Street food: not for this summer
Marie-Claude Lortie talks about the benefits of street food, while on Canoe there’s a reminder that permission won’t come this summer – we have to wait for results of a study, which may take long enough for enthusiasm to safely die down again.
Bill Binns 08:59 on 2012/06/14 Permalink
The city should fund a study to measure the effectiveness of city funded studies.
paul 09:11 on 2012/06/14 Permalink
No joke…do they really need to do a study??
Has this not been studied before?
Just print-off the guidelines for street food from the City of Portland, translate them, and you are ready to go! Much cheaper and likely more effective than anything we could come up with.
Ephraim 09:13 on 2012/06/14 Permalink
@Bill But after that, they would need to study the effectiveness of studies of studies.
While I love the idea of street food, how fair is this to the restaurants in the neighbourhood that pay rent and taxes? Something should be done to equalize this as part of the permit and licence.
William 09:23 on 2012/06/14 Permalink
Honestly, the debate over this minor question has to be the most #firstworldproblems issue in the media at the moment. Why not just have proper kiosks installed that can be used as needed in the areas involved and that can be used by approved traders on application? It would be a lot more attractive to look at and a hell of a lot less stinky.
Charles 09:30 on 2012/06/14 Permalink
I still don’t get the whole street food thing… Isn’t it better to sit down and eat and take the time to taste the food. The whole eating on the go doesn’t seem very Montreal in my opinion. There are so many restaurants around, wouldn’t it force other places to close down. The city could encourage existing restaurants to open windows to the street and accept orders…
Bill Binns 10:09 on 2012/06/14 Permalink
I like the idea of street food but I have trouble seeing it here, at least in the downtown core. The streets have been widened to the point that our sidewalks are already too narrow to comfortably handle the pedestrian flow. Especially on St Catherine. And where do you go with your slice of pizza or taco once you have it? Other cities have lots of little plazas and such where you could sit for five minutes to take a bite. St Catherine is pretty much a solid unbroken wall of shops. Maybe they could designate a section of maisonneuve as a food truck area.
paul 10:14 on 2012/06/14 Permalink
@William – aside from tuition hikes, yes. ;-)
Food carts would need to pay taxes just like anywhere else. Local businesses should encourage them as they can bring new street traffic to areas (or vacant lots) that are under visited. If I was enacting the policy, I would limit their location to such areas specifically.
I would hope that the reduced business costs are passed onto the consumer (Grumann is not a good example of this) – bringing a major benefit for those that wish to eat-out with healthy and local food but perhaps can’t afford a restaurant. The reduced costs and easy mobility also allow chefs to take more risks and experiments (I’m looking at you Korean-creperie place) rather than serving pizza-getti as a staple.
Adam 11:38 on 2012/06/14 Permalink
“how fair is this to the restaurants in the neighbourhood that pay rent and taxes”
Fair? Why is it supposed to be fair? The purpose of selling things is for consumers to enjoy them, not to be fair to other sellers. Anyway, if food trucks are such a great racket and so much better than restaurants for the operators, then we’ll see a flood of restaurant owners closing up shop and opening on the street. Which is obviously not going to happen since last I checked places like Toronto and New York still have a few restaurants open.
What boggles my mind is that people are talking about this like it’s some kind of wacky experiment, the consequences of which are impossible to foresee. When in reality this is pretty standard everywhere else on planet Earth. Just stop banning street food and let the entrepreneurs get on with it.
Ephraim 15:32 on 2012/06/14 Permalink
Yes, fair. You are looking only at consumers, there are many factors involved, landlords, city taxes, parking. Heck, even the trucks have fights over the available locations. In some city you can’t reserve the spots until 11:30 for example, and you can’t be in the same location on a schedule or twice during a week, to give all operators a chance at the best spots. And yes, they pay city taxes and pay a fee for parking as well as city inspections, etc.
Part of the problem in this city with our bureaucrats is that everything doesn’t have a value, for accounting purposes. For example, the STM doesn’t pay for all the spaces it uses on the road because there is no value. Stationment Montreal doesn’t pay the city for the parking spaces. Bixi doesn’t pay for the street and sidewalk that they use. Contracts to repair roads don’t have a cost associated with the time the street is closed. No parking permits don’t have to post the permit number and don’t post what the permit allows, what dates, how much of the street, doesn’t explain to citizens displaced by the permit any information. Scaffolding sits on the sidewalk for free when other cities charge a daily fee that increases over time so that you are encouraged to do the work faster. If you don’t put a value to things they have no value and are squandered.
If the city make the STM pay per parking space used, you want to bet that they would start to re-evaluate each space they used? How about the police, they have reserved spots, who’s paying for them? Shouldn’t someone pay for them? They have a value. Citizens pay for permits, so the street should have a value.
elleanon 15:58 on 2012/06/14 Permalink
@billbines wrote: “Especially on St Catherine. And where do you go with your slice of pizza or taco once you have it? Other cities have lots of little plazas and such where you could sit for five minutes to take a bite.”
I think food trucks are handy for a lot of people: you want a snack in the park? hit the truck. City office tower worker? Maybe you want a change and want something a little cheaper than the food court, so they pop out to the truck to get a sandwich and take it back to your desk or lunch room. There are also many young people who eat on the streets at all hours of the night. Walk around the plateau on a Saturday morning and it’s littered with poutine, noodle and pizza containers. they find somewhere to eat, and it doesn’t appear to be inside the shops. The little Chinese food place at the corner of Pine and St Laurent was doing alright and they served food out of a window (disgusting food, might I add) with no available seating. Eating on the go is totally manageable and a very common part of life for a many Montrealers.
Adam 16:50 on 2012/06/14 Permalink
Ephraim, I’m all for having people bid for spots on which they want to park their trucks. Otherwise, I’m not sure what your response has to do with the issue of restaurants vs. food trucks.
walkerp 17:21 on 2012/06/14 Permalink
Food trucks can make specialized delicious foods at cheaper prices because of their smaller overhead.
I’m here in SF and there are freaking awesome food trucks all over the place. One morning, one happened to be parked right around the block from where I’m working. It turned out to specialize only in breakfast sandwiches and for $7 I got a Maple Glazed Pork Belly Sandwich which was seared pork belly glazed in maple syrup, pickled red onions, mustard aioli, organic arugula and a fried egg on rosemary focaccia and it was fricking delicious.
Do you not want that?
Oh yes and it was served to me in a compostable cardboard container which went into a city-wide composting bin whose contents will be taken and composted.
Montreal is really backwards at times. It’s sad, because it has such a great spirit and such a great public life. And then you see that typical Canadian negativity and pessimism and resentment and fear of change as we see in the comments above and you remember why we can’t have nice things here.
Adam 17:59 on 2012/06/14 Permalink
walkerp: Agreed 100%. This is like arguing over whether if abortion is legalized, women will use it like birth control. Maybe you could fear that 50 years ago, but at this point anyone who makes that claim is just being obtuse. This is a lot less consequential, but the arguments you hear about why we can’t just go ahead and allow street food are just as ridiculous.
Ephraim 05:56 on 2012/06/15 Permalink
@Adam – I’m simply pointing out that the system needs a way to account for the value of the spot, since it is the street and it has a value. So does the permit have a value. The value of the permit should go to the city to reduce the general bill and of course pay for such items as garbage collection.
I’m simply trying to point out that putting a value to everything within the system ensures that we cover costs properly. Do it, but not in a way that costs the taxpayer money, but that it either has no impact on taxes or lowers overall taxes.
Adam 07:34 on 2012/06/15 Permalink
Ephraim: if the trucks have to bid for the spots (rather than paying a pre-determined price) then everyone will pay whatever they think the spot is actually worth.
Tux 09:39 on 2012/06/15 Permalink
If you have to pay more to park your truck in a popular spot then food trucks that become famous and established will be the only ones who can afford the sweetest spots. Make it like the music spots in the metro, first person to reserve gets the time slot. (If they did this, and the reservations were online, I would totally write an eBay Sniper-esque software tool and sell it to food truck owners…)
Adam 09:40 on 2012/06/15 Permalink
Tux: you mean, if we auction them off then the best trucks will get the best spots? That’s a feature, not a bug.
Tux 13:02 on 2012/06/15 Permalink
Adam: No, it’s a bug. It creates a situation where only the most popular (not necessarily the best) get the spots with enough traffic to continue funding being able to have that spot. In a system like that, new food truck businesses will be forever relegated to the sidelines even if their food is better. Every truck should have a fair shot at the plum spots.
Adam 14:41 on 2012/06/15 Permalink
Tux, if a cart is the most popular, then it is, by definition, the “best” as judged by most people. Obviously you or I might think it’s crap, but that doesn’t change the judgement of the majority. And there’s no reason to think that new trucks will never get good spots. Do new shops only open in bad locations? To do it by first-come-first-served is practically guaranteeing that a lot of bad businesses are going to get good spots. How, under that system, does a more successful truck get a better spot and a less successful one get relegated to a worse spot? Random chance?
Kate 13:09 on 2012/06/16 Permalink
In a way, you guys are doing collectively wonderful job of explaining why the city has avoided this situation so far.
This is what I’d do: continue banning trucks (sorry, Grumman 78) and only allow those ambulant street-corner carts they have in New York. Whoever gets to a corner first can stay there for an hour; nobody’s allowed to be on any corner for more than an hour. (Time limit would be watched by passing cops and obviously not firmly to the minute, but it would be the target – nobody gets to squat on a spot and deny it to others.) No intersection can have more than 2 carts on it at a time. Voilà.