Miracle Mile Lunch Trucks examines the competition between “permanent” businesses and food trucks in one neighborhood in Los Angeles:
For food truck lovers — and there are many in this city — Wilshire Boulevard near South Curson Avenue is a mecca, distinguished by the sheer number of upscale trucks it attracts. On Wednesday about 1 p.m., there were nearly a dozen. Across the street from the La Brea Tar Pits, the India Jones Chow Truck, Mrs. Beasley’s Dessert Truck and Fishlips Sushi were all crowded into half a block.
For restaurant owners, the trucks are competition that take away business and hog precious metered parking spaces. Some shop owners are said to have called the police on trucks that languish beyond the allowed hour at a meter.
It sounds delicious—but I can understand why “permanent” business owners are threatened. On the other hand (I used to work in this area), I wish the permanent businesses were tastier.
June 17th, 2010 at 5:41 am
AS far as I can tell, food truck are a HUGE LA tradition. They have gone really upscale, and a lot of permanent businesses have taken to sending out trucks of their own.
It’s called healthy competition and maybe they should be getting creative rather than complaining about it?
June 17th, 2010 at 5:47 am
Possibly the permanent businesses need their own food trucks….
August 19th, 2010 at 9:22 am
Hm. I’ve not heard about that before. In this part of England they don’t have them, at least; not sure about the rest of the country. I can see both sides. For the trucks it is a good way of generating business, being able to shift around and park where they like and so forth, and customers might think it quirky, which makes business even better. For the business owners, though, they don’t have the option of being quirky and moving about, and even if it is only when normally regular customers that use the set-in-place restaurants/cafes see the trucks and think “ooh, just this once” and never use said trucks again, the business has still lost business, and if lots and lots of customers think “ooh, just this once”, then that is a lot of lost business (even if, as I said, they really did only do it the once).
So I - very helpfully - can’t make up my mind about it either way.
*shrugs, helplessly*
August 19th, 2010 at 9:24 am
…Though I agree with the comment above mine: about businesses hiring trucks and playing the truck n’ stop guys at their own game. That might work.
See, this is why I should read comments before making a comment of my own… *blushes*