Toronto, CAN: Food trucks need more room to grow, advocates say

Food truck operators say the city needs to create more room on the road to allow for a vibrant, growing street food scene.

But a year after council continued to relax the rules governing where food trucks can park and how they do business, Mayor John Tory says he doesn’t see the need for any more changes anytime soon.

And food truck patrons will have to wait at least another year for the debate to be revisited.

“I think that what we have to do is make sure that we have a fair chance given to the regime that’s been in place now,” said Tory, speaking to reporters at the launch of Food Truck Days in Nathan Phillips Square.

The proof that the new rules are working, the mayor said, is the growing number of trucks on the road.

Since the regulations were amended in May 2015 — most significantly reducing the distance trucks must park from brick-and-mortar restaurants from 50 to 30 metres — 44 permits have been issued, more than doubling the annual amount. Eighteen of those permits have been handed out so far this year, nearly all of them the new six-month version allowing vendors to try the road business at half the regular $5,000 fee.

There are currently 49 permitted mobile food trucks in Toronto, offering everything from sushi to tacos to grilled cheese.

“What we’ll have to see is how do they all do and what is the impact on the existing restaurant business and then it might be a fair chance at that stage to look at whether we make more changes,” said Tory, who recently ushered in changes to a different set of licensing regulations to allow Uber and similar ride-hailing companies to compete against taxis.

“For now I think the rules we have seem to be working in terms of encouraging people with new ideas and new foods to come out and give people more choice and so I wouldn’t see, for myself, any changes happening imminently.”

Food truck advocate and restaurateur Zane Caplansky says he’s disappointed by the stalled progress.

“The food truck issue has fallen off the city’s agenda,” he told the Star, saying the Uber debate has recently dominated policy-makers’ time.

The new rules, he said, were a good start. After the vote last year, he vowed they would continue to push for 15 metres and eventually no distance restrictions at all.

“That was really only meant to step in the right direction. We’re not at the finish line yet,” Caplansky said. “We scored a major victory a year ago for the birth of an industry. Now that the fears have been pushed aside by facts, let us operate.”

While the restaurant industry has pushed back on loosening food truck regulations, saying it would cripple their businesses, Caplansky said those fears have not been borne out.

“No restaurants have been closed because of food trucks,” Caplansky said. “There’s room on the city streets.”

Still, Tony Elenis, president and CEO of the Ontario Restaurant Hotel & Motel Association said while they have no hard data, some businesses are threatened by food trucks.

“We actually worked with them to bring it down to 30 (metres),” he said Wednesday. “That 30 metres should stay.”

While he said sit-down restaurants are less impacted by food trucks, he argued sandwich shops and other grab-and-go lunch spots are in direct competition with food trucks, whose owners pay far fewer fees to operate.

While food truck advocates hoped to see the issue back before council this year, staff told the Star the debate won’t return until 2017.

Word from the grill

The Star spoke with food truck owners at city hall on Wednesday to find out how business is going.

La Novela