6 ms·

Did you read the article? The author is arguing it's not because of that at all, it's because of all unnecessary and conflicting rules and regulations that is i

by zavulon 13y ago

Did you read the article? The author is arguing it's not because of that at all, it's because of all unnecessary and conflicting rules and regulations that is in place.

benihana 13y ago
Don't forget selective enforcement, which is probably the biggest frustration and source of uncertainty and cost. Not knowing if doing one thing one day will be fine the next day are not conditions most businesses thrive in.
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  Don't park next to a school or food market? You can avoid that every day. I think that is a smoke screen for the real problem: a terrible business case.
- panacea 13y ago
  I'm ok with regulation pertaining to food standards and service. I'm equally ok with Apple's App Store curation. But it's a tricky line to get right. When visiting countries with street food cultures, you can generally do ok by following the local crowd. But that's because the local establishment isn't going to screw the pooch and poison the regular clientele if they can help it. We live in a society attempting to outsource trust, whether by government regulation, flimsy technological crowdsourced reputation or other equally ephemeral measures of quality.
- jcnnghm 13y ago
  There isn't enough manpower to fine everyone doing anything wrong every day. Parking fines are generally much higher than the parking cost because it's impractical to catch every illegally parked vehicle every time; the whole idea is to make the expected cost of parking illegally greater than the expected cost of parking legally, while limiting the cost of enforcement. Similarly, I am under no delusion that speeding is fine on days I don't get caught.
- forinti 13y ago
  You should look at the law and decide if you can operate within its confines. Counting on it not being enforced is not really a sound business strategy.
- nijk 13y ago
  Random enforcement is fair play, and efficient. Biased enforcement is corruption.
JoeAltmaier 13y ago
Yet the article listed only a handful of requirements - health certificate, and don't park next to a school or food market. What else? This doesn't seem like rocket science. It has to be the business case stinks. I can't see the regulation getting in the way, any more than other businesses.
- mrgoldenbrown 13y ago
  There are plenty of examples in the article that you are skipping over. First of all, getting that health certificate you mention takes several months. And you need one for every employee. In a brick and mortar, you only need one, period. And you need to get your cart or truck cleaned at a specially licensed "commissary" every morning. Then you have the case of this lady: She had a street-vendor’s license, she said, but didn't understand that she also needed a separate permit for her cart. This whole situation with licenses costing money and being "leased", plus the commissaries, reminds me of the Boston cab situation right now - when you need to pay a bribe to be able to driver a cab for the day, regulation is definitely getting in the way.
- frankc 13y ago
  One of my best friends owns a food truck in nyc and by association I've come to know a lot about the subject. 1) The requirement of a food handling license for every employee is not a trivial problem. It completely distorts the market for hiring, really making it almost impossible to do legally. Remember, this is not the kind of job where people stick around for years so a 2 month lead process in hiring is tolerable. And it's not like this food handling license is in any way helpful to maintaining the public health; its not required for regular restaurants (for every worker like in food trucks). 2) In reality there are next to no legal spots to park a food truck in nyc. In manhattan, pretty much every spot is metered, and therefore illegal. However, as long as no one complains, usually the cops leave you alone. Usually, but its unpredictable. 3) Arbitrary and capricious enforcement of health regulations by health inspectors that can lead to large fines and confiscation of your permit. Again, don't underestimate how big a deal this is. At any time, for approximately any reason if the inspector doesn't like you, your entire business can be shut down. Think about how patent lawsuits affect startups and then imagine that a class of patent inspectors can just bust in unannounced several times a month to shut you down. It's like that. 4) You can't actually get a permit legally because the city doesn't issue them any more. All food trucks get their permits on the black market and the costs is up to $20K per year now. It's not just the cost but also the hassle of having to deal with that. It's also completely stupid from the city's perspective as they could be auction off permits as they do for taxi medallions. Instead the benefit goes to people who just happen to have been issued a permit many years ago for $200. 5) You must park in a licensed commissary as mentioned in the article. It means you basically have to pay 3x in rent what you would if you could park legally in a private lot. And plus those places are actually completely filthy. I've been to several. All that said, the article is actually quite wrong about it not being a profitable business. The people I know are raking in cash hand over fist. There is huge demand as long as your food and concept are decent. If the city actually fixed some of these regulatory issues, there would be a huge explosions of trucks overnight.
smackfu 13y ago
My point is that even in a perfect business environment, most food trucks would fail.
VLM 13y ago
That's merely a side effect of the brick and mortar restaurants having more money therefore more political power than the food carts. If the food cart owners were millionaires and the brick and mortar restaurant operators were poor, I'm quite certain we'd be reading an article about how simple and clear the regulations are for food carts but its nearly impossible for poor illegal immigrants to open a brick and mortar restaurant without endless government pressure to close. The free market may have made America great, but a pretty good summary of our current problems is we're now trying the reverse of both in as many business fields as possible. There are numerous eCommerce analogies, etc.

by zavulon 13y ago

Did you read the article? The author is arguing it's not because of that at all, it's because of all unnecessary and conflicting rules and regulations that is in place.

benihana 13y ago

Don't forget selective enforcement, which is probably the biggest frustration and source of uncertainty and cost. Not knowing if doing one thing one day will be fine the next day are not conditions most businesses thrive in.

JoeAltmaier 13y ago
Don't park next to a school or food market? You can avoid that every day. I think that is a smoke screen for the real problem: a terrible business case.
panacea 13y ago
I'm ok with regulation pertaining to food standards and service. I'm equally ok with Apple's App Store curation. But it's a tricky line to get right. When visiting countries with street food cultures, you can generally do ok by following the local crowd. But that's because the local establishment isn't going to screw the pooch and poison the regular clientele if they can help it. We live in a society attempting to outsource trust, whether by government regulation, flimsy technological crowdsourced reputation or other equally ephemeral measures of quality.
jcnnghm 13y ago
There isn't enough manpower to fine everyone doing anything wrong every day. Parking fines are generally much higher than the parking cost because it's impractical to catch every illegally parked vehicle every time; the whole idea is to make the expected cost of parking illegally greater than the expected cost of parking legally, while limiting the cost of enforcement. Similarly, I am under no delusion that speeding is fine on days I don't get caught.
forinti 13y ago
You should look at the law and decide if you can operate within its confines. Counting on it not being enforced is not really a sound business strategy.
nijk 13y ago
Random enforcement is fair play, and efficient. Biased enforcement is corruption.

JoeAltmaier 13y ago

Yet the article listed only a handful of requirements - health certificate, and don't park next to a school or food market. What else? This doesn't seem like rocket science. It has to be the business case stinks. I can't see the regulation getting in the way, any more than other businesses.

mrgoldenbrown 13y ago
There are plenty of examples in the article that you are skipping over. First of all, getting that health certificate you mention takes several months. And you need one for every employee. In a brick and mortar, you only need one, period. And you need to get your cart or truck cleaned at a specially licensed "commissary" every morning. Then you have the case of this lady: She had a street-vendor’s license, she said, but didn't understand that she also needed a separate permit for her cart. This whole situation with licenses costing money and being "leased", plus the commissaries, reminds me of the Boston cab situation right now - when you need to pay a bribe to be able to driver a cab for the day, regulation is definitely getting in the way.
frankc 13y ago
One of my best friends owns a food truck in nyc and by association I've come to know a lot about the subject. 1) The requirement of a food handling license for every employee is not a trivial problem. It completely distorts the market for hiring, really making it almost impossible to do legally. Remember, this is not the kind of job where people stick around for years so a 2 month lead process in hiring is tolerable. And it's not like this food handling license is in any way helpful to maintaining the public health; its not required for regular restaurants (for every worker like in food trucks). 2) In reality there are next to no legal spots to park a food truck in nyc. In manhattan, pretty much every spot is metered, and therefore illegal. However, as long as no one complains, usually the cops leave you alone. Usually, but its unpredictable. 3) Arbitrary and capricious enforcement of health regulations by health inspectors that can lead to large fines and confiscation of your permit. Again, don't underestimate how big a deal this is. At any time, for approximately any reason if the inspector doesn't like you, your entire business can be shut down. Think about how patent lawsuits affect startups and then imagine that a class of patent inspectors can just bust in unannounced several times a month to shut you down. It's like that. 4) You can't actually get a permit legally because the city doesn't issue them any more. All food trucks get their permits on the black market and the costs is up to $20K per year now. It's not just the cost but also the hassle of having to deal with that. It's also completely stupid from the city's perspective as they could be auction off permits as they do for taxi medallions. Instead the benefit goes to people who just happen to have been issued a permit many years ago for $200. 5) You must park in a licensed commissary as mentioned in the article. It means you basically have to pay 3x in rent what you would if you could park legally in a private lot. And plus those places are actually completely filthy. I've been to several. All that said, the article is actually quite wrong about it not being a profitable business. The people I know are raking in cash hand over fist. There is huge demand as long as your food and concept are decent. If the city actually fixed some of these regulatory issues, there would be a huge explosions of trucks overnight.

smackfu 13y ago

My point is that even in a perfect business environment, most food trucks would fail.

VLM 13y ago

That's merely a side effect of the brick and mortar restaurants having more money therefore more political power than the food carts. If the food cart owners were millionaires and the brick and mortar restaurant operators were poor, I'm quite certain we'd be reading an article about how simple and clear the regulations are for food carts but its nearly impossible for poor illegal immigrants to open a brick and mortar restaurant without endless government pressure to close. The free market may have made America great, but a pretty good summary of our current problems is we're now trying the reverse of both in as many business fields as possible. There are numerous eCommerce analogies, etc.