Why Food Trucks Are Not Evil

desserttruck.com

Please, please, PLEASE come to OC, Dessert Truck!

​Nancy Luna (the Fast Food Maven) is someone whose writing I admire, and she scoops absolutely everything about fast food in OC. I know that when the Buttermilk Truck or the Grilled Cheese Truck or any of the other, suddenly-fashionable higher-end food trucks come to OC, she will know about it before they even tweet it, and so I was glad to see a post about more food trucks coming to OC, because it probably means she has insider information.

I read through the post (and Nancy, you're a food truck tease) and am excited by what I read, but the comments! The comments made me cringe.

You'd think I'd have learned by now never, ever, ever to read comments on any story at all on the Register's website. There has to be some kind of OC corollary to Godwin's Law, whereby the chance of someone ranting, usually completely off-topic, about illegal immigrants increases exponentially with the length of the comment thread.

The comments on Nancy's post weren't as xenophobic as normal for the Register, but they still made me cringe. They contain nearly all the stereotypical, misinformed objections to food trucks. Read on, dear readers, as I tackle the big ones in turn:

1. Sanitation

Courtesy of Bill Esparza

It's hard to be unsanitary when your customers can see everything about your operation.

​Let's just get this right out of the way. I have eaten at food vendors from Hong Kong to London. I have eaten so-called "dirty water" hot dogs, barbecue brisket, grilled squid on sticks, Mexico City-style quesadillas de huitlacoche and, yes, Korean grilled pork tacos, and I have never gotten sick. Not only have I never gotten sick from a mobile vendor, I don't know anyone who has ever gotten sick from food from a mobile vendor. I have, however, gotten food poisoning on multiple occasions at bricks-and-mortar restaurants. Now, while the ratio of time I eat at mobile vendors vs. bricks-and-mortar restaurants is fairly low, it's definitely high enough that I should have gotten sick by now if sanitation were the issue the detractors say it is.

The simple fact is that there's nothing to hide about the sanitation of a food truck, because food trucks are almost always small mom-and-pop operations that succeed or fail based on word of mouth. If a food truck (I'm sorry, leasing people, I'm not going to call them "road stoves") poisons someone, it is the kiss of death for that business, so they are going to make absolutely sure that they don't. They're under constant inspection by their patrons, who can see exactly what is going on in there. If they engage in unsanitary practices, people will just leave, and they'll tell others, and it's curtains for the owner.

2. Neighborhood disturbance

joits @ flickr.com CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Parking trucks away from homes helps keep the peace.

​This one depends on where you are. Somehow, I don't really see food trucks driving into the maze of tracts that makes up most of OC's residential zone. Most food trucks don't want to pull into residential neighborhoods, because there's hardly any traffic that drives by; eating at a food truck is often an impulse decision ("I'm hungry... mmm, barbacoa.") and the trucks are there to make money, just like any other business.

This is one complaint, however, where the food trucks can take a step to make sure they're being good neighbors. Don't stop in parking lots adjacent to residences (such as the weekly Kogi stop at Luigi's D'Italia in Anaheim); pick a spot that isn't going to keep people awake in their houses until the wee hours. Provide trash (and recycling) receptacles.

For those people who choose to flout the rules, the answer is simple: fine them. Fine customers for littering, or fine the trucks for not cleaning up after their patrons. We already have laws about littering: enforce them. There will always be people who don't want to be good neighbors, but the solution is not to ban food trucks completely. Fine the bad ones and let the good ones sell food in peace.