The Wafels and Dinges truck, my personal favorite, parks outside of Key Food in Park Slope on Saturdays. (Photo by flickr user Adam Kuban)
I am an unabashed fan of New York’s burgeoning food truck scene. From the Wafels & Dinges stalwart to the cookies from the Treats Truck to Mexicue’s sliders and beyond, I find the food trucks to be a breath of fresh air amidst New York’s stagnant lunch scene, and I eye Los Angeles, Portland and the Bay Area enviously for their vibrant food truck and food cart offerings.
Unfortunately, though, while many New Yorkers agree with me, those with power — the restaurant and food services industry — don’t feel the same way. To them, the food trucks represent a threat. While no longer a novelty, they have remained popular by offering good, cheap food, and from Midtown to Park Slope, bricks-and-mortar stores feel threatened. They don’t want to lose their customers to better options and think that food trucks, which do pay taxes and do adhere to DOH standards, are leeching off of their businesses. Competition, of course, is good for everyone, but try telling that to someone with an insane rent on a mediocre deli on 48th Street.
To that end, restaurants and delis have often tried to get food trucks to move. They’ve complained to the cops and to City Council members; they try to get parking regulations changed or old laws enforced. It is, as The Times noted earlier this week, working:
In the last 10 days, the Treats Truck, which has sold cookies and brownies for four years during lunchtime at West 45th Street near Avenue of the Americas, has been told by police officers that it is no longer welcome there, nor at its late-afternoon 38th Street and Fifth Avenue location. The Rickshaw Dumpling truck, a presence for three years at West 45th Street near the Treats Truck, has been shooed away as well.
The police “have told us they no longer want food trucks in Midtown,” said Kim Ima, the owner of the Treats Truck, a pioneer of the city’s new-wave food-truck movement, who began cultivating customers on West 45th Street in 2007.
Also ejected from their customary Midtown locations recently were the Comme Ci, Comme Ça Truck at 38th Street and Broadway; the Desi Truck at West 50th Street between Seventh Avenue and Avenue of the Americas; the Eddie’s Pizza Truck, the Kimchi Taco Truck and the Wafels & Dinges Truck, all at West 52nd Street and the Avenue of the Americas; the Crisp on Wheels truck at West 51st Street and Seventh Avenue. Members of the ragtag fleet of generic soft ice cream trucks in the area have been cast out, too.
Few if any of these trucks have been ticketed, and few towed. Nevertheless, some vendors who tried to return have been shooed away again. Many, including the Treats Truck, consider themselves permanently displaced and are trying to find other locations. In some cases, they have been turned out of their new neighborhoods, too.
According to The Times, this drive to push food carts out of midtown stems from a recent New York State Supreme Court case that turned to an old law “believed to date from the 1950s.” The law bars any “vendor, hawker or huckster shall park a vehicle at a metered parking space” from offering “merchandise for sale from the vehicle.” In May, Judge Geoffrey Wright decided this law applied to food trucks, and cops in certain Midtown precincts where delis feel most threatened have ramped up the pressure to get food trucks to move.
Now, the problem here isn’t just one of a limited culinary palate. It’s one of street prioritization. Food trucks inherently encourage pedestrians to use the sidewalk space they have, and they turn road space otherwise taken up by either idle and empty parked cars or moving traffic into an economically beneficial activity. Food trucks should be encouraged, and laws leftover from the 1950s when no one had even heard of the Rickshaw Dumpling Truck should be discarded. Of course, that would require a City Council willing to face down the food services lobby, and that won’t happen. Somehow, food services are louder and more vocal than pedestrians.
One day, the city will better allocate street space based on use. Then, we’ll be able to enjoy our waffles, our cookies and our overpriced lobster rolls in peace. For now, the food trucks will be marginalized to neighborhoods that actually want them.
46 comments
The deli owners paying ridiculous rent have a legitimate point. The food trucks are getting away with stealing their customers for less overhead. This is going to put some of these delis out of business, which won’t be so great for the people who like having them as an option as well, or at least people looking for a sandwich at 3am, when the food trucks tend not be so conveniently everywhere.
Lots of people have pointed out that free parking amounts to a subsidy for car use; free parking for food trucks is effectively subsidizing mobile restaurants over stationary ones with rent obligations. The city definitely shouldn’t be shooing away food trucks, but it shouldn’t be giving them a free ride, either.
I think the free parking point is fair, but food trucks are not stealing customers. They’d be stealing if they went into delis, took their wares without paying, and served them from their trucks. Driving generic delis (some aren’t even really delis) selling unhealthy processed food being out of business could be a good thing.
Have them pay market rate for the space they’re using. I doubt food trucks will go away because of that.
Bolwerk- I couldn’t agree more, but don’t the food trucks also have to pay the meters? So aren’t they taking space that the City only made a small amount of tax revenue on and making more revenue out it via sales?
CJS- Apologies for how harsh this sounds, but your comment is indicative of the misguided zero-sum view that so many people in this City have when it comes to basic economics. The food trucks encourage competition with the delis, forcing them to offer a better product at a better price. This benefits everyone, including, indirectly, the deli owners, as we all benefit from better products at better prices. Now if I could just make the rent-control advocates see that point…
– A Capitalist Democrat
The point is that the food trucks are rent-control darlings. Even if they are filling the meters for every minute they spend in a spot (and given that they’re in attendance and able to watch for cruising meter maids, are they really doing that?) they’re still paying far far below market price.
I disagree with Ben’s article in that food trucks shouldn’t be “encouraged” (i.e. subsidized) and neither should parking or any other particular private use of the space. If the city desires to turn this block of public land over to a private actor for a period of time, its primary interest should be revenue maximization – if the owner of an empty parked car is willing to pay more than the Wafels and Dinges truck for temporary occupancy of that space, then empty car parking has been discovered as the more economically beneficial activity.
Not necessarily. A food truck actually employs some people. A parked car is mostly just wasting public space while its owner does something else.
Chris- Far below market price for what? Street parking? If you’re suggesting that that we compare them to bricks and mortar stores, I think my previous analogy stands. The bricks and mortar stores will have to raise their bar to offer more at a better price (ie by taking advantage of the fact that they aren’t a tiny little truck). It’s called competition and it “has marked the upward progress of humanity since time immemorial”.
Bolwerk- don’t food trucks also have to buy fairly pricey license from the City? thereby raising even more revenue?
I don’t know about trucks, but here is what NYMag says about the economics of carts. Maybe trucks are a loophole?
Either way, either a cart or a truck provides value besides the revenue it sends to the city.
Why is running a food truck in a parking spot a “use” of space and parking a car there a “waste”? Items have to be stored somewhere just like businesses have to operate somewhere; the best way to allocate space among these many uses is price.
The value of the employment to the employees is factored into the bid the truck owner is willing to offer for the space. Either they are getting paid the absolute least they are willing to do the job for – in which case they are indifferent to losing it – or they can take a pay cut and still not leave, in which case they should do that, the truck owner will be able to increase his bid and still achieve his necessary return on capital, and the guy wanting to park will keep his money in his pocket and go elsewhere.
It’s a waste when there is an opportunity cost higher than the value of the parking revenue. A retail operation that adds value to the economy and presumably _more_ revenue to the city coffers (through sales/income taxes) easily fits that bill.
But the distinction between higher-value and lower-value uses comes precisely from checking which users can afford to pay more for the space!
Opportunity cost isn’t necessarily monetary, and the choice isn’t binary. It’s not parking vs. taco truck. It could be parking vs. play street vs. taco truck vs. hotdog stand. The cost of a play street is all foregone revenue; the cost of parking is a lost play street or space for a taco truck or hotdog stand.
Either way, you would really have to stretch your imagination to think of a business where sales taxes plus income taxes less foregone parking revenue actually is less than what you can realistically expect from government-operated street parking. If a business’s sales are so low that they can’t pay more in sales tax than a realistic parking price, they really may as well fold because they aren’t meeting any other basic expenses either.
I guess they have to pay meters during the day. Meters aren’t usually 24/7 though.
Rent control is effectively gone at this point. I think there are only hundreds of rent control units left. (Anecdotally, in the past 10 years, every person I know who had one lost it by some court ruling or being bought out.)
What I want to know is how so many generic delis stay in business. Almost none of them sell fresh fruit and vegetables, much less meats that aren’t smoked and cured. It’s no wonder food trucks are able to muscle into their territories.
There are between 20,000 and 50,000 rent control units. They are rapidly falling to market rates. I think Hank meant rent stabilization.
Ah, I see. Close to 40k according to this 2010 report (PDF). 717,471 stabilized units.
Exactly right. I am guilty of referring to all non-market / inefficient subsidized housing programs as “rent control” even though the vast majority are rent stabilization and not control/public housing
In many neighborhoods the stabilized rent is higher than the market rent.
It depends on the neighborhood. On the Upper East Side, the bodegas do sell fresh vegetables. The quality is lower than what you’d get at Food Emporium, but the price is lower as well and the bodegas are open 24/7.
Yeah, I live in the boroughs now. Very few sell fresh vegetables, and the ones that are open 24/7 seem mainly to cater to the late beer-drinking crowd (which includes me sometimes). Brooklyn’s swankier neighborhoods do have homegrown mini-chains specializing in organic foods and fresh vegetables. When I was in Clinton Hill, beer and high-carb processed food was sold from behind bullet proof glass in some places.
The problem here is that there are far fewer deli owners and far more Pret’s and Metro Cafe’s instead. These are corporate owned (no doubt) and charge very inflated prices for food in quality and or quantity that is not worth the price. The food trucks (and carts, when will they be targeted?) offer an economic alternative to the Pret’s, Metro Cafes and Cosi’s of Midtown
I don’t really know that I like the idea of food truck proliferation, at least not without understanding the environmental implications. And I find their offerings to be of questionable quality in most cases.
Food trucks don’t belong in Manhattan. They block the streetscape. Also the grilling and frying of “meats” on the street is out of hand, it’s noxious and obnoxious. How would you like to have a clothing store and some guy is outside grilling “meats”? Several times I’ve left stores ( B+ N, Virgin) because they were full of “meats” smoke. How would you like to buy a million dollar apartment on the second floor and have some jerk set up shop 20 feet from your living room? Where do these people go to the bathroom?
Stand on the uptown platform at Grand Central. At times it’s full of eye watering throat scratching smoke from the guy on the corner of 42nd and Lex grilling “meats”. Same at Times Square. Ugh!
How would you like to run a little food cart to barely make ends meet and have some prude bitch about the meat you’re cooking?
Really, if you think cars should be tolerated in Manhattan, you can tolerate food trucks and carts.
A car has emission laws, a grill on a food truck doesn’t. Cars dont go around in the USA belching smoke black enough to cause collisions.
Neither do food trucks, at least not that I’ve seen. I can’t say that I appreciate the aromas emanating from every truck, but neither do I appreciate the aromas emanating from every restaurant exhaust fan. If we’re going to ban trucks based on smell, we should do the same with restaurants.
The only exception is food trucks that idle their engines (which may not be in perfect shape) all day. Ice cream trucks, I’m looking at you.
Andrew- very good point re: restaurants & idling engines.
Not to sound too much like the effete liberal snob that I am, but I’ve often noticed it’s the “traditional” (ie dirty old gyro and nut vendors) who really stink up an area. Most of the new “high-end” trucks have modern exhaust systems that limit the olifactory pollution significantly.
I’d say that the actual food trucks (i.e. a truck with kitchen inside) tend to be pretty low on the odor scale regardless of what they’re serving. It’s the sidewalk cart chefs, who are cooking on a griddle in the open air with no enclosure, that tend to produce a lot of smell. Though I usually find those aromas fairly appetizing myself…
I rather enjoy the scent of kabobs cooking.
I had a delicious lamb/rice meal in Astoria last week too.
The smoked nuts really do stink, but I don’t know if they stink enough to the point where they should be banned.
Bolwerk,
I don’t think cars should be tolerated in Manhattan. I think the speed limit should be 25 and rigoursly enforced by cameras and ticket quotas. I also think there should be no free on street parking. Before 1951 you couldn’t park overnight on the street. Nowadays I think there should be meters for every space and an overnight rate.
Question, where did cars have to be parked over night prior to 1951?
In garages or driveways.
Ben’s on target when he says this is about the prioritization of streetspace. Then I part ways a little, food trucks are great addition to our city and a favorable solution yet they need reasonable restrictions and in certain areas permits for placement. In Greenwich Village, I would rather first prioritize aggressive zoning/permitting of sidewalk cafes sponsored by permanent establishments. A possible future conflict in my own neighborhood comes to mind. The popular gourmet ice cream truck’s traditional parking spot is now within sight of a new and wildly successful gelateria, opened with costly build out of the retail space. In a certain way the truck did the site research for the gelateria’s investor. Currently there are enough customers for everyone and that’s good. Yet as a property owner, I’d have to side with the new investor that has made a long term commitment. Food trucks are great for almost every area – they are novel, fun, creative and make living in New York a great experience. Yet they are an accessory rather than a permanent investment in the city… Those who make such investments need every opportunity to succeed. Lets put some new rules in place then we can then clear the path for the Belgian Waffle truck to park down the block for a limited time.
how about the prioritization of sidewalk space. these trucks impede pedestrian flow and cause congestion as customers scarf down their food a few steps from the trucks. trying to navigate around these trucks when you have somewhere to go is a problem.
also, i believe that health inspections of these traveling grease pits is lacking.
i’ve eaten from them, sure, but i fail to see why they are being celebrated.
i’ve eaten from them, sure, but i fail to see why they are being celebrated.
That’s because they have become 2011s hot food trend. lets see what happens in 2012. As americans earn less income food trucks could become an alternitive in dining out.
Take a look at this article on food trucks from QSR magazine.
Food for the Road
The growing number of mobile units provides a variety of flavors for brands looking for menu inspirations.
Food trucks are on a roll.
Whether they’re parked along the streets of Los Angeles, in a Miami shopping center, or at a Chicago corporate highrise, the trucks are as trendy as it gets in the restaurant business.
Folks are lining up at mobile counters in cities across America to gobble down everything from gourmet fusion food to specialty cupcakes from chef-entrepreneurs.
“They’re popping up everywhere,” says Eric Giandelone, director of foodservice research at Mintel International. “They have huge appeal because they are an inexpensive way to get into the food industry. Owners also have more control over how they can operate.”
Restaurants and quick-service chains have joined the fray with their own trucks.
The growing interest in the segment has created even more cross-pollination: truck chefs opening brick-and-mortar units, restaurants adding street foods to menus, and, in some cases, developing whole concepts around street food.
“This is going on all across the country,” says Kevin Higar, director of consulting and research for Technomic Inc. He recently spent three months crisscrossing the nation and talking to food truck operators who typically set up shop at different locations each day.
Unlike brick-and-mortar restaurants that have large menus, food trucks have become popular, particularly among 25- to 45-year-olds, for their distinct, limited offerings.
“You find people with a strong passion and the skill to make two or three or four things really, really well,” Higar says. Then these items filter out to other chefs because “we’re really good at ripping off ideas and making them our own.”
Twitter and Facebook are key to food trucks’ success, helping followers find out the trucks’ location on any particular date, as well as the day’s menu. It also builds the kind of relationships that leads some chefs to name menu items after customers or customers’ pets.
“Truck owners really have to do social networking,” Giandelone says. “They aren’t going to have a marketing budget. For customers, it’s more like an adventure because of ever-changing menus and ever-changing locations.”
In a few cities, food trucks gather at one spot for a temporary food court. In Miami, truck maker Food Cart USA promotes these events several days a week.
“It’s been great for the industry and an easy way for customers to come out and try all different types of great food,” says Crystal Ramirez, the company’s manager.
A typical evening may see a chorizo and sirloin burger from Latin Burger and Taco, Jefe’s fish tacos, crêpes from Caza Crêpes, and Big Daddy’s discos voladores.
Food trucks have their roots in moving military canteens, Old West chuck wagons, New York City food carts, and street vendors worldwide.
Catering trucks have traveled the pavement for decades. Featuring a refrigerator case, warmer unit, and griddle, they regularly visit several blue-collar workplaces a day, serving sandwiches, pastries, and similar items.
As Hispanic construction workers grew in numbers in California in the ’80s, entrepreneurs refitted trucks to create moving taquerias, known as taco trucks.
But a new breed of chef-impresario has now found a niche for various gourmet efforts from a truck.
The recent recession is a major reason the food truck culture took root and grew, says restaurant industry veteran Ray Villaman, a principal with Mobi Munch, a mobile foodservice infrastructure company.
“We saw a lot of the old taco trucks go belly up in the economic downturn,” he says. At the same time, white-tablecloth eateries also suffered, and “a lot of fine-dining chefs were looking for their next move. They jumped at these trucks.”
Their numbers are still small. Of the 4,000 food trucks with permits in Los Angeles County, “probably 3,500 are Mexican style,” says Josh Hiller, co-owner of Road Stoves, which rents trucks and provides other services to mobile chefs.
“There are only a couple hundred that could be categorized as gourmet trucks,” he says.
Road Stoves has worked with many of the new breed, including the owners of Kogi BBQ, which led the wave of upscale mobile chow.
Roy Choi, a Culinary Institute of America grad and the truck’s chef, “is the poster child for igniting the movement,” Villaman says.
Kogi got its start on a rainy weekend in November 2008, says Alice Shin, creative director for the Los Angeles enterprise that has grown to five trucks and several traditional restaurants.
Its fusion of Asian and Mexican food, notably marinated barbecue meat and kimchi in tacos, didn’t find many takers at first, Shin says. But word of mouth and the tactical use of Twitter and other new technology eventually made the truck a phenomenon.
Kogi’s culinary success is in Choi’s ability to mix Mexican and Asian ingredients in portable food. The brand has several regular items, including the signature short-rib tacos for $2.10 each, plus daily specials.
Fusion is a major food segment for trucks nationwide. There are Mexican-Filipino, Peruvian-Japanese, Jamaican-American, and Asian-South American combinations.
Ironically, Kogi started partly because restaurant recruiter Dave Danhi couldn’t get Choi a regular restaurant position four months before the truck hit the road.
Now, Danhi is also a partner in a rolling food emporium, The Grilled Cheese Truck. Like many trucks, it visits several spots a day during a Tuesday-to-Saturday schedule.
The menu is based on another popular truck style: comfort food. Prices range from $3 for an American Cheese sandwich to $7.75 for the Brie Melt, which features brie, homemade fig paste, and smoked turkey or bacon on black peppercorn potato bread.
The spotlight item is Danhi’s Cheesy Mac and Rib Melt, which combines Southern-style mac and cheese with sharp cheddar, slow-cooked pork barbecue, and caramelized onions on buttered, fried white bread.
This is awesome. I work in DUMBO, where the food trucks all stopped showing up a few months ago and moved to midtown instead. On Monday, the Rickshaw and treats trucks came back for the first time. If midtown doesn’t want the food trucks, DUMBO will definitely take them, we’re way short on lunch options.
If this is really a problem in Midtown, it would probably good to talk to the local precinct and the community board.
Seth- did Waffles & Dinges also move to DUMBO? I miss my morning treat. Jealous
Also, the great thing about Brooklyn: We have a lot of unmetered parking so that law shouldn’t apply!
DAMNIT! I hope Papa Perone (the rice ball truck) hasn’t moved from 55th between Park and Madison… great stuff, I’m gonna check it out now.
He wasn’t there.
When will the Red Hook trucks get chased?!
To bring this back to the original topic, the prioritization of street space, keep in mind the issue that is behind the current crackdown: using metered spaces to sell, in this case, food. The point of a metered parking space is to encourage turn-over. In midtown, where these trucks are getting kicked out, metered space is at a premium and is usually intended for commercial deliveries. When the restaurants, delis, etc. complain about the trucks, it’s not just about cheaper overhead, etc., it’s also about making it more difficult for these stores to get their deliveries. These metered spaces are there for commercial vehicles to pull up, make a delivery, and leave. If you’re a restaurant and your delivery guy can’t make a delivery without getting a ticket for double parking, you’re going to complain about the people who are parking illegally. In this case, that’s the food trucks.
I think we also need to keep in mind that there is a distinction to be made between food trucks, who park at the curb, and food carts, who “park” on the sidewalk. They are both competing for public space, but different types of public space.
If restaurant owners think food trucks have it that much better then they can start their own.
As for parking spaces, I see no reason why food trucks are any less legitimate than parked cars. If they’re blocking pedestrian flow, then there should be no parking, period. If they’re paying too little for the space, then meter rates should go up to market rates. If stores need a loading zone, they can use the space when there is less demand (eg. early mornings) or meter rates can be risen even higher to ensure high turnover, taking into account food trucks’ demand for space.
One of the major negatives of moving back to NYC is the lack of cheap street food. Somehow Asians cities are able to have a huge range of options, covering nearly all hours of the day, without negatively effecting quality of life.
Are they asking the ice cream trucks to leave to? They’re not new, but they do the very same thing as the other trucks.
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