In Chicago, if you don’t like your competition you work with the city to regulate it into extinction.
That’s how it works with taxis and ridesharing; that’s how it works with the hotel industry and Airbnb; and the same goes for restaurants and food trucks.
The city’s rules make it nearly impossible to operate a profitable mobile food business, despite a community of chefs and entrepreneurs anxious to make their mark. And for some reason, in a city racked with violence and plagued by debt, Chicago officials have chosen to focus their attention on small-business owners trying to serve hungry customers.
In the past few months, Chicago has mounted a campaign to squash food truck activity, stepping up enforcement of rules that prohibit vendors from selling within 200 feet of a brick-and-mortar business that sells food (including anything from McDonald’s to CVS), mandate that trucks hook up a GPS tracker so the city can monitor movement and activity, and force truck owners to move every two hours (even though it takes about this long to set up and tear down for the day).
And parking is a huge problem – there’s simply not enough room for trucks to operate. Food trucks can park legally by just 3 percent of curbs in the Loop, the city’s busiest weekday lunch district, according to analysis from the Institute for Justice.
“It's crazy – you can put … a Potbelly across from a Subway, but we can't sell within 200 feet of a restaurant,” said Sam Barron, co-owner of The Fat Shallot food truck, who said obtaining a food truck license from the city was “one of the hardest things” he’s ever had to do.
Unsurprisingly, these rules have kept the number of trucks operating in Chicago pretty low – official numbers from city officials show 106 active food truck licenses, though industry insiders say the true number of operating trucks is likely fewer than 70.
Because of the city’s approach to innovative food businesses, chefs and entrepreneurs are struggling – and the number of trucks is stagnating.
Native Chicagoan Rachel Angulo is co-owner of the La Cocinita food truck, which operates in New Orleans, Evanston and Chicago.
She opened the New Orleans food truck in 2011. In 2014, she and her husband decided to head home to Chicago to start a family. They expanded La Cocinita, debuting a new truck in their hometown in summer 2014, followed by a brick-and-mortar version of La Cocinita in suburban Evanston.
The couple has invested a lot in Chicago, but when Angulo thinks about expanding the couple’s beloved food truck business she doesn’t have Chicago in mind.
“We’re investing more in Evanston than in the city because it’s hard to support an economic situation that doesn’t support you,” she said. “My hope is to expand locally, but at this point the New Orleans market is certainly more food truck-friendly, and we’ve been able to grow our brand more there.”
And while the city is busy making life difficult for food trucks, officials are skirting state law when it comes to enforcing food safety inspections – fewer than half of Chicago’s “high-risk” restaurants were inspected twice in 2015, according to an audit released Nov. 29 by Inspector General Joseph Ferguson.
A new ordinance was introduced Dec. 14 that would change the two-hour parking limit to six hours. While this update would be a good start, it does nothing to increase parking options, which is necessary before more food trucks can set up and thrive. If the city doesn’t clear these roadblocks, food trucks won’t be able to survive in Chicago. And while there’s no doubt this would please the restaurant industry and some aldermen, it’d be a huge loss for customers and the city’s food scene.