ProgressLex

Though the summer has been busy, I was happy to be able to attend the recent Itinerant Merchant meeting last Wednesday after missing the last several. As I’m not a member of the Task Force, my role is simply to listen and comment if necessary at the end, but today’s meeting was extremely insightful and one that I think ProgressLex members and Lexingtonians interested in the developing food scene will want to stay abreast on.

Just as a bit of background, we first reported about the Itinerant Merchant Task Force back in May, when we became aware almost by accident that the city was looking at changing the current ordinances in response to the growing enthusiasm nationwide for “Food Trucks” – mobile food vendors that often specialize in fusion or ethnic cuisines at reasonable prices. But as it happens, that was the not the original purpose of the task force; rather, they were formed to address the growing concerns from residents in the 11^th District on a numbers of food vendors in the area, specifically taco trucks, which they thought were diminishing the feel of their neighborhood with additional trash, unsavory smells, and additional and often unsafe pedestrian traffic.

But to give them credit, under Councilwoman Henson’s direction, along with the support of many, the Task Force quickly realized that there was a much larger issue at stake – mainly how can they allow for an easier process to encourage a food truck culture that serves both businesspeople and customers alike that can also be well regulated.

Wednesday’s meeting included some excellent presentations, but by far the most intriguing was that done by Sean Tibbetts of CluckinBurgers, a new food truck to Lexington.

He painstakingly pointed out all the hoops his company had been forced to jump through by both LFUCG regulations as well as the local and state Health Department. Along the way, they continued to get conflicting information from the same agencies, often depending on who answered the phone on each particular day.

He also presented the challenges in finding approved locations to set up and to learn about when all the area events were taking place.

Most impressive was a total list of fees they pay ANNUALLY – totally nearly $3000. For his business, he broke that down further to show that it required him to sell more than 1400 sandwiches JUST TO PAY THE FEES!

While his hopes were obviously that some of the costs might be lowered, it was clear in his conclusion that a streamlined process that encouraged food trucks would be enormously helpful rather than the current system, which not only discourages them, they actually make them downright illegal when parked on anything but private land (and even then its massively cumbersome!). He adamantly believed that the market was willing to support these new businesses, if the city would just “get out of the way.”

At the end of the meeting, Councilwoman Henson asked each Task Force member to go home and consider what changes they might like to see in the regulations. These might concern new definitions for food truck vendors (as opposed to the only 2 options available now as either peddlers or itinerant merchants), suggested processes for helping these businesses get set up, ways to determine where and when they can operate, and ways to ensure they do not cause unnecessary headaches. She then asked that these suggestions be emailed to the Task Force in preparation for the next meeting, to be held on Sept 21^st. They plan to look through them and compile them into a draft of a new ordinance.

So here’s where we need your help.

If you care about this issue at all, we need to hear from you.

If you’re a foodie who just wants better food options for Lexington.

If you think the low start up costs might be just the kind of local jobs we want to stimulate.

If you just want our city to be progressive enough to adapt to this new trend rather than throwing up complicated and discriminatory regulations.

Maybe you just don’t want to sit back and see the typical response of “we’ve never done it that way, so we can’t start now.”

Or maybe it’s all of these reasons or more.

We need you to take a moment to write down your suggestions and visions for Lexington’s Food Trucks. Then email them to me or put them in the comments below and I’ll compile them in time for the next meeting (in just a few weeks, so do it now!).

Let’s let the city know that this is an issue that Lexingtonians care about!

By the way, if you want to read the documents from today’s meeting or see past meeting minutes, you can always check out the link here.

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