside of The Showcase (who doesn't seem to be affected or at all fazed by the food truck drama), his presence doesn't help the fact that I'm shit outta luck if I'm looking for decent produce in my neighborhood.


A Dollar General Market is going up on N. Miro near St. Bernard, where Save-a-Lot was immediately pre-Katrina and where Winn-Dixie was in the early '90s. Looks like a not-so-fancy Walmart (OMG I really said that), but I'll be happy to be able to walk to get produce.


The produce (onions, hot peppers, single bananas) in the corner stores in my neighborhood is always dusty or covered in slime. It makes me angry because I know these stores are getting grants to sell fresh food. But there's always a wide variety of rot gut to soothe me, so there's that.

Charles said...

A change in popular fashion is exactly what it is, i.e. there's suddenly a lot of them and the city only permits 100 at any given time. Also, there is kind of a change in business plan. The newer ones don't generally work out of traditional food-truck locations, factory parking lots. They go to commercial street corners, which, actually, if you consider the shift from manufacturing to service is sort of the same thing in spirit. (Ignoring the fact that often with these newer ones, people follow their Twitter accounts and drive to get to them, and they're also going after shoppers and late-night drunks rather than primarily serving lunch to people working, but anyway). They can't do that under current city code because they're not allowed to be within 600 feet of a restaurant, school or a bunch of other very prevalent things I can't remember right now.