City of Ate from p16 Top 50 honorable mentions list for the best barbecue joints in Texas. Ramirez bought his trailer for about $50,000. It has two refrigerators, a range and oven, two food warmers, two flat grills, a fryer, a three-well steam table, a three-com- partment sink and a hand-washing sink. But unless he pays for a one-day permit for an approved special event, he’s not allowed to operate in Dallas because it’s a trailer he pulls with his truck. “I didn’t do my research. I learned the hard way,” Ramirez said with a laugh. “I thought it was going to be an easy process, but nope. That’s why we ended up every- where else besides Dallas.” After he learned about the restriction, he looked into getting a food truck and learned one would cost upward of $140,000. Allow- ing only trucks creates a high barrier to en- try, stifling entrepreneurship in underserved communities where it’s needed the most. “This is a basic equity issue,” Dallas City Council member Chad West said in a recent committee meeting on the issue. “You’ve got food trucks that are very expensive to oper- ate. It’s a barrier to entry for these smaller guys because they haven’t had the benefits of this ordinance that the food trucks have had.” The truck vs. trailer issue isn’t the only rule stifling Dallas entrepreneurs. The city also requires food trucks to visit a food com- missary every day. A commissary is a licensed commercial kitchen that is regulated by the health department where food truck opera- tors can prepare, cook and store food and dis- charge wastewater. Everyone agrees that having access to a commissary is a good thing, but having to go every night is difficult. Ven- dors can’t stay in one place for any length of time, say, over a weekend. The back and forth is expensive and time-consuming. Austin’s mobile food scene is an example of how different things can look with less onerous regulations. First, Austin allows trail- ers and doesn’t distinguish among motorized, pulled or pushed mobile food operations. Vendors in Austin also have contracts with a commissary, but the city doesn’t regu- late their visits. In fact, another business has flourished from this; companies will go to the trailers and trucks to take away waste- water. Also, Austin’s permit for a trailer is less than $300 for an entire year compared with Dallas’ $250 for just one day. Umar Baig has operated Halal Mother Trucker, a mobile food truck, in Dallas for the past five years. He says so long as a truck operator has all of his permits in order, Dal- las is a good city to work in, but he does have some qualms, among them how slowly the city’s code department has operated since COVID. “I think they should let trailers be per- mitted,” Baig said.” I don’t know why you wouldn’t. That’s very dumb. It’s the same thing as a food truck, but you have a truck pulling it.” He also wishes there were more parks for trucks and trailers, “like how they do it in Austin.” Dallas is working on that, too. Terry Mooney is president of the North 18 18 Texas Food Truck Association and has helped her son operate his truck, Jack’s Chowhound, for more than a decade. Mike Brooks “Everything is very vague with food trucks,” Mooney said. “Rules change, and you don’t know that they change until you go down to renew your permit, and then all of a sudden you’re surprised with some new rule that you weren’t aware of.” That’s not just in Dallas. Cities throughout North Texas have different rules. She said that recently 30 trucks arrived for an event in Ar- lington, and 10 had to leave because the opera- tors didn’t know they had to have a gas-line pressure test done before arriving. She doesn’t disagree with the test, but truck operators didn’t know it was necessary. Instead of trying to maneuver around cities, codes and events, it’s easier to find private catering jobs, she said. “You find that you just About a year ago, council member West posted a “call to action” on his Facebook page asking for industry comments on what ex- actly needed to change that “could allow more food service providers to enter the busi- ness and more equitable access to food op- tions throughout the city.” West isn’t alone in pushing for action. In a committee meeting in January, council mem- ber Omar Narvaez said, “We are behind as a city with these [regulations]. We’re decades behind already from other major cities, so let’s see how we can catch up.” Adam Bazaldua, chair of the council’s “YOU SHOULDN’T look for private parties and corporate events to keep your life simple instead of dealing with a lot of these different festivals and cities. It just becomes too hard,” Mooney said. “And the in- spections and stuff, a lot of times these inspectors will come out and want to in- spect your truck, which they should — they need to do that — but they wait un- til you’ve got a huge line out the door, 300 people in line and they want to come in and inspect your truck.” Baig sees an opportunity for Dallas to create a better culture around food trucks, but there needs to be more opportunity. These issues aren’t new. The Observer has been covering the city’s regulation of trucks since at least 2014, and now some City Council members are getting impatient. In November 2020, five city council mem- bers signed a letter requesting Mayor Eric Johnson’s office to place an item on the council’s agenda regarding food truck regu- lations before the end of the year. That didn’t happen. NEED A LAWYER WITH YOU AT AN EVENT TO TELL YOU IF YOU’RE IN COMPLIANCE OR NOT.” - KRISTA NIGHTENGALE WITH BETTER BLOCK FOUNDATION Quality of Life, Arts and Culture Commit- tee, is both a City Coun- cil member and trained chef who taught a culi- nary class in Dallas ISD, and even he was puzzled by the delay. “I’m just kind of at a loss for what the wait is for,” Bazaldua said. Their impatience is understandable. The In- stitute for Justice, a non- profit public interest law firm, has been touting the benefits of food trucks for a decade. In a 2012 re- port, they wrote, “Food trucks give entrepreneurs with big dreams, but only a little capital, a way to start their own food-service busi- nesses. In many instances, trucks serve as a stepping stone toward opening a brick and mortar space.” After a decade of grappling with getting the city’s mobile dining business in gear, the City Council and a nonprofit are finally tak- ing the wheel. The Better Block Foundation helped an- swer West’s call to get something done about mobile food vending. Better Block is a local nonprofit that looks for ways to help commu- nities and improve neighborhoods. Last spring it created the MLK Food Park, a pop-up incu- René Ramirez bought a trailer for 225 BBQ and discovered Dallas allows only trucks. bator specifically for South Dallas culinary en- trepreneurs. For four weeks, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons, vendors in a variety of mobile formats set up shop in the Forest District neighborhood. It was a success. More than 5,000 people attended. The purpose of the MLK Food Park was to test what works, what doesn’t and make recommendations to the city. Even it had problems with the types of mobile food ven- dors allowed and complicated codes. “You shouldn’t need a lawyer with you at an event to tell you if you’re in compliance or not,” said Krista Nightengale, Better Block’s executive director. Some codes can’t even be explained, like the one that says mobile food vendors can’t prepare fresh chicken or shrimp; it must be frozen then fried. Better Block offered a handful of recom- mendations to the council committee on March 29: The city should clear up its defini- tion of what counts as a “mobile food prepa- ration vehicle” to include anything that “is self-propelled or can be pulled or pushed safely down a sidewalk, street or highway ... that complies with health and transportation standards.” It should simplify permitting and allow the preparation of all foods at mobile operations that meet health standards. Fi- nally, the city should reduce the requirement for commissary visits to once per week or as necessary for qualified operators. Nightengale and Better Block worked di- rectly with Chauncy Williams, the assistant director at Dallas Code Compliance Depart- ment. Williams studied the recommenda- tions to make sure they were feasible for city staff to manage. At the meeting on March 29, Williams re- ported to the committee that they should move forward with all the suggested changes. The members of the committee unanimously agreed. The next stop is the full City Council. MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014 APRIL 7–13, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | MOVIES | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | SCHUTZE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS | DALLAS OBSERVER CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.com dallasobserver.com
