Food truck finale: regulation at last?

blog by Ben Tsujimoto • October 25, 2011 @ 8:51am

It’s been a rocky road to progress for the WNY Food Truck Association, but today’s 2 p.m. meeting in the Council Chamber of City Hall (13th floor) should result in a vote on the legislation.

With a little direction from WNY Media’s Alan Bedenko, we’ve found out that the ad-hoc committee of “brick and mortar” restaurants and food truck representatives created more division than unity.

The Roaming Buffalo owner Christopher Taylor vented his frustration with the proceedings over Twitter on Sunday, tweeting “Talks have ceased with B & M’s because all they do is yell” with the hash-tag “effthem,” and later responded to a reply tweet with “B & Ms are unorganized and have no clue.”

Because negotiations closed in such a negative manner, it will be interesting to see what’s proposed to the Common Council today. The meeting is open to the public, and several food trucks have asked for support from their fans.

While the decision stemming from this unnecessarily long fiasco will benefit the city’s food scene—trucks and established restaurants won’t have gray areas in how they’re supposed to operate—there’s no guarantee that we’ll have clarity today.

“They suspect that a vote may be taken on proposed regulations today. I’m not so sure it’ll all be resolved today, but one can always hope,” Bedenko writes.

TAGGED: common council, food truck legislation, lloyd taco truck, rnr bbq, roaming buffalo, the whole hog