

Startup Food Fight: Truck vs. The City - robbiea
http://technori.com/2012/10/2433-food-fight-trucks-vs-the-city/

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mturmon
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...](http://blogdowntown.com/2011/01/6013-food-trucks-near-fidm-serve-
up-controversy)

* 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

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

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digisign
Never heard of the judicial branch?

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jusben1369
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.

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a2tech
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.

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sk5t
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.

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potatolicious
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.

