Town Considers Stiff Food Truck Rules

The Town’s Planning Commission has pushed forward tough new food truck regulations that will strictly limit where the popular mobile food vendors can locate.

The commission last week voted to ban the trucks from locating “next to or across the street from” any traditional stationary restaurant. They also banned seating outside the food trucks.

Those new restrictions are in addition to requirements recommended by the town’s staff that would require food truck operators to obtain a permit.  To get that new permit, the operator would be required to locate only in retail areas, prove Department of Health, Environment Control compliance and prove permission from landowner to set up the truck.

The town council must still vote on the new rules, but the proposal has food truck operators in a huff. They say the rules, as proposed, effectively ban food trucks from Mount Pleasant.

“We just operate with different business models,” said Martha Walters, who operates the Magic Cheese Truck. “Our customers make a different choice … but that’s why we live in and do business in the United States, so we can try a different business model and let the public decide.”

If passed, the new restrictions would be a win for some local restaurant owners who had argued that food trucks have an unfair competitive advantage in the marketplace. The most vocal was Tony Page of Page’s Okra Grill.

Restaurant owners “located businesses in Mount Pleasant, and made significant investments, without the foreknowledge that I’d have a mobile food competitor at my doorstep,” Page said.

Commissioners added the seating and proximity rules because they wanted to "level the playing field" between the mobile food truck operators and regular restaurants.

“There is a disparity in expense between food trucks and traditional, stationary restaurants,” said Commissioner Howard Chapman.