Food Trucks
I don’t agree with all of Yglesias’ analysis here on cities regulating food trucks out of business, but the overall point is fairly sound. In the comment section for my post on Cleveland the other day, I suggested that cities trying to revitalize themselves need to spend more time creating the infrastructure that would allow people to create exciting urban life organically rather than try to find the next gigantic project that will save the city. In Cleveland’s case, this is the baseball stadium and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, both of which have their charms but have not revolutionized Cleveland’s downtown as promised. Rather, the happening places in Cleveland are away from downtown, in Ohio City and Tremont, where people are creating very fun neighborhoods without significant municipal assistance.
Food trucks are an excellent example of how a city can create this infrastructure. The food truck phenomenon is overrated in terms of the quality of food and the experience of standing around eating, but it does have real benefits. Food trucks are cheap, fast, often good, and create eating experiences for people on the go. This can be workers catching a quick lunch or people leaving the clubs at 2 a.m. Restaurants are not nor should be the only eating out experience we can have. In Portland and Austin, where the food carts have taken off, they have become central to the urban landscape, reinforcing what makes those cities some of the nation’s most vibrant urban spaces in the early 21st century. But as Yglesias points out, the restaurant industry is outraged and has lobbied city councils to eliminate the threat. That is suboptimal.
At the same time, I do have some sympathy for the restauranteurs. That’s often a low-profit business with a high chance of failing. Yglesias notes that “Space is scarce and rents are high in the centers of major American cities. If new competition can bring prices down, we’ll all be better off in the long run.” Well, lower prices mean lower wages for workers. It’s not as if most waiters are getting rich. I like a cheap piece of pizza or a taco as much as anyone, but workers’ wages and overall employment numbers are worth studying in the food truck-restaurant debate.
I’m in Los Angeles where we invented the food truck. Its very hard for me to even grasp the idea that restaurants should be protected from competition. So what that some restaurants might fail. Any private business might fail. We simply shouldn’t protect businesses from competition.
The food trucks here offer an incredible diveristy of food at an incredible diversity of prices. And the health inspections are much more rigorous for food trucks than for restaurants (and, as a matter of practicality, most food trucks are stored at facilities which vigorously clean the trucks every night as part of the storage service).
Many restaurants here have figured a way to compete – they get their own trucks and have both a fixed location and a mobile location.
There’s a few complications:
1. The trucks don’t provide the same services as fixed locations. There’s no bathrooms, no sanitation (care for garbage, etc.) They don’t provide parking. Fixed restaurants provide a lot of hidden services to the city that food trucks don’t, and food trucks cause a lot of problems that fixed locations don’t. You might not care about that, but then you might also like paying higher taxes for public restrooms, more sanitation workers, more public transportation, and stuff like that. Unfortunately, that makes you part of the Ygeslias coalition for victory – there’s like 12 of you.
2. The “health inspection” thing is a huge old fiasco. The trucks are usually stored at huge barns that are shifted out of county as soon as the inspections get too rigorous, which then makes it virtually impossible to regulate. It CAN happen, and right now it largely does, but that’s changed in the past and will in the future.
3. And those huge old barns? That’s where the profits are. Most of the food trucks are basically money generating machines for grifters who own fleets of these trucks at huge facilities. Not really the bootstrap-lifting business you think it is.
4. If you’re actually IN Los Angeles, you should know better than anyone that the “diversity” of the food trucks is a huge old myth. They’re actually less diverse than plain old fixed location restaurants. You’re probably just a (relatively) rich white person and so you are in rich white person locations where you see the relatively few gourmet food trucks. The vast majority (by, like LOTS) sell candy, sandwiches, and mexican food. It’s not bad, but in LA you can get that on literally every half-mile, so what’s this diversity you’re talking about? I mean, I can see 3 Subways, a Campos, a Champonile, and two other taco stands from my bedroom right here.
So what’s your deal? Did a restaurant owner kick you mom or something?
I don’t know where you live in LA but I live on the east side where there are lots of great taco trucks plus a good amount of gourmet trucks. I work downtown where there are a couple dozen gourmet trucks at events like Art Night. There are gourmet trucks that offer food that can’t be found at restaurants or can’t be found without driving for a half hour. And the best tacos in LA are at some of the trucks. I don’t have anything against restaurants. I also don’t have anything against letting people choose.
Quite obviously, the trucks don’t offer tables, bathrooms and valet parking. Most of them, however, are located in spots where there is ample parking or where parking isnt needed to attract a crowd.On the sanitation issue, you don’t know what you’re talking about. the health department inspections of trucks are much more frequent than inspections of restaurants. And if the profits were only in the barns, why the hell would there be so many trucks on the street? If they weren’t making money, they wouldn’t be out there since the barns don’t sponsor the trucks
As far as being white,, as if that has anything to do with anything, I’m white (russian jew, scots-irish and american indian) but married to a Mexican woman. I think I got the credentials to evaluate food in SoCal
Richard. Next time you’re near LaBrea/Olympic. Phenomenal!
When I was sixteen, we moved to one block from La Brea and Olympic and my brother and I still own the house there which I rent to my son. I’ll check out this place on Saturday. Sounds great. Thanks for the tip
Just told my son about it. He said he goes there all the time and says its phenomenal. And open to 3am or so. I’m definitely there this weekend
Restaurants are a different thing from food trucks, and they shouldn’t need to compete head to head. But the restaurant owner has a big investment in the lease fixtures and furniture of the place, and he can’t pick up and move across town if it turns out that business is bad. Done well, however, and the trucks can help the restaurants and build a buzz about a restaurant row, etc.
More food trucks might also help keep down the asking rents for restaurant spaces.
Food trucks are an investment too. A new one customized to fit the requirements of the food being sold costs about $80,000.
And if you are concerned with worker’s wages, which is a legitimate concern, the solution isn’t to prevent competition from food trucks, its to raise the minimum wage laws for the workers in the food industry.
Fair points. But it’s relative investment. Only a couple of guys (maybe the owners) are on the food truck. A restaurant staff can easily be a dozen or more.
Most food service wages suck, especially for waitstaff. That’s irrespective of the workplace. And yes, I know some people make great money in restaurants.
Food service is a very tough business to succeed in. For all the expense of setting up a restaurant, it’s one of the cheaper business types to open. And it attracts many people to try, with withering failure rates in the first year of operation.
I like food trucks, and have worked to make them essential parts of urban revitalization plans. But they are one part of a good neighborhood, and like most things, they need to be handled well and in balance with all the other things a healthy community needs.
“But they are one part of a good neighborhood, and like most things, they need to be handled well and in balance with all the other things a healthy community needs.”
But if a certain establishment cannot remain open because it isn’t doing enough business to remain viable, isn’t that pretty much the definition of something a community doesn’t need?
Most of the food trucks are owned by corporations that rent them out. That’s why they’re the starter point for the food industry.
And raising the minimum wage wouldn’t help because the trucks are rented to “owners” who work as independent contractors for the real owner of the truck. (The trucks, btw, are all independent corporations.)
Also, $80,000 is an average figure. The “Food Truck” industry covers everything from top of the line gourmet splendamobiles to gutter-dwelling pre-made sandwich dispensers. If there’s 100,000 food trucks in your city, guess what most of them are?
Richard, do you actually know ANYTHING about this industry?
I do, and most of what you have said on the topic is garbage.
It could not be more obvious that the Anonymous commenter is a restaurant owner who wants to get rid of the trucks.
Whoever you are, You’re an idiot and hardly worth my time to respond to your rants but there was an interview on one of the local NPR stations a few days ago with the two brothers who are the major manufacturers of food trucks in L A. They said that the price of a new food truck in LA is about 80 grand ( not the average price). Before an owner takes possession, the health department has to inspect and approve the truck. Granted this is a top of the line truck but Erik’s post was about these trucks, not the lunch wagons of yore. Yglesias article was about the attempts by cities to shut down the gourmet trucks ( where all the truck growth is)
. No one is forcing you to eat at the trucks. If you don’t like them, go to a restaurant .
Yes and no. High end restaurants, franchises, and chain restaurants aren’t really competing with food trucks. However, the myriad of low and medium level sit down restaurants like diners or the local Mexican place are. Food trucks offer more interesting variety of food, faster, and at the same or lower prices.
I too wonder about how much direct competition it really is between food trucks and sit-down restaurants. When I’m pondering a food truck run, usually the alternatives I’m considering are: fast food, local places that have cheap/quick takeout and/or delivery, late-night options and other food trucks. Within those parameters, the percentage of brick/mortar restaurants that are potentially missing out on my $ due to the food truck option, would be pretty small.
I think Yglesias is a lot more right about this than your conclusion is: shutting down new business ideas just because they’re bad for incumbents is obviously a bad idea and represents nothing but crony capitalism. I’m fairly certain the fortunes of employed wait staff probably won’t be impacted at all here, but even if they are made worse at the margins, that seems like, at most, a noble but functionally untenable concern. After all, shutting down food trucks is obviously bad for the people who work in them, but even beyond that how far will you take it? A moratorium on any new restaurants opening up and competing with the established proprietors? (This is effectively what we have here, unless you’re a rich guy with the right friends, of course, and it doesn’t even work as protectionism: people just drive further to avoid the crappy local establishments owned by the commissioners) Heck, would you ban eating out altogether to keep restaurants from competing with grocery stores?
Obviously I’m being a little bit facetious, but in general you just can’t make any sort of broad progress by pitting the interests of some workers against the interests of others (and don’t forget the consumers in this equation either, who are most likely workers themselves). And trying to do it by enriching the most powerful people in the equation (incumbent business owners) is rather bizarre.
I have to agree here. Erik’s comment about waiter’s wages is just silly and distracting. If a few restaurant owners enjoy some monopoly protection, it’s going to be the owners making the money. If the workers benefit at all (which given the reduced competition for their labor they might suffer instead), it’s going to be quite minimal compared to the extra cost to customers, many of whom will come from the same demographic or are simply workers somewhere else.
Brien, you are way overstating my argument
Well, fair enough. I am perhaps a bit touchy due to the fact that we just had a proposal to build an evil chain restaurant (Outback) killed by the county government. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the head commissioner owns the only steakhouse within a 30 minute drive from the main population center.
Also, upon further reading, when Yglesias said “prices” I think he meant rent, specifically. Which would change the calculus quite a bit.
Would that be THIS Outback? Then I’d say your county government did your county a favor.
I don’t get it.
If lower prices are caused by reduced overheads – rent, capital, etc – it doesn’t necessarily result in lower wages.
It will force restaurants to lower wages to compete
But isn’t that an argument against all new restaurants? More new restaurants means more competition, and so on.
Probably not. First, wages for restaurants could hardly BE lower — waitstaff work for nominal wages as it is and cooks not much more than minimum wage. You might as well say the same thing about having many restaurants next to one another, like they have in, say, most major cities everywhere in the world.
Also, it could make restaurants figure out how to better differentiate themselves as an experience. Food trucks offer some great (to awful) food, but they almost always have an awful ambiance and rarely offer even a place to sit. Eating good food awkwardly is only slightly rewarding. Restaurants can offer booze, seating, lighting and service. That, to many people, is worth it.
Also, while I now live in LA, I used to live in New York where they’ve had food carts since, approximately, the beginning of time with next to no actual downward affect on restaurant wages or restaurant viability, at least any more than having another brick and mortar restaurant next door offers.
How could they get lower? When I was in the US and heard someone working as a waiter mentioned getting $8/hr and being pretty chuffed with that my jaw dropped. How in the name of little green apples does one even live on that?
Tips.
$2.15 + tips in New Mexico. $8 (or 10? I forget) for waiters in California is WAY above the national average and pretty f’ing good.
Its $8 an hour in California (and a little over $10 an hour in San Francisco) plus tips which must be distributed to the workers unless the “tip” is a mandatory service charge. For companies that charge a mandatory service charge, primarily catered events, its pretty standard to pay about $14 an hour to servers (since they don’t receive tips).
There are any number of ways restaurants could cut costs, and I would imagine restaurant wages have already approached a floor (probably pretty far below it, at this point) to offer and expect to have a competent staff.
It is especially important to consider that the wait staff is precisely where restaurants would find their competitive advantage over the trucks.
It is just as likely that forcing customers into a particular less efficient business allows restaurants to be less concerned with the quality of their staff. Allowing food trucks could have the effect of pushing up wages as restaurants are forced to focus on quality of food preparation and service.
It seems fairly obvious to me that banning food trucks would serve to protect the restaurants most likely to have servers who don’t make a good living. The restaurants where workers are more likely to make a good living probably don’t have to worry about much competition from food trucks.
This is not necessarily correct and anyways opposing any value creating development because it might drive down someone’s wages is foolish. That just arbitrarily limits economic growth.
The only way it could *force* them to cut wages (or reduce staff) would be if they were losing so much revenue they couldn’t afford to pay them any more. In which case, we come back to the “what are ya gonna do?” point.
“In Cleveland’s case, this is the baseball stadium and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, both of which have their charms but have not revolutionized Cleveland’s downtown as promised.”
These sorts of projects will not revitalise a surrounding area unless they are *primarily* serviced through public transport so that instead of surrounding them with square miles of parking lots you can actually bring the dependant entertainment sector (i.e., pubs, cafes and restaurants) in close enough for convenient pre-game and post-game walking access.
I live in Chicago and there are massive regulatory barriers to starting a brick and mortar restaurant. To clear those hurdles and survive and then suddenly have a new mobile competitor introduced with a much lower barrier to entry seems unfair.
I’m for lowering barriers to entry through reduced permitting and licensing for almost all fields but it has to be done somewhat uniformly or you are just picking favorites.
OT: If spending money is considered free speech by the Supreme Court are we far away from a ruling that says making money is free speech? It logically follows that regulations on commerce are regulations on speech if you take one more step beyond Citizens United.
“I live in Chicago and there are massive regulatory barriers to starting a brick and mortar restaurant. To clear those hurdles and survive and then suddenly have a new mobile competitor introduced with a much lower barrier to entry seems unfair.”
But that’s an argument for lowering the barrier to entry for opening brick and mortar establishments, not for using local regulatory authority to shield incumbent businesses from competition.
Exactly. If the barriers are onerous, get rid of them. Don’t make all businesses subject to them
In Portland we have food cart pods, not really trucks. Even the trucks are semi permanent. In one location on north Mississippi ave, a food cart pod of about 10 is associated with Prost, a German restaurant bar. They let you have food from the carts in the restaurant.
This enables everyone in my family to choose from 10 “restaurants and I get sweet German eer.
that was sent from iphone, should be sweet german beer.
We all love sweet German beer. In NYC, there has been something of a miniresurgence in German restaurants in the past few years. Which is good because I like German cuisine.
There is no charm to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That institution is a joke. Yeah, they put in some no-brainers like Van Halen and Metallica. But they have left out so many worthy Rock and Roll musicians and put in so many musicians that are not even close to being in the Rock genre that they have no credibility.
Steve Miller isn’t real great or anything, but I give him a lot of props for turning his nose up at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“restauranteurs”
Am I crazy or isn’t the word “restaurateurs”?
Crazy.
No, it is. It’s pretentious, meaningless outside the original eighteenth-century sense of the term, and arcane. But correct.
I say we kick up the pretension a notch and coin the term “restaurauteur.”
Or, for the evil ones, restaurantichrist.
Does the US have Singapore/Malaysia style hawker markets? Parked food trucks all round the sides, and basic seating in the middle?
I was just in New Orleans and there is a great little restaurant/wine and cheese shop that was forced to stop serving food and having live music when its neighbors (a tattoo parlor) figured out that the restaurant had been violating some trivial zoning regulations.
To get around this, they have parked a food truck in the restaurant driveway and serve food directly out of it and then “allow” you to come sit at one of their tables.
Not sure what he point of this story is, other than that it seems that food trucks do face significantly less barriers than restaurants.
If you want to experience food truck cuisine, you gotta come to Philly. Don’t believe the crap about “Pats and Genos”, the real, real, cheesesteaks come from the trucks.
They’re not just a convenience, they’re a way of life.
What does it say about me that I think cheesesteaks are gross, although with the gigantic caveat that I’ve never been to Philadelphia?
They’re more disgusting/better in Philadelphia.