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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
by 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.
- claudius 13y ago@1: In a normal restaurant, not every employer handles food all the time. I don’t see why a (helpful) license shouldn’t be required – whether the actual licenses are a positive contribution to public health is another issue. @2: If it is not legal to park somewhere, then don’t park there rather than complaining about unpredictability in law enforcement. Ideally, everyone parking ideally would be fined every time. Would your friend prefer that? @3: Nothing wrong with enforcement of health regulations. Ideally, these would take place all the time at the best humanly possible quality. Since health inspectors are just humans, too, they might appear somewhat arbitrary. Again, ideally, everyone violating one of these regulations at any time would be shut down permanently. @4,5: Okay, these are obviously problems. The simplest solution appears to be not to require a license to operate such a business and regularly auction off suitable (public) places to the highest bidders (once a month, maybe?).
- greedo 13y agoRegarding #1- I worked in food service for 17 years, opened my own restaurant, etc. ALL my employees had to have a food handler's permit, and there had to be a manager with an expanded permit. So the idea that only one person needs a permit in an entire restaurant is scary. Perhaps it's a terminology issue...
- king_jester 13y ago> If the city actually fixed some of these regulatory issues, there would be a huge explosions of trucks overnight. A lot of people would find this undesirable, esp. considering the vast majority of food trucks only do service in Manhattan. An explosion of food trucks eating up already heavily trafficked road and parking spaces sounds like a bad idea.
- acdha 13y agoDrivers are not the only people who live in a city: if you walk, bike or use public transit, does it make sense for a parking space to go to a single driver (with no benefit to anyone else) or a food truck patronized by hundreds of people over the course of day? The main problem in Manhattan is that street parking rates are kept artificially low – as much as 40% of the traffic is due to people driving around hoping for a savings over garage parking.
- Thrymr 13y ago> In manhattan, pretty much every spot is metered, and therefore illegal. Not true. Most cross streets are not metered, they are free parking. I don't know whether they are legal for food trucks, but they are legal to park in.