Chicago meals vans can be permitted to park and keep in a single authorized area for 4 hours — double the present restrict — below a mayoral plan embraced by a restaurant business as soon as dead-set in opposition to meals vans.
The ordinance launched by Mayor Lori Lightfoot at Wednesday’s City Council assembly would additionally create a everlasting, two-year license for cellular retailers which have been working for years below short-term standing.
Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s tried to create a brand new and everlasting designation for “mobile merchants” solely to run right into a buzzsaw of opposition from aldermen involved that the brand new class would create a double commonplace that treats the closely regulated meals truck business unfairly and, probably, illegally.
Lightfoot’s ordinance solves the double commonplace drawback by offering aid for a meals truck business that has chafed at a rule that requires them to park a minimum of 200 ft away from brick and mortar eating places and keep in a single place for now not than two hours.
Instead, the park-in-one-place restrict can be doubled to 4 hours with the blessing of an Illinois Restaurant Association that after considered meals vans as a menace to brick and mortar eating places.
“You park in the food truck zone. You’ve got to get your fryers going. You’ve got to get your propane gas all set up. Get your water going. It could take anywhere from 15-to-30 minutes to set up. Then, you’ve got to break down. All they really have is an hour [or less] to sell food,” stated Illinois Restaurant Association President Sam Toia, former proprietor of Leona’s Restaurants.
“In weather like today, I don’t know how many people are going to a food truck. So, we’re okay with them being parked in a location for four hours. We figured this would help make it more profitable for them.”
Gabriel Wiesen, the meals truck proprietor serving as president of the Illinois Food Truck Association, couldn’t be reached for remark.
Ald. Tom Tunney (44th), proprietor of Ann Sather Restaurants, referred to as the four-hour restrict a “concession” that can assist make meals truck house owners “more vibrant” whereas relieving town of an enforcement burden it might probably’t deal with.
“Who is going to monitor how many hours you’re there — whether it was two, three or four [hours]. Realistically, we probably don’t have the resources to monitor it,” Tunney stated.
“I’m here for the lunch break. I get there at 11 a.m. and I get out at 2 p.m. Is somebody gonna fine me for the two-hours and 15 minute stay? This is more practical.”
The two-hour rule was put into place in 2012 as a part of the landmark ordinance that lastly allowed for cooking aboard meals vans.
But a joint 2015 investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times and ABC7 discovered that meals truck house owners have been thumbing their noses on the two-hour rule. They stayed in the identical place for six hours or longer with out ever being cited for his or her violations.
Chicago presently has 100 energetic meals vans. That consists of 65 “mobile food preparers” who do their cooking and meals preparation on board and 35 “mobile food dispensers” that promote meals ready off-site.
The two-year license charge is $1,100 for cellular meals preparers and $700 cellular meals dispensers.
The metropolis’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection has up to now issued 34 citations to meals vans this 12 months after writing 45 tickets throughout all of 2018.
Soon after the 2012 ordinance went into impact, meals truck house owners filed a lawsuit in opposition to town difficult one other longstanding rule prohibiting them from working inside 200 ft of a brick-and-mortar restaurant.
In May, the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the landmark Chicago ordinance. Six months later, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to think about the case, bringing the litigation to an finish.
The proposed, two-year license for cellular retailers will price $250. It will permit entrepreneurs to promote non-food gadgets between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. from any authorized parking area in Chicago…