

Inside D.C.'s Food-Truck Wars - michael_dorfman
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/39815/inside-dc-food-truck-wars/full/

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tptacek
Food trucks are one of the breaking trends in urban food scenes. Austin is
apparently famous for them, but every major metro area has a bunch of them
now. For the uninitiated, these are high-end restaurant operations, in
"sandwich shop" configurations, hosted in trucks. They aren't hot dog carts;
we're talking about foie gras and duck confit flatbreads here.

There's an obvious legitimate concern here, and it may help if you switch the
role of the underdog and the establishment to understand it. If guerilla chefs
can set up trucks, so can Starbucks[1]. How would we feel about Starbucks
launching a fleet of cafe trucks and parking them right near independent
coffee houses?

It's these kinds of tensions between the local optima that the market seeks
and the long-term welfare of communities that makes me _not_ a libertarian.
The food trucks are awesome. I want more of them. But I don't want every
neighborhood restaurant in the South Loop replaced by Potbelly's, Jimmy Johns,
and Dunkin' Donuts, which is exactly what will happen if food trucks make the
margins on brick-and-mortar restaurants untenable for independent operators.

Chicago apparently has a provision that allows food trucks only within a
certain distance of a brick-and-mortar restaurant. It's a clumsy start. It
looks like there's no black-and-white answer... which is why we have a city
council, I guess; that, and to prevent us from eating foie gras.[2]

[1] When I left Ann Arbor, Zingermans[3] ran a cafe truck out of a strip mall
parking lot, and it was spectacularly awesome; I can't wait for the dawn of
the cafe trucks in Chicago.

[2] Our city council famously banned foie gras, because force-feeding ducks is
an outrage, unlike battery farming Purdue chickens.

[3] Which is awesome[1], go there, worth a detour to A2.

~~~
oldgregg
Completely disagree. You just assume that corporations are going to be rolling
out truck fleets without providing any evidence of the fact. The current
reality seems to indicate right the opposite of what you seem to fear. It's
independent restaurants that are starting food trucks and it's CORPORATE
interests that are colluding with local government to stop the threat --
precisely because they know they CAN'T compete with the decentralized system
of street vendors.

I've spent a lot of time in China, India and Brazil -- everywhere you go there
are street vendors -- all run by small business owners. When McDonald's and
KFC go overseas they are usually considered a luxury item.

The problem is that corporate food has _nothing_ to do with food. In the
gilded age the entire industry has been based on selling "experiences" --
that's how you maximize revenue. But when the economy contracts people
suddenly care about the FOOD again -- suddenly people are unwilling to pay an
extra $2 for "Starbucks experience." My guess is that this is a long term
trend.

Here is one thing you CAN be sure of. When a corporation says "jump" the
politicians say "how high" -- and right now corporate food wants MORE
regulation in order to protect their revenue stream.

~~~
hugh3
_Completely disagree. You just assume that corporations are going to be
rolling out truck fleets without providing any evidence of the fact._

The point is not that we know that they will. The point is that once a
profitable niche exists it will eventually be filled. Whether some existing
restaurant chain starts putting a truck on every corner, or whether one of the
current truck entrepreneurs grows to be so big that _he_ can afford to put a
truck on every corner, if food trucks aren't regulated they _will_ eventually
be annoyingly prevalent.

 _It's independent restaurants that are starting food trucks and it's
CORPORATE interests that are colluding with local government to stop the
threat -- precisely because they know they CAN'T compete with the
decentralized system of street vendors._

No, they're objecting because they have a huge investment in the current way
of doing things. It doesn't mean they can't switch to a new way of doing
things if they have to.

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va_coder
This actual could lead to some interesting technical solutions.

There are Twitter feeds that help customers find the food trucks, but there's
still room for improvement in getting that information to the right people at
the right time, easily.

As long as people know where they are, the food trucks can park out of the way
and still get a lot of customers.

If anybody writes an android/iphone app that helps me find trucks with quality
food, that are sitting on a side road, I'll use it ;)

~~~
hugh3
Indeed, if you're in an area where food trucks are common, an app providing a
real-time look at where all the food trucks are would be a great thing to
write. You could also provide reviews, or perhaps charge the food truck
operators for promoting their business.

I'm sure somebody is already doing this.

~~~
johnwatson11218
I think that is just the start. Imagine an app that lets groups of office
workers put together a large complex order that is already paid for when the
trunk leaves the overnight lot. It could start to blur the distinction between
food truck and the office catering outfits I have seen.

You could go so far as to allow the menu to be customized the night before.
Maybe the truck operators could move on a great deal on beef because they have
all the orders paid for in advance.

Another idea for an app would be a real time inventory that could run against
a fleet of trucks so that new inventory could be dispatched to try and catch
more of the unexpected lunch rushes.

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allertonm
Vancouver has been experimenting with allowing a greater variety of food carts
recently. The previous regulations allowed nothing more exotic than a hotdog
cart, which led to innovations like Japadog.

In the first instance they've picked 17 sites with the explicit purpose of
avoiding the kind of conflict described in the article - so they tend to be in
front of office buildings etc. The process of handing out licenses for these
sites by lottery initially produced some odd results but this seems to be
sorting itself out in the wash - and we're starting to see some success
stories.

It'll be interesting to see how the scheme can be expanded while still
avoiding conflict - I think we may have a case of Portland-envy and won't stop
until we can say Vancouver's scene is as vibrant as Portland's.

The whole area of BIAs and how well they represent the interests of local
businesses is somewhat interesting to me right now, as it appears that BIAs
are a primary force in opposing any kind of change in the city especially
those that affect parking and car usage. Like, for example, better bike lanes.

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AaronM
The way i see it, is that this is just capitalism. If you sell a overpriced
poor product, and someone comes in and sells a better product, your going to
lose. Of course people don't like to lose, so they try to get government to
prevent the new comers from getting a foothold on their market.

~~~
tptacek
It's not just capitalism. The streets are community property. Starbucks can't
exploit that to set up coffee trucks selling below-cost lattes to siphon
customers from Intelligentsia and then call it "capitalism"; Intelligentsia
paid for a very expensive retail space, and Starbucks would be free-riding off
our tax dollars to punish them for it.

~~~
yummyfajitas
How is a food truck free-riding any more than a person parking a car is?
Unlike a car parker, the food truck owner is also paying licensing fees to the
city.

If you believe people underpay for parking, I agree with you. Everyone who
parks a car is free-riding, and food-trucks are free-riding to the exact same
extent as a guy who commutes to work. But if that's the problem, why not just
charge market rates for parking?

~~~
marcinw
I live in NYC, and I see food trucks everywhere. Someone parking their car
versus a food truck doesn't even compare. Like Thomas, I enjoy food trucks,
but I wouldn't want them being able to just park anywhere. Food trucks attract
many people, and thus result in more litter, noise, beggers etc; that's
something I just don't want at my doorstep everyday.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I'm not opposed to regulating food trucks for crowd control reasons. Nor would
I object to charging them license fees proportional to their impact (e.g.,
cost of additional litter cleanup) - in fact, I'd strongly support that.

But that's not tptacek's objection - his objection is that many people will
prefer Starbucks Truck to Intelligentsia, which might cause Intelligentsia to
go out of business. This would deprive him of the coffee he desires, and he is
willing to deprive everyone else of the coffee they desire to protect his
preferred coffee.

~~~
tptacek
Honestly, I don't care; I go to Starbucks 40% of the time and Intelligentsia
60% of the time (Intelligentsia is on the first floor of my business). The
reason I brought up Starbucks was to take the "underdog vs. establishment"
subtext out of the discussion, because it isn't relevant, but was essentially
the theme of the article we're commenting on.

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jswinghammer
A few of my coworkers are obsessed with the Clover Food Truck in downtown
Boston. It's a very nice place to get food cheaply. One guy goes there pretty
much every day at least once and for awhile twice.

I think it's a great development to let people who have limited capital get
started. It's a nice way to test the market for what you're serving too. I
have a few friends who are considering trying to get a food truck business
going.

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edge17
This sounds like DC. I remember when they used to have vendors all over the
national mall. Then the turf battles started, and a few homicides later it
became illegal to set up a table to sell souvenirs. I think even the street
performers need to have permits if they intend to play a trumpet or something
on the street in DC.

