St Tammany parish has ruined the restaurant business on the North Shore. There are over 95 mom and pop places in Mandeville. Covington has 78...just downtown. Good places close and they just let more open up. The market is controlled by real estate agents...the authorities of jurisdiction just rubber stamp every restaurant application yet they thwart every other type of business in the name of regulation. They aren't about to let trucks come in under that scenario. If an area has a shortage of restaurants...that's a different story.
I do sell lunches to offices out of my house now that I closed the doors to the cafe....but I still have a valid business license in the parish until Jan 1.
I know...but what I'm doing is still not completely legal...My home kitchen doesn't meet board of health standards. And I have 15 illegal Mexicans living in a tent in my back yard cooking for me and cutting the grass !!
Perhaps, but we don't own restaurants and are speaking as food consumers and citizens. For the sake of argument, one would counter that they don't owe property taxes or water and sewerage fees because they don't apply. One could also point out that restaurants have many more advantages over food trucks, as I pointed out above. And that they have expenses that you don't have (gasoline, vehicle fees, parking fees, generators, the truck itself, etc.) So, keep your Mexicans clean and green and you have no problem . Seriously, you think Taquieros don't get targeted by the Border Patrol and the Health Department? I can see not letting them set up adjacent to an established restaurant. I agree that they should be sufficiently regulated. I just don't think that they are trying to lure your upscale, sit-down customers away from a fine dining experience. I think they cater to the "walk-away eating a hot dog" market. Lucky Dog on steroids.
In a situation that is normal (and not toxic) where there is not one land based restaurant per fifty people...like the North Shore, there is room for those trucks. Competition is good, but restaurant growth has to be regulated. It's an unregulated free for all here. For example, downtown Covington already has about 80 restaurants. EIGHTY....not counting fast food places. Not counting Hwy 190. Not counting the Boondoggle Pinnacle shopping center that the short sighted, paid off parish councilmen approved (thinking it would be another Lakeside but is now filled with big box chain restaurants). So the people that own Chimes Grill come in and ask the mayor: "I know you have eighty restaurants downtown alone...You mind if we build a 500 seat restaurant right here and put about ten small ones out of business?" The answer is "Sure go right ahead !!" And I know damn well that a small warehouse there at that location would have been rejected out of hand. My rant is not so much against food trucks as it is about short sighted politicians that have an open agenda of turning Historic Covington, Mandeville and Abita Springs into a cultural equivalent of Lincoln, Nebraska. You see, big boxes like even the Chimes do nothing to carry on and perpetuate the culture like the small mom and pop restaurants (and even food trucks) do.
My favorite thing in New York were the hot dogs. They weren't even in trucks, rather, carts. My wife laughed her azz off at how many I ate.
