So Halifax wants more diversity in their Food Trucks, and a bigger fleet of trucks to cater to our appetites. I love the idea, but what about the local restaurants and fast food places that will suffer? A restaurant on Spring Garden has insanely high rent which they use to figure out their prices. Food trucks do not have this overhead! They have costs of their own, but its a fraction of what the rent would cost for a shop, which is why their prices are so low and they get so much business. A restaurant pays the rent for a large space so their patrons can eat, a food truck relies on public spaces and sidewalks. How is this fair? Let’s establish more places for food trucks and base their rent on what restaurants pay in the area, thats fair. Or, let the trucks set up where ever and whenever they want, and watch our downtown businesses die an even faster death. Then even retail outlets can just hang their clothes on telephone poles and have great prices. —Hungry, But Well-Educated
This article appears in Mar 7-13, 2013.
Well, there are two types of snack trucks. The ones that remain stationery and pay the municipality for that spot and the ones that go from business to business. Downtown Halifax is not a good place for the business to business ones as it contains large buildings and highrises. Burnside, for example, is set up much better for those.
The stationery ones like that fry truck by the SGR library are potentially the bigger threat to the restaurants if there are more of them and they diversify. Still they must pay a pretty penny for those spots maybe not as much as the rent restos pay but I would guess it’s not cheap. Besides, a lot of restaurant allure is the sit-down and ambience and the trucks don’t offer that.
“How is this fair?” – Life isn’t fair, get over it and leave the chip wagons alone. It’s not like the wagon owners are rolling in cash, jackass.
^What the Captain said.
OB be jelly….
they aren’t doing shit-all to business in the area.
If they are, get all business-y and undercut their price and sell plates of fries and sausages to your ‘patrons’ until they go extinct.
sorry for the terrible link but check out the food wolf’s response to this terrible argument…
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=269…
it’s food in a truck, non-issue. customers will go or not, lots of ideas out there http://smallfoodbiz.files.wordpress.com/20…
Buying and maintaining those trucks isn’t cheap, OB.
damn, i had a good comment ready, then i looked at the bitch again. oh well.
haha, i’m sure there were others too
Great post secretagent!
All I can say is…
I can’t wait for the Panini truck to open!!!!
Nothin’ like sitting on a bench in the driving rain & wind blowing a gale while trying to eat yer fries. Yes indeed no resturant can ever compete against a food truck with that kind of wonderful ambiance for a lunch break
My family used to run two different fry trucks in downtown Halifax and it takes a huge amount of money to run this business.. its not as easy as it looks.. and those people running their business has to pay for the spot they have.. its called tender or something like that. I believe there is a silent auction where all the different businesses bid money for which spot they want. Problem is if someone has more money one year or some new guys come in town your ususal spot can be taken away from you and then you have to goto plan B.. and downtown Halifax only has a number of good spots available.. not to mention.. seriously.. why does someone running a cafe or eat in place deserve to have customers over a truck? Some things that should be noted are that most trucks do not stay out over night (its usually just hotdog guys at night), they are not busy enough or warm enough to work thoughout winter.. and when it rains most of them take the day off! This person bitched without thinking first!
Great points, missjlneary, I had a friend who owned the ‘J.F. Lovely’ chip truck back in the early 80s – and as his t-shirts noted was ‘Located Directly Above The Centre of the Earth’ – he had the Spring Garden sweet spot in front of the library for a while and, as missjlneary noted, it was a work-yer-arse-off business. And all the hassel of the politics re licenses et al. Nice hot summer day and you’re sweating your bag over a deep fryer? It’s not for the faint at heart. Get over it, OP. You’re talking shit.