Food Trucks and Their Relation to Real Estate Legislations, Research Paper Example

The implication of food trucks are the mobile venues serving the purpose of food transport and sales. The food items in these food trucks include ice creams, prepackaged and frozen foods with some being similar to wheels supported restaurants. Some food trucks offer specific meals like breakfast, lunch, snacks etc.  Food trucks proliferation has been a significant concern to restaurant owners due to the tensions and unfair competition that they have created.

Food trucks are in most cases located in vast areas of city blocks because they have been identified as a profitable investment in real estate. Customers including tenants having the food truck amenities have attracted the attention of developers because they only need to occupy the play areas and can function only with underground electricity services and water. A prime parking gives 500 – 1000 dollars in revenue to real estate owners which they consider to be a favorable investment (Bernstein, 2010).

The emergency of food trucks in real estate was attributed to catastrophes that confronted the real estate business in 2008 that was characterized financing back out in banks. The proprietors decided that instead of incurring huge losses on ongoing construction projects, it was prudent that some of the existing buildings that could otherwise tear down due to lack of financing were converted to food carts. The project was perceived to be relatively inexpensive and a good means of improving the value of their parcels in the long term.  The improvements associated with the carts are attributed to their effects on their neighborhood. The petty nasty locations that were perceived to be socially disparaging to the extent that people could not visit were efficiently converted in to gathering places for the community. This improved traffic to those areas and high variations in traffic are determined by seasonal changes in weather patterns.

However, the food trucks are becoming a concern to the administration and the government is obliged to enact some legislation that will govern the food trucks being a sector that is rapidly proliferating industry in most parts of the city. The legislations aim at setting suitable locations where these food trucks are supposed to operate. This consideration is a preserve of the City Council committee that is intended at encouraging vendors to take active role in this industry while at the same time setting the limits of their locations of operation in order to shield the brick-and-mortar restaurants from the intensive competition that arises from the mobile food trucks.

The issuance of food permits to the food trucks operators must also be reviewed by the city council staff. The operators of the food trucks were obliged to apply for bids for particular spots with the use of tendering. The city permits issued in this respect did not cover the food truck operators whose businesses were located within a private property. The only requirement set for the food trucks based on private property was meeting the business as well as the provincial health regulations. Any other type of agreement was made between the operator of the business and the owner of the property.

The food trucks are however required to observe several restrictions that are placed upon them by the city ordinances. These include moving a distance of 500 feet after a time interval of five minutes and should not be located close to brick-and-mortar restaurants or any DCU center. The food truck operators have however requested the city council subcommittees responsible for these ordinances to loosen the restrictions. This initiative was quickly objected by the proprietors of brick-and-mortar restaurants arguing that such a move was tantamount to according the food truck operators an unfair benefit. The brick-and-mortar restaurants operators forwarded some arguments to the effect that these cash business hardly complies with tax regulations and the government faces extremely difficult time extracting the taxes from them. They also fail to adhere to some regulations governing this industry including fire safety, grease, fat, as well as oil processing.

The city council committee has the responsibility of reviewing the ordinances for the operators in food truck. This could include granting permits to several food trucks to function in the City Park and identification of suitable areas of the city where the operations of the food truck could not give an unfair benefit against the brick-and-mortar restaurants. However, these developments face significant opposition from food truck operators. They fear that any kind of limitation enacted through legislation was injurious to their operations of business. The preferences of the food truck operators was to be allowed to operate in any region throughout the city but they honored the restriction of keeping a distance of 300 feet from the brick-and-mortar restaurants.

Food trucks industry is generally sparsely concentrated in all regions because of their nature of being highly fragmented. However, due to the entrance of more and more players in the industry at an extremely rapid rate, the industry has become more fragmented and the trend is anticipated to incline in the years to come with the ever growing popularity of mobile vending of food items in the regions that are perceived as less saturated.

With the rapid growth of the industry therefore, it will be prudent for the government to consider the enactment of more and stricter ordinances which will give a solution to the ongoing efforts of legalization of the business in the private properties in real estate. Comprehensive legislations to govern the food truck industry are vital and wanting to improve on the antiquated rules that have been applicable since 2011. The aim of the new legislation enactment requiring that zones be set aside for the business is to offer room for expansion of the industry and get rid of tensions that exist between the food trucks and the traditional brick-and-mortar restaurants.

The food truck is a burgeoning business leading to the addition of vitality to the communities (Weber, 2012). Therefore, any attempt towards the reduction of possible friction within the entire food industry is a move in the right direction. However, this development was not favored by operators in food truck business because of poor identification of zones and lack of proper rules of the proposed lottery to govern the location of each food truck at any given time. The bill to govern zoning and lottery should be made unambiguous for the initiative to be considered a success.

Food trucks are not entirely new development because in the past there have been food wagons that have operated near construction sites. Most of brick-and-mortar restaurants operators supported the legislation governing the operations of food trucks because their businesses were jeopardized by food trucks parked irregularly directly outside their businesses (Clark, 2012). The food trucks were parked directly outside the permanent restaurants which were a cause of concern to the business owners thus posing negative impact. While the owners of brick-and-mortar restaurants admit that the food trucks are positive initiatives, they argued in favor of rules to govern their operations. The food trucks must abstain from being a nuisance to other players in the industry and maintain their positive impact of being a fabric in the city. Their existence as a detriment to other business operators was the major contentious issue in as far as the brick-and-mortar restaurants operators were concerned.

The intended legislations are anticipated to establish suitable zones for the operations of the food trucks while at the same time, creating considerable expansion of suitable areas for parking the food trucks. The food trucks will henceforth be able to work in the farmers markets where their demand is anticipated to be high and they will also have greater access to the city council empty lots as well as city parks. The friction over the client base as well as the parking spaces should adequately be addressed with implementation of the new regulations.

A number of challenges are anticipated in the food truck industry in some five years to come. The benefits that real estate developers enjoyed with the operations of the food trucks in their premises are likely to be eroded if zoning and lottery programs succeeded. The major transformations in the food truck business eroded all ties that they had with the owners of real estate. However, property owners could also acquire permits to run food trucks in their premises.

Works cited

Bernstein, Sharon. “Food Trucks are Rolling into the Mainstream: Restaurant Chains Join the Parade of Roving Kitchens.” Los Angeles Times, 2010.

Clark, Ethan. “Hell On Wheels: Why Food Truck Owners Are Increasingly Turning to Brick-and-Mortar Shops.” New York Magazine, 2012.

Weber, David. The Food Truck Handbook: Start Grow and Succeed in the Mobile Food Business. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2012.