Where do you all stand in the Food Truck debate!!Yea or Nay (Chicago: city hall, leases)

[Chicago76]

Originally Posted by chet everett

The densities of Manhattan or even the Bronx mean they can support street vendors. The combination of very high income and very small incomes, together with factors like TINY apartments, true 24x7 crisscrossing transit, and a tolerance for stinking sewers / leaking steam utilities all give NYC unique factors in the ability for normal resturants to survive alongside "food trucks".

What about Austin then? Great food trucks + great restaurants + chains. And they all coexist...in a much smaller and less dense city.

The best locally owned restaurants will always have a following, which means that if anyone is losing, it will be the crappy local and a bunch of chains. Net-net, you're putting more money in the pockets of the local guys because you're encouraging locals to compete with the national bricks and mortar places.

If a few Sbarro's close because someone is making a better slice out of a truck, you won't see me weeping. Most of the places you can go for a quick bite at lunch in the Loop aren't even open past 6-7pm anyway, so it's not like the Loop will be a dead food zone at 7pm as a result of food trucks. It already is. I spent way too many nights ordering from restaurants outside the Loop via CEO deliveries at 8pm because I missed the 7pm McD's or Potbelly close for anyone to tell me otherwise.

[tomcho]

Originally Posted by chet everett

The densities of Manhattan or even the Bronx mean they can support street vendors. The combination of very high income and very small incomes, together with factors like TINY apartments, true 24x7 crisscrossing transit, and a tolerance for stinking sewers / leaking steam utilities all give NYC unique factors in the ability for normal resturants to survive alongside "food trucks".

Similarly the factors present in LA (like its monstrously wide surface streets linked to horrendouslly interlinked freeways) means that a culture of "drive around for hours" keeps people and cars intertwined in ways that just don't happen in Chicago.

I don't get it, you just described two opposite urban landscapes that can support street vendors but Chicago can't? Street vendors would do very well during the lunch hours in the loop and after hours across most of the north side from River North through Lakeview.

Originally Posted by chet everett

morons that are pushing asinine food truck ventures realize there is NO STREET SCENE when is HOT AND MUGGY or so friggin' cold it hurts NONE of these trucks will around. .

It doesn't get hot and muggy or cold in NYC?

[OrlFlaUsa]

If Orlando can have a thriving food truck scene with multiple food truck bizarre events every month and weekly food truck pods all over the metro, then certainly Chicago could. Plus our DT keeps the trucks pretty busy between 2:30 and 4:00, after the clubs shut down.

[Chi-town Native]

Originally Posted by chet everett

...beleive me the "corporitization" of lunch spots in the Loop makes me sad / angry / nuts too, but the reasons for that WILL NOT BE MADE BETTER by making it even TOUGHER for physical carry out / sit down resturants to stay in business!!!!

Food trucks may look cool on TV but I guar an-GODDAMNED-TEEEE that it will have a whole raft of unintended consequences that will snuff out the littlest guys on the big hierarchy of resturants FIRST and ...

The solution to this is properly regulating/licensing them so they have to contribute to the City's infrastructure the same way the brick-and-mortar restaurants do.

The Tamale Guy is one thing, but by me we have these quasi-permanent tamale vendors who have set up shop on the corners of Belmont between Kedzie & Kimball.

Only someone with their head in the sand is going to tell me that doesn't impact the restaurants in the hood, they're directly in competition.

I'm all for street vendors in theory, but the fact is they have nothing tying them to the City - bad weather, economic slowdown, they can be gone.

[LakeShoreSoxGo]

Originally Posted by grapico

That is true, why are all the good places under the train tracks? Wells/van buren/wabash?


As to this will only work in LA or NYC... that is not true at all Austin has a better food truck scene than Chicago, I wonder how that happens...

the only reason you don't see it in chicago is nanny state laws. I'm pretty sure there used to be food vendors allover the loop but Daley pulled them off.

Poots on the nanny state. If SF, the epitome of nanny state (happy meal ban, plastic bottle ban, circum. ban) can make food trucks work, we should be able to make it work.

[paytonc]

Originally Posted by chet everett

How much more good would come from increasing the inspections at existing resturants and maybe reducing the restaurant tax to encourage more young / creative types to open places that will do more good in terms of jobs and neighborhoods

Thanks for making this point early on. This is a solution in search of a problem, and can be addressed through countless other strategies. Many other cities built public markets to address the public health problem of there being too many streetside food vendors, pre-industrialization.* The same approach can work today.

Another con: litter. Lots of litter, lots of paper plates, and the food trucks don't pay local taxes (to cities or Special Service Areas) to pick it up.

This is not to say that they're a bad thing, but I'm sick of hearing nonstop breathless twatting about this latest silly little yuppie food fad. I mean, geez, it's a truck, not an Orgasmatron.

* The Encyclopedia of Chicago tells me that the city fathers in Chicago never encouraged public markets because they didn't want the proletariat gathering en masse, thereby sparking more Haymarket Riots. Seems about right.

[FAReastcoast]

I grew up on street vendors selling food, Chicago is missing out big time on this!

[reppin_the_847]

Maybe Rahm Emanuel will ease up the laws on Chicago street vendors so that we start seeing more food trucks in town. Could be wishful thinking though.

Originally Posted by FAReastcoast

I grew up on street vendors selling food, Chicago is missing out big time on this!

[Irishtom29]

So where would these trucks park to do business? Seems there's little enough room downtown though they'd make great sense at factories and office parks.

I worked at Bethlehem Steel in Indiana a few years ago and a big lunch wagon came in at lunch with fresh hot meals. The chow was good and the wagon made out.

[gichicago]

Would be nice. Agree that Chicago is missing out, and would complement the scene well. However, i live in Manhattan now, and the food truck/cart thing just doesn't excite me as much as others. Maybe its better in other parts cities like Portland, LA, Austin.

The problem is that they switch locations, and the prices are not that great. And especially during lunch they get way to damn crowded. There are a few unique trucks worth visiting where the food is good. Also, if we take into account the carts, it includes all the hot dog/coffee/chicken&rice vendors. Majority of them are mediocre.

If anything, i would like to see a scene similar to hawker stands in Singapore.