
A Taco Truck on Every Corner, or Not? - badrequest
https://a2civic.tech/blog/2018/09/30/a-taco-truck-on-every-corner-or-not.html
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cascom
I feel like a municipality should have to create these maps when proposing
legislation, and maintain them on an [annual?] basis

There are so many areas of our lives where its becoming de facto impossible to
comply with all the laws/regulations without devoting an unreasonable amount
of time/resources towards compliance

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Consultant32452
This didn't even cover things like how county and city sales tax can change if
you move to the other side of a street. Also doesn't account for the fact that
each different level of government (state, county, city) may have different
licenses, so you might have a license to sell on one side of the street, but
not the other, regardless of zoning.

I've been considering potential targets for "radical deregulation." An
experiment in getting rid of all licensing and certifications and just "see
what happens." The risk here is too many taco trucks, and some minor fear of
food poisoning. Personally, I'd be willing to accept that in exchange for
massive increase in consumer choice and greater opportunity for small
businesses to get out from under corporate overlords.

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TangoTrotFox
You can find "radical deregulation" in this exact field throughout the
developing world, and it's one of the things that keeps drawing me back. It's
wonderful. You can find all sorts of of people selling all sorts of delicious
stuff at rock bottom prices and when you buy it it's not only made by the same
people who own the stand, but also of course directly supporting these people
so it even feels better just spending money at these places.

In my experience food regulation does very little for food safety. When
somebody opens a stall to sell food, they generally know how to cook very
well. And a single incidence of bad food is enough to put somebody out of
business. These places all develop regulars, and when they lose a regular - it
hurts. Sell unclean food, and your regulars are gone. And people also talk,
meaning you may lose customers that didn't even come that day.

All in all in something like a decade of travel in developing nations, I got
food poisoning once. Ironically it was from a western targeted fast food
chain! I've never gotten sick from eating at 'street food' vendors literally
thousands of times, excepting the early months when you first move to a place
that's mostly just your body adjusting to all the new microbial stuff that's
present even in clean food.

And in many ways, I think the direct ownership provides far greater safeguards
than a mountain of rules and regulations. Because in the end those rules and
regulations mean absolutely nothing when some detached worker decides not to
wash their hands after coming back from the toilet. That and the fact that
they are generally going to locally source their ingredients, whereas
McCorporate Burger is going to see where they can find the cheapest substance
that can legally be classified as meat that passes taste tests, and then
import it by the ton.

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multjoy
"Bad food" isn't the issue. Lethal food poisoning is the issue - a single
instance of contamination can kill a number of people and make a larger number
very unwell.

This idea that small businesses are somehow exemplars of food hygiene is
nonsense.

Some of the oldest laws made relate to food safety.

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TangoTrotFox
The FDA did not exist until the early 20th century and laws relating
specifically to food were scant before then. They've been quick to pile them
on like crazy since then, but they don't actually have much of an effect when
you look at comparative rates. According to the CDC [1], in the US each year
48 million people get sick from bad food, and 3,000 die. Worldwide rates
according to the WHO [2] are 600 million ill, and 420k deaths. The US has
4.37% of the world's populations, so our normal expected value would be 26.3
million ill and 18,381 deaths.

So in terms of getting sick from food, we actually score substantially worse
than the entire rest of the world. Our death rates are 6x lower than expected
which sounds very good, but I think that's unlikely to be attributable to the
FDA. Our relatively large rate of foodborn illness is more of an annoyance
than anything. But an annoyance for us us is something that kills people in
rural areas with less knowledge and less access to resources. In particular
the way people die from food poisoning is not some crazy hyper virulent strain
of some hyper dangerous ailment or whatever. It's just plain old diarrhea from
bad food -- something that's practically unheard of in the developed world. A
couple of bottles of gatorade, lots of water, and some pepto turns diarrhea
into a mild annoyance for at most a few days for those in developed areas. But
for those without access to resources or the knowledge of how dangerous plain
old dehydration actually can be, it can kill quite quickly.

And in any case this is primarily going to be people cooking their own food at
home and making themselves sick. I'd strongly recommending traveling to the
developing world. I certainly never would have taken anything I've said at
face value before. But living life in a different way makes you appreciate
both the things we do right, and the things we do wrong. And having a million
regulations on food for the sake of safety that doesn't even really
materialize is something I think we are doing _very_ wrong.

[1] -
[https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/index.html)

[2] - [http://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/food-
safe...](http://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/food-safety)

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oxymoran
The food truck laws in Michigan in general are pretty annoying. You need to
have a commissary kitchen where all the food is actually made in order to be
in compliance. Which defeats one of the main points of having a food truck to
begin with(not having to rent or own an expensive building)

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awad
New York (City) as well, IIRC. Street-side cooking is more akin to heating up
already prepared food. San Francisco, too. While it seemingly defeats the
purpose, the flip side of the argument is that it is easier to ensure base
levels of hygiene.

The article itself, btw, is a pretty nifty use of PostGIS viz.

Edit: Originally had all of California included but it was pointed out that my
knowledge was limited to San Francisco as LA does not have the same
requirements.

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WillPostForFood
In Los Angeles, food trucks must be parked at a commissary, but it isn’t
required that food prep be done there.

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awad
Ah, I might have been too over-reaching. I know it's certainly true in San
Francisco.

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baddox
I’m not so certain. I know of prominently-positioned pizza trucks in SF that
are clearly cooking their pizzas there. I doubt they are doing that illegally.

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awad
"All mobile food vendors must operate in conjunction with a food facility,
also known as a commissary, such as a licensed commercial kitchen. Thus, you
will need to rent a commercial space for preparing food, and storing your
inventory."

[https://businessportal.sfgov.org/start/starter-kits/food-
tru...](https://businessportal.sfgov.org/start/starter-kits/food-truck)

Another commenter mentioned that there may be various classifications of food
such that a Pizza truck may be able to get around it due to the nature of the
ingredients but I'm unfamiliar as to where those lines are drawn

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pochamago
What's the motivation behind ordinances like this? I've never spoken to anyone
who likes them, so I'm not really sure why cities are so aggressive about it.
I assume there must be a large segment of the population who are really
bothered by food trucks for some reason, but I genuinely struggle to imagine
why

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mikeyouse
Some people don't like other congregating in front of their stores and not
buying anything but the most vocal opponent are restaurants. They feel like by
paying substantial money for a restaurant lease, they shouldn't be subject to
competition that can operate with far lower costs / standards. Think about if
you owned a nice Mexican restaurant and then a taco truck parked outside
during your rush hour. They have almost none of the fixed costs that you do
and could undercut you pretty easily.

I'm not convinced it's worth regulating their hours/locations, but I do
sympathize a bit with the brutal economics of restaurants.

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lozaning
>they shouldn't be subject to competition that can operate with far lower
costs / standards.

Of course they should. There is no assurances or guarantees that any business
venture is going to be successful.

If you're running a mexican restaurant that goes out of business because of a
taco truck, the answer isn't to outlaw taco trucks, it's to make your own
restaurant better.

If you can't change your restaurant and you go out of business isn't it your
fault for not adapting to customer tastes and preferences, not the taco trucks
fault because it was able to satiate customer needs?

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abdullahkhalids
With your line of reasoning, I guess a rich person thinking of opening a
restaurant could follow following strategy.

1\. Get a few food trucks and park them in front of all potential competitor
restaurants. Sell subsidized food.

2\. Wait till these restaurants close because they can't compete with the
subsidy.

3\. Start their own restaurant selling really bad food at expensive prices.

4\. Profit.

This is the same kind of strategy that tech giants often follow to push
startups out of business. Obviously, my example strategy is extreme (and
possibly illegal), but food trucks can easily drive good restaurants out of
business resulting in a worse culinary scene in the city. The purpose of the
regulation being discussed here is to eliminate such bad forms of competition
that result in worse outcomes in the long term.

~~~
lozaning
This situation is in no way unique to food trucks though. I could buy the
property next to your restaurant and make it into an exact clone of your place
and give away all my food for free until you're out of business.

And yet I don't see anyone out there arguing in favor of laws banning copycat
restaurants.

If I can run a food truck and sell food at a lower cost to people who have to
stand outside while they eat, and they prefer that over the experience you
provide in your restaurant, the customer is not wrong. Good restaurants, by
definition do not go out of business.

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jniedrauer
> I could buy the property next to your restaurant

This requires a substantial investment. It is in no way comparable.

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dragonwriter
> This requires a substantial investment.

If there is an established profitable business case, financing will be widely
and easily available.

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Glyptodon
I don't really get why they wouldn't want food trucks to be near residential
parks and such. I'm also curious if this would effectively ban residential
area ice cream trucks.

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frankharv
I work at a large employer with 150 employees and no real cafeteria. So there
a food truck makes sense. They only do 1 hour at our gate. Quick money. Plus
fastfood is a 10 minute drive so a captive audience. They just need to be
reliable. Otherwise I pack a lunch. So other use cases are weird to me. I can
see festivals. But the food trailer out front Lowes. Who eats there? I rarely
see customers waiting...

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daveFNbuck
The food truck in front of Lowes is probably there for day laborers.

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mmcniece
Really good article, great idea for a blog too "A site dedicated to exploring
Ann Arbor civic engagement through technology."

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zrail
a2civictech you've been shadow banned for whatever reason.

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minikites
I clicked "vouch" on their comments so I think they should be visible now? I'm
not 100% sure how that system works.

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tim44
I love taco trucks, and I'm a pretty picky eater. My probably weekly order is
about: 6 tacos asada, no salsa, 4 jalepenos, radishes and extra limes. Maybe a
plate of rice. Proceed to cover the taco in deadly amounts of salt and lime.
What I can't ever seem to do is find a "street taco" in a mexican restaurant
that's near as good tasting.

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monksy
Great article! How did you manage to visualize those maps?

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cbcoutinho
These look like maps rendered/exported from GIS software such as ArcGIS.

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RosanaAnaDana
Those are the default color schemes for QGIS.

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mlindleyjr
As an A2 resident I want to thank you for this post. Awesome stuff!

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normaldotcom
Started reading the article... and realized that it was about my favorite BBQ
spot in my own hometown! Hope that they can find a way to continue operation.

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HillaryBriss
if this had been about LA instead of Ann Arbor, the title might as easily have
started with "A French Fry truck," "A Banh Mi truck," "A Po Boy truck," "A
Poke Truck" or "A Gyro Truck"

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HillaryBriss
ok. wow. why the downvotes? what did people think this comment was trying to
say?

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djsumdog
HN isn't Reddit. Jokes that don't add something to the intellectual
discussions are typically downvoted. Also asking/commenting on voting is
discouraged by the rules.

