Louisville Food Trucks Wary of New Regs

As reported by LEOWeekly.com, link to full article follows;

On the morning of Thursday, Oct. 20, Mayor Greg Fischer’s office sent out a press release touting new food truck regulations that cut bureaucratic red tape for the increasingly popular industry.

“Food trucks add a new element of energy on the street and we needed to relax the regulations to encourage more of them,” wrote Fischer. “This is a win-win for the community and for these budding entrepreneurs.”

Some of those “budding entrepreneurs” had quite a different reaction when they heard about the revised regulations, which the Metro Council had approved five days earlier.

“These ordinances went into effect 5 days ago and they kill every mobile food operation that you all are fans of,” Matt Davis, owner of Lil Cheezers food truck, wrote on Facebook. “They END our business until we can get compliant.”

MozzaPi’s Facebook status that morning read “Due to the new ordinances put into effect for food trucks in our city I have canceled all of our public events for this week and next.”

A disgruntled Davis appeared on local TV news, and a flurry of Facebook posts and tweets ensued, as food truck fans expressed shock and outrage at what they viewed as their imminent demise.

But by the time Monday rolled around, Louisville’s food trucks were still cooking, even if some of their owners remained skeptical of and upset by the ordinance.

This confused dance of city government officials and food truck operators is nothing new, as Louisville finds itself among a growing number of cities struggling to regulate this fast-growing breed of restaurants on wheels.

The ordinance, passed unanimously by the council, undeniably relaxed regulations on food trucks in two areas. Instead of having to obtain a permit for each location that a food truck operates, now owners simply have to obtain one permit per vehicle. Also, the “buffer zones” required of trucks — the distance between residential zones and similar brick and mortar establishments — was cut in half.

What Davis didn’t like is what remained in the law, particularly requirements for owners to 1) obtain a criminal background check for every employee, 2) provide the city with a detailed map of every place they intend to operate, and 3) obtain the notarized consent of the property owner where they do business — a person who often lives out of state.

Davis says these requirements — which already existed, but were not previously enforced — discriminate against food trucks and present unnecessary obstacles to their businesses. He also feels the mayor’s office, which held meetings with food truck owners prior to the passage of the ordinance, blindsided them by not mentioning that these would now be the set law of the land.

“Those meetings with us were like window dressing. It all got passed in a council meeting without our knowledge, and we were handed a press release five days after. The only way that it can look from where we’re sitting is shady and underhanded.”

But according to the mayor’s office, the ordinance simply codified pre-existing regulations.

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