Food Trucks in Jax: DVI Board Votes No

[thelakelander]

In my view, food trucks would attract mostly the same lunch crowd that eats lunch Downtown right now, thus canabilzing the brick & mortars business....which matter more than food trucks.

Bill Hoff or Mayor Bob Buckhorn?  Who's right and who's wrong?

In the city of Tampa, the issue hasn't been the regulations as much as parking issues and raising awareness about food trucks.  In the little over a year that Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn has been in office, he's ensured that the trucks there are properly equipped with all the appropriate fire and safety equipment and created a monthly food truck rally in Downtown Tampa.  Instead of taking business away from restaurants downtown, Buckhorn said the rallies have actually brought more business to them during the rallies.

"They've given our downtown a tremendous shot in the arm," said Buckhorn, who calls himself the mayor of food trucks.  He encouraged Jacksonville's leaders to support the trend. "The long-term impacts of reinvigorating your downtown far surpass the inconveniences of dealing with the codes," he said.

Btw, I'm not trying to be funny.  However, I am trying to make a point about opinion verses fact and the need to research before making economic impacting public policy decisions.

[thelakelander]

http://www.youtube.com/v/s85mMDQVWaI?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0"

The newest food craze to hit the Tampa Bay area is food trucks (www.tampagov.net/foodtruck)â€"and the mayor’s on board in a big way. These traveling food emporiums are fixtures around town and during the monthly Food Truck Fiesta in the city’s Gaslight Square Park, inaugurated by Mayor Bob Buckhorn, a reported food truck aficionado.

“It’s not only great food, but it’s an amazing draw for our downtown. It draws a couple thousand people,” Buckhorn says. “It’s been the best shot in the arm for downtown Tampa in a long time.”

If your group can’t be there for the festivities, held the first Wednesday of every month, not to worryâ€"several of the food trucks have regular lunch stops and even cater to private group functions.

http://www.meetingsfocus.com/Magazines/ArticleDetails/tabid/136/RegionID/211/ArticleID/17825/Default.aspx#top

[Bill Hoff]

Because we've evaluated other cities where the trucks have actually done what we're claiming.  Tampa is a great example.  Anyone who really wants to see if person should consider a day trip down there when one of the rallies are taking place.

I'm all for the monthly rallies, like in Tampa. DVI also stated they support these. It's a great idea. I suggested Hemming Plaza, in another thread, for the location, and you mentioned the new court house green as another good spot. Let's do it.


Why all of the fear about allowing small business growth in the urban core, in the form of a food truck generating foot traffic in the dead zones of downtown?

Of course there's no fear about supporting small business and generating foot traffic, that's ideal. But not at the expense of other small business that have made a large and tangible investment in Downtown. And if a daily, lunch time food truck space is allowed among brick & mortars, it will directly hurt brick and mortars.......unless the food trucks draw in scores of new people from outside Downtown. MJ has covered the perils of parking Downtown in great detail, and potential new patrons from outside of Downtown would (usually) only have a 30-60 minute window for lunch and travel, so I don't see many traveling into Downtown and combating the chronicled parking perils to visit a few food trucks.

Perhaps I'm wrong, and that'd be great news.


You're view isn't supported by the reality of what's occurring in cities like Tampa.  Policy decisions should not be made on opinions without a basis of factual data to support them.  What facts are you basing your opinion upon?

I think you misundstood my view. I'm all for monthly food truck events, a la Tampa.

What have I based my opinion on? There's also negative articles about food trucks v brick & mortars out there. It's not all positive, beleive it or not. Google is a wonderful instrument. Every city is different and has different dynamics.

I hope Downtown Jax has a similar monthly event soon, as well as late night food trucks and special event food trucks, as supported by DVI. This way, food truck operators make more money, they get their own special on-going event, and the exisiting brick and mortars who've made a substantial, tangible investment in Downtown continue to benefit as well.

Just one person's opinion.

[Bill Hoff]

hmm
the nations largest 'brick and mortar' restaurants also seem to disagree with both DVI and Bill Hoff:

I don't think myself or DVI said they weren't profitable .... they are. In fact, a family member is looking into investing in one.

[duvaldude08]

I'm curious as to why people think these food trucks would draw new people into Downtown for lunch.

After all, they'd have to fight the much talked about parking problems in Downtown which have been highligthed 1000 times on MJ, and do so with a limited amount of time to travel to Downtown, park, eat, and return to where they came from.

In my view, food trucks would attract mostly the same lunch crowd that eats lunch Downtown right now, thus canabilzing the brick & mortars business....which matter more than food trucks.

Not true. I work on the southbank and I do not eat downtown for lunch. Not enough variety and I need something quick. If there were a variety of food trucks down there, I would go and able to get back from lunch on time.

[thelakelander]

Because we've evaluated other cities where the trucks have actually done what we're claiming.  Tampa is a great example.  Anyone who really wants to see if person should consider a day trip down there when one of the rallies are taking place.

I'm all for the monthly rallies, like in Tampa. DVI also stated they support these. It's a great idea. I suggested Hemming Plaza, in another thread, for the location, and you mentioned the new court house green as another good spot. Let's do it.


Why all of the fear about allowing small business growth in the urban core, in the form of a food truck generating foot traffic in the dead zones of downtown?

Of course there's no fear about supporting small business and generating foot traffic, that's ideal. But not at the expense of other small business that have made a large and tangible investment in Downtown. And if a daily, lunch time food truck space is allowed among brick & mortars, it will directly hurt brick and mortars.......unless the food trucks draw in scores of new people from outside Downtown. MJ has covered the perils of parking Downtown in great detail, and potential new patrons from outside of Downtown would (usually) only have a 30-60 minute window for lunch and travel, so I don't see many traveling into Downtown and combating the chronicled parking perils to visit a few food trucks.

Perhaps I'm wrong, and that'd be great news.


You're view isn't supported by the reality of what's occurring in cities like Tampa.  Policy decisions should not be made on opinions without a basis of factual data to support them.  What facts are you basing your opinion upon?

I think you misundstood my view. I'm all for monthly food truck events, a la Tampa.

What have I based my opinion on? There's also negative articles about food trucks v brick & mortars out there. It's not all positive, beleive it or not. Google is a wonderful instrument. Every city is different and has different dynamics.

I hope Downtown Jax has a similar monthly event soon, as well as late night food trucks and special event food trucks, as supported by DVI. This way, food truck operators make more money, they get their own special on-going event, and the exisiting brick and mortars who've made a substantial, tangible investment in Downtown continue to benefit as well.

Just one person's opinion.

Bill, did you overlook the point where Tampa doesn't limit trucks from operating everyday in their downtown?  In addition to allowing trucks to freely roam daily, they complement this with a monthly food truck rally.  So, unless you're for not limiting their access to downtown, you're off base with that example, just like DVI's board was.

[Bill Hoff]

Bill, did you overlook the point where Tampa doesn't limit trucks from operating everyday in their downtown?  In addition to allowing trucks to freely roam daily, the complement this with a monthly food truck rally.  So, unless you're for not limiting their access to downtown, you're off base with that example, just like DVI's board was


Yes, I did overlook that.

Since all city & town have different dynamics,  I think having something like a 90 day period to test out the concept would a great idea. That's a broad enough time to see the impact, positive or negative, on existing brick & mortars.

Are there any other ideal locations at the moment besides Hemming Plaza? It certainly would fill the "programming" hole they want to fill, or would it be more appropriate to locate it in a restaurant desert.....say around the LaVilla medical building & school?

[thelakelander]

I personally don't see anything wrong with a trial period.  As for locations, I think anywhere you have a large number of surface parking lots or parking garages would be great locations for rallies, as well as the new county courthouse since there's not a single restaurant within a two block walk of it's front door.  In addition, there are more areas where designated spots (similar to what we do with the hot dog vendors) could be carved out.  All in all, there's a ton of things that should be explored and researched before out right recommending to place restrictions.  My hope is that we'll eventually get to the point of at least fulling exploring various concepts before making long term economic impacting decisions.

[fieldafm]

It's clear DVI didn't do much research on Tampa before making their statement and the followup public statements.  Tampa does not ban these trucks from downtown except for a once a month event.  In fact, Tampa has the MOST food trucks in the state.  That doesn't happen b/c you artificially create an environment where it is hard for them to operate within.

http://www.actionnewsjax.com/mostpopular/story/Downtowns-Hunger-for-Food-Trucks/6dRky-T7nESdi9oHiQ6q6A.cspx

[Tacachale]

^Having reservations about unrestricted food trucks is one thing. However, as we saw last weekend, currently it's not feasible to have even a food truck event downtown. When any entity is making it difficult or impossible for interested parties to have events downtown, it's a major problem.

[TheCat]

Rich Jones, our news partner with WOKV, 1O6.5FM&69OAM, interviewed Stephen Dare regarding food trucks and dvi...it's short, 2 minutes, but poignant.


http://www.wokv.com/Player/101325721/

You can also catch Rich Jones' morning news recap on his blog:

http://www.wokv.com/weblogs/morning-news-recap/

[simms3]

Nice.  In the interview, the interviewer mentioned that DVI has stated that food trucks are illegal in downtown, and so he questions Stephen on whether the law needs to be changed or if Stephen doesn't like the decision.

Not only does that sound patently absurd to say that food trucks are blatantly illegal (though that may be), why would DVI even hold a vote if it were already legal.  Was the vote to change a law?  I thought the vote was to determine if members of DVI thought it would be ok to allow them.  Is the law that anything that occurs downtown be put to vote by DVI's members?

There are just too many holes going on here in this situation and I would like for someone to break it down for me so I can understand.

[simms3]

On another note, and the reason I came back to this discussion, we just held a food truck event at one of our struggling redevelopment properties in Chattanooga.

8 trucks showed up, massive crowds turned out, and the Food Court (which is really a local food kiosk mercantile in the lower level) had record sales that day.  In a spit of irony, both our restaurants and our food court operators did historical business on the same day we had 8 food trucks, and now we are going to make this a routine thing (and our tenants really want this event).

Perhaps DVI members should look at other food truck examples, whether in active downtowns with actual restaurants or parking lots of shopping centers with restaurant tenants, etc etc, and ask their own questions.  It sounds like DVI members a) don't think things through with logic and b) don't have any outside knowledge about the world in which they operate, nor do they seem interested in learning.

[Anti redneck]

What does Brown think of the food truck ban? Has he spoken on the topic?

[fieldafm]

Can't find the video... but Action News had a segment on Saturday night about the event.
If anyone has the link to the video, please post it here.  They covered the event and also did a segment with Driftwood BBQ Sat night.

http://www.actionnewsjax.com/mostpopular/story/Food-truck-vendors-hope-to-help-revitalize/w_W_MbtcVke6iQ3dq2N65Q.cspx


There were also a few clips Friday morning

http://mms.tveyes.com/Transcript.asp?StationID=2415&DateTime=3%2F30%2F2012+6%3A25%3A30+AM&Term=Second+Harvest&PlayClip=TRUE

http://mms.tveyes.com/Transcript.asp?StationID=2410&DateTime=3%2F30%2F2012+6%3A25%3A31+AM&Term=Second+Harvest&PlayClip=TRUE

http://mms.tveyes.com/Transcript.asp?StationID=2415&DateTime=3%2F30%2F2012+7%3A13%3A57+AM&Term=Second+Harvest&PlayClip=TRUE

http://mms.tveyes.com/Transcript.asp?StationID=2415&DateTime=3%2F30%2F2012+7%3A32%3A41+AM&Term=Second+Harvest&PlayClip=TRUE

http://mms.tveyes.com/Transcript.asp?StationID=2415&DateTime=3%2F30%2F2012+7%3A32%3A41+AM&Term=Second+Harvest&PlayClip=TRUE


Kerry Speckman has a wrapup about her experience here:
http://www.thespecktator.com/2012/03/1097/

Pictures are up on the Facebook page
facebook.com/JaxTruckies

Visit Jacksonville had info about the event on their social media feeds and on their website. 

First Coast News announced the event

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/local/article/249890/3/Jax-Truckies-Food-Truck-Championship-Saturday

Jacksonville.com had a previous article about the event

http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/423471/gary-mills/2012-03-06/jax-truckies-food-truck-championship-set-march-31

Coverage should be in Jacksonville Mag and Folio Weekly

If you are on Twitter you can hear what people are saying about the event here:

twitter.com/JaxTruckies

Roaming Hunger (a food truck website) had the even on their social media feeds

Here is the podcast for Melissa Ross' First Coast Connect show

http://www.wjct.org/mp3/fcc/fccmar2912.mp3

Stilly trying to get the video posted of Action New's coverage of the event on the news.

In the meantime:

http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/423471/gary-mills/2012-04-05/inaugural-jax-truckies-food-truck-event-just-beginning