City will try to revive street food
The city is planning to double the permissible locations for street food trucks this season, and several boroughs are lightening up on requirements for terrasses.
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Kate
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dmdiem 13:14 on 2021-03-12 Permalink
The entire purpose of food trucks is that they can go anywhere. Let them.
Kate 14:05 on 2021-03-12 Permalink
I just canvassed a group of people I know online, most of whom don’t live here. Not all towns in the U.S. allow food trucks. Ones that do, they often limit them in the same way Montreal does. Limits on where they can park and how close they can be to regular restaurants, are both common. It’s not a free-for-all.
The only complaint I’m not seeing is price. Montreal has gone in for making food truck menus somewhat upscale, which I think kind of shot the whole program in the foot from the beginning.
dmdiem 15:07 on 2021-03-12 Permalink
I imagine this is a thing that the market would largely self regulate. Trucks would generally avoid residential neighbourhoods because there’s no profit there. No problem. However, if there is a profit there that would mean that the locals want the food trucks around. So no problem again. I would think the bulk of food trucks would find themselves around high foot traffic areas like parks or festival events.
I agree with you 100% about prices. The whole other point about food trucks is that low overhead equals inexpensive food. Also when you couple that with a low cost of entry, it allows food trucks to be wildly experimental with minimal damage from failure.
One of the few problems I could imagine is say if a sushi truck parks in front of a sushi restaurant and charges half the price for the same menu. Regulations there makes sense. However if a pizza truck parks in front of a sushi shop and the sushi shop goes under, it was going to go under anyway. It wasn’t the trucks fault. People usually go out with a specific place or food in mind. Having another option nearby generally doesn’t change their mind. Although, to be fair, I have on occasion found myself walking around a restaurant district just looking for something to catch my eye. Or stomach, rather.
Hmmm. I didn’t realize I cared this much about food trucks. Go figure. Maybe I’m just hungry.
Kate 15:30 on 2021-03-12 Permalink
dmdiem, I wonder right now if there would necessarily be no profit in stopping in some residential neighbourhoods around lunchtime. Obviously I haven’t taken a survey, but my strong impression is that a lot of the folks on my block in Villeray have been working from home now for a year.
If you could harness technology to create a system where, say, people got texted around 11 a.m. that a food truck would stop at a nearby corner between noon and 1 p.m., they might well decide to skip making lunch and go out to get something from the truck instead. Could that be made profitable?
dmdiem 16:04 on 2021-03-12 Permalink
Holy crap. I didn’t even think of the work from home crowd. Imagine a food truck slowly rolling through the neighbourhood playing some sort of ice cream truck jingle…. People would be pouring out of their homes screaming, “yes I would very much like tacos now please!”
An all in one food truck app would be an insanely good idea.
1). Shows where all the trucks in the city currently are and what food they have.
2). Each truck could upload their route for the day. You could see when each truck is going to be nearby.
3). If the truck was just driving around randomly, it could ping you when it’s nearby and you could respond “yes please” and the truck could pull up right in front of your house.
4). Everyone who wants a particular food could let the app know and the truck could calculate a route around the city to hit everyone.
If only the city would let the trucks off the leash, this would be a billion dollar app.
MarcG 17:06 on 2021-03-12 Permalink
This has some of those features https://streetfoodapp.com/vancouver
dmdiem 17:26 on 2021-03-12 Permalink
Very cool. I’ve heard that Vancouver food trucks are amazing. Can we do that here, please? Preferably before lunch tomorrow.
Kevin 17:39 on 2021-03-12 Permalink
Way out in Pincourt there are a couple locations where the chip truck routinely parks- and it’s mostly in residential areas, or areas near parks. And they don’t need a storefront to prep food — they can do it in the truck.
DeWolf 20:40 on 2021-03-12 Permalink
Imagine if a cavalcade of food trucks were allowed to operate in the old Mile End garment district. They could park along de Gaspé or in the St-Louis arena parking lot, feed all the Ubisoft and other workers around there. Not only would it be fun and lively, it might take pressure off the St-Viateur real estate market and reduce the number of takeout restaurants that exist primarily to serve tech workers.
Montreal is a great town for eating refined cuisine at affordable prices. But it’s not very good at offering a diverse range of casual, cheap eats. Loosening food truck regulations could be a way to help with that. Food trucks are meant to be an affordable way for somebody to get into the food business, but we’ve made them some cumbersome and expensive to operate that only corporate restaurant groups and well-established residents can afford to run a food truck, which defeats the whole purpose of having them.