The study ranks American cities by the food-truck friendliness of their regulatory climates, using average scores to indicate the ease or difficulty of three distinct activities: obtaining permits and licenses, complying with restrictions, and operating a food truck. Several of America’s largest cities are already experiencing slower, or zero, growth of their local food truck economy. After five years of rapid growth, expected food truck growth is now only 0.4% a year through 2020. Market research by IBISWorld found that “despite strong performance…high competition and unfavorable regulatory conditions in some cities have limited the growth of industry vendors.” That report predicts food truck growth will grind to a halt over the next few years. In spite of rapid growth, regulatory barriers appear to be slowing a once hot industry. While official figures on that type of growth are elusive, neighborhoods where food trucks cluster, such as around Washington, D.C.’s Farragut Square, have seen visible, concomitant growth in brick-and-mortar establishments.

In nearly every city in which they set up shop, food trucks offer a net positive to the established restaurant industry. That trend of food trucks morphing into and being a part of brick-and-mortar restaurants is accelerating. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, we see the scale and severity of the damage caused by a range of these regulatory roadblocks.Ĭompiling in-depth analysis of food-truck rules from 20 American cities, as well as in-depth surveys from 288 food truck owners, the study concludes that “in spite of rapid growth, regulatory barriers appear to be slowing a once hot industry.” In Food Truck Nation, a new study from the U.S. But alas, such opportunities are beginning to disappear in many cities across the country, leaving many struggling beneath the weight of a growing pile of rules and regulations. In the restaurant industry, for example, food trucks have posed a healthy challenge to the status quo, rattling entrenched corporate interests, diminishing barriers to entry, and expanding opportunities for aspiring restaurateurs of all backgrounds. But while the wars over wages tend to be the loudest and most prominent, we mustn’t forget the pains and misfortunes due to plain-old regulatory excess, subtle and unexciting though it may be. We’ve seen it with the recent embrace of the $15 minimum wage, which continues to cripple and dismantle small businesses wherever it’s found, from Seattle to Minneapolis to California to New York. The painful irony, of course, is that the victims of such policies are not the fat-cat cronyists at the top, but the scrappy challengers at the bottom. As protestors continue to boldly decry “corporate greed” with little definition or discernment, progressive policymakers are just as quick to push a range of wage controls and market manipulations to mitigate the supposed vices of free and open exchange.

Harvard food truck challenge tips