A wonderful thing happened during Naperville’s most recent city council meeting, the council allowed food trucks to ‘do their thing’ without being regulated out of business. By the narrowest of margins the council voted five to four to leave food trucks alone so they can do business. It’s not often the ‘little guy’ gets a break when it comes to government regulation.
Watch and listen as Naperville resident Tim Messer spoke-up for the food truck ‘little guys’ when he implored the council to ‘let them alone, so they can go about their business’ without burdening them with additional regulations and excessive fees:
Watch and listen to councilwoman Patty Gustin as she became excited and energized expressing the opportunity to include an application/permit fee of possibly $500 – $1500 rather than the staff recommendation of $134:
When it came time to vote, the five council members showing compassion included:
- Ian Holzhauer
- Patrick Kelly
- Theresa Sullivan
- Jennifer Bruzan Taylor
- Benny White
While the four council members showing less kindness and mercy, included:
- Mayor Steve Chirico
- Patty Gustin
- Paul Hinterlong
- Paul Leong
If you happen to see one of those four council members enjoying a food truck delight, ask them if they still think it would have been a good idea to squeeze the little guys out of some of their profit.
I fully support not imposing more regulations on Food Trucks, that are operating like food trucks (i.e. moving from location to locations near its customers daily or regularly, which the customer takes with them to eat at home or facilities provide by employers)
But when a food truck stays put in one location, has setup tables/shelters/etc for customer to use. And the food truck customers must travel to them rather then the truck coming to them, then you have a “food truck” that is operating more like a brick & mortar restaurant that provides “takeout only” out of a “tiny home” that is on wheels. It is not really, any longer, operating as food truck.
These truck operators are using a loophole in the regulations to give them an unfair operating advantage against traditional brick & mortar restaurants. Not having to comply with a large number of regulations that traditional restaurants must comply with means lower operating cost as well as other true food truck operations.
Food Trucks operating in this manor need to be more heavily regulated then true food truck operators, who truly do need to make sure they are operating out of a truck that need to be regularly maintained because it has to travel many miles everyday. These fixed food truck operators have large propane tanks and generators that are not part of or mounted in someway on the truck, meaning they are no longer truly mobile operations.
Again these type of operations are using loopholes to gain an unfair advantage against both their brick & mortar as well as true food truck operators. Regulations need to be put in place to either prevent food trucks operating in this way or to regulate them in a way more appropriate for the way they are operating.