Markeshia Ricks Photo
The Meat Truck’s Jose Perez and Ricky Evans of Ricky D’s Rib Shack at Monday’s meeting with city officials.
City officials have dialed back a proposal to charge food truck operators as much as $5,100 for licenses, but vendors are on notice that their costs of doing business in New Haven could one day go up.
In a meeting at City Hall Monday, the officials unveiled a revised proposal for establishing rules for New Haven’s sprawling, growing mobile-food industry.
About 30 vendors attended, asking whether a change in the city’s licensing structure would be worth the cost, or an end to their businesses.
Deputy Economic Development Director Steve Fontana — who has been spearheading the effort to establish the rules —sought to reassure attendees that the plan is not to run them out of town, but to address concerns that have been raised by brick and mortar restaurants, city residents and the food truck and cart vendors themselves.
“There are gaps in the current system,” Fontana said. He pointed out that the city ordinances that govern mobile vending operations are outdated and currently don’t require basics like providing proof of insurance. They also don’t have any provisions for suspending or revoking the permit of an operator if that person is found to have engaged in any kind of verbal or sexual harassment.
Turcio.
And even if the city did have such authority, Building Official Jim Turcio, who is charged with much of the enforcement responsibilities for mobile vending operations, doesn’t have the staff to consistently carry out that enforcement. The money generated from proposed new licenses would help pay for an additional staff member in Turcio’s office for enforcement.
Turcio pointed out that the demand for vending spaces exceeds supply, and that is the case in every city that has a robust food vending scene.
“We have 700 licensed food vendors,” he said. But the city doesn’t have 700 spaces for these vendors to operate. “There are 4,000 vendor spaces in New York City and 15,000 licensed vendors. If you are vending without a license there the police will give you a $100 ticket. We don’t want to give you a ticket.”
Tessema.
Wub Tessema of Lalibela, which has four carts selling its Ethiopian fare, said he’d like more detail. But he said he is receptive to being able to secure his locations and to receive better service from the city
The New, New Proposal
Fontana.
Fontana originally circulated a draft of the plan at a private meeting with brick-and-mortar restaurant owners, at the Study on Chapel Street. He proposed charging truck operators as much as $5,100 a year for a license for use of parking spaces. When word of the proposal leaked out, many people reacted in outrage at the suggested spike in costs from licenses and other fees, which currently start at a total $450 a year.
He and his staff have since changed some of the plans, and for the first time described them, in public, to the vendors at Monday’s meeting.
This updated version of the revised vending ordinance would create four special vending districts based on where many food carts and trucks already ply their trade: Long Wharf, Cedar Street (by Yale-New Haven Hospitals), Prospect Street (in the Ingalls Rink parking lot) and downtown.
Food truck and cart vendors wouldn’t be restricted to these areas. They could still vend in any location in the city that is not considered a residential zone, paying only the current $200 per person permit fee on the truck to the city Building Department and another $250 to the health department. But they would be subject to any new regulations such as a possible requirement to provide proof of insurance.
Fontana said that the idea behind the proposal is to maintain a critical mass in the four main areas where these vendors already operate, give vendors who either want to stay at a particular location or get into a location a shot at doing so on an annual basis, and regulate vendors specifically in these areas consistently so that everyone is treated fairly
Right now the city has a waiting list for vendors who want to get in at Long Wharf. A new vendor can take up residence there only when someone who is currently there quits. The new process could create more churn.
In these four special districts, the city has determined that there are about 87 spaces that could be dedicated strictly to food truck and food cart operations and would allow vendors to have a space that they can use for a year, every day of the week if they so choose.
But instead of creating a bidding process for those spaces starting at a blanket $5,100 for trucks and $1,000 for carts, which was proposed in the initial draft of the plan, the bidding process would be determined by where vendors want to sell food.
Food truck owners who want to operate in the downtown district would start bidding for a space at about $2,000, or $8 a day for parking multiplied by 250 operating days.
For operating a food truck on Long Wharf, a coveted location for many of the vendors who attended Monday’s meeting, the bidding would at $4,250, or a $17 per day cost of parking, again multiplied by 250 operating days.
Under the revised proposal, food carts and stands would have a slightly different licensing structure. Those operators can expect to pay at least $1,000 no matter which district they’re in, but it could cost them more in certain districts such as on Cedar and Prospect streets, where the numbers of spaces are limited and would be bid starting at $1,000.
The majority of those spaces, about 58, would be up for grabs in a sealed-bid process. The rest would be spaces that could purchased in a lottery.
Old School vs. New School
Doug Cotton (pictured at right): Give me a chance to match the bid.
The concerns in the room Monday seemed to break along the lines of the vendors who have been operating in New Haven for decades and those who have been at it for five years or less.
Doug Cotton of Big Green Truck Pizza wasn’t put off by potential new process, but he said he wants an open auction.
“If I bid $100 over the base fee and I get beat out by someone who bids $101, I’m cut out,” he said. “I want an opportunity to match that bid just like in a live auction.”
Another vendor argued the annual bid process seems unfair. He said if you manage to get into a good spot where you have built a following and are successful, you might have to move to another, less successful spot the following year.
“I could lose my business, my house,” he said.
Another vendor added to the amusement of attendees, “Man, you could lose your wife too.”
James Mitchell of Mamoun’s Falafel Restaurant, which has a storefront, a cart and two trucks, expressed concern that some of the oldest operators would have to bid at all against upstarts that are benefiting from what they helped build. “It seems unfair,” he said. “We helped build this demand.”
Fontana said that there has been some discussion about giving certain trucks a first right-of-refusal in the bid process, or grandfathering certain trucks, but no decision has been made.
Some of the newer operators called the new proposal biased against them even though their trucks have helped diversify the food vending scene beyond pizza and tacos.
Markeshia Ricks photo
James Mitchel and Bellal Chater of Mamoun’s Falafel
Ricky Evans of Ricky D’s Rib Shack asked how the city would deal with ordinary people parking in a reserved spot. He said if he has to wait for towing instead of just finding another spot nearby, he loses money. Fontana said that likely could be addressed with proper signage.
Millianys Garcia of Dre’s Burgers & More said her truck is number 14 on a wait list to vend on Long Wharf. She said she believes that some of the old-timers there have multiple permits under other names, which allows them to keep others out. She asked Fontana if someone with multiple trucks in a location will get to bid for multiple spaces in one of the districts. He said that the question remains to be discussed.
“New Haven is small and people talk,” she said. “They keep talking about fair, but the process they described doesn’t sound fair to me.”
Spud Stud Seeks Diversity
The McCarthys of The Spud Stud.
Krista and Craig McCarthy operate The Spud Stud and they said it might be worth it to them to spend a significant amount of money to be able to operate on Long Wharf, but if the city isn’t going to create a process that would diversify the food scene out there, it’s not worth it to them.
As it stands, they operate downtown on Church Street one day a week, and operate in other cities and states. Paying $2,000 or more to operate for parking that they wouldn’t use every day, or might not be very profitable beyond lunch time if they did, doesn’t appeal to them.
“People think that food truck vendors get into this business because they can’t afford a brick and mortar restaurant,” Krista McCarthy said. “That might be the case for some, but that’s not our story. We like the business because it’s mobile. Other cities have really embraced their food truck vendors, but operating in New Haven can be frustrating.”
Fontana said after the meeting Monday that he heard strong support for enforcement. He also heard that there are a lot of different business models that would have to be considered going forward given that some people want to operate in the city on a periodic basis, while others are more permanent. He said creating some sort of advisory committee might also be in order.
If it keeps moving regulated it 'eh Mr. Fontana. Well we appear to have arrived at step two haven't we?
From the article, "Fontana said that there has been some discussion about giving certain trucks a first right-of-refusal in the bid process, or grandfathering certain trucks", typical asymmetrical business thinking from the left, picking winners. That policy bias has won us nothing at the state level, so hard to imagine how it would at the local level either.
@James Mitchell, with respect to this notion of special treatment and the comment, "We helped build this demand". Demographics, social media and the Food Network plainly had nothing to do with it. Could not have it any more twisted. Consumers build demand, merchants meet it.
Look, leave these businesses alone. If you are going to do anything make it part of a pre-existing process, do not invent a new one. Simply make the vendors provide a valid COI as part of the annual permitting or DPH renewal and leave it at that. Get them off the sidewalk, make them pay at the meter and draw your fee that way. They should be entitled to park there just like any other wheeled vehicle. Meanwhile, work to unwind any and all zoning or general ordinances that inhibit them from delivering the food from their trucks into paying consumers' mouths.
Additional layers of regulation or enforcement are unwelcome and unnecessary. Turcio has enough to do already, and frankly appears to be unable to keep up with the City's own immobile properties: http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/armorys_rebirth_comes_into_focus/