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TRAVERSE CITY, MI — When nobody is completely happy, that means you have a good compromise.

That’s how food truck owner Simon Joseph is looking at the recent 5-2 decision by Traverse City commissioners to allow the mobile kitchens to set up in the northern Michigan city’s downtown area starting Thursday, May 16.

“I think it’s the right step and a good direction for Traverse City,” said Joseph, owner of the Roaming Harvest Food Truck and an outspoken advocate during the past year for eased restrictions and lower fees for mobile food vendors in town.

Despite some opposition by downtown restaurant owners, commissioners at their regular meeting on Monday, May 6 agreed to allow food trucks to operate on city property in select areas following a year of study and debate over the issue.

Related: Food truck revolution hits northern Michigan

The Roaming Harvest Food Truck operated by Simon Joseph of Lake Ann. Joseph as been vocal in the debate about food trucks in Traverse City.

The new “trial basis” ordinance allows up to two mobile food vendors to operate on city property from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. in four different city parking lots.

Areas given the green light for food trucks include city lots near the volleyball courts on West Bay, near the Union Street dam, the downtown post office and the site of the farmer’s market — although not while the market is operating on Saturday mornings.

Other areas were approved for food trucks near the Northwestern Michigan College and Traverse City Central High school campuses, the Grand Traverse County Civic Center, Munson Medical Center and city parks outside of the downtown district.

Until now, food trucks have been restricted to private property and were charged up to $100 per day to operate in some cases.

Vendors will now pay about $1,225 per year — $725 for an annual permit to park on private property, and $500 to park on public property.

While that’s “substantially higher” than some cities, Joseph told MLive it “does mitigate the argument that we’re using public land for nothing.”

Not everyone was thrilled at the compromise.

”All I’ve been fighting for is my employees because it’s just not that lucrative of a business,” Nick McAllister, owner of the House of Doggs on Union Street told the Traverse City Record Eagle. “It’s a lot of rent and taxes and everything just to be in these prime locations downtown.”

McAllister’s business is located next to several bars and caters to a late night crowd. Joseph said his only real bone of contention with the city’s decision was that “the hours are a bit arbitrary.”

He’d like to be able to score some of that late night business, he said, but could only do so until 11 p.m.

Joseph’s food truck will soon have some company in northern Michigan. Five new food trucks are expected to operate at a new downtown bar that’s opening on East Front Street, according to The Ticker news site.

New trucks include The Dragon Wagon, EZ Cheesy, Pigs Eatin’ Ribs and Anchor Station, as well as a second vehicle for Joseph called Little Yella.

While some readers have suggested that cities the size of Grand Rapids cannot support more than one or two food trucks following news that The Silver Spork owner Molly Clauhs was parking her vehicle for good, Joseph believes Traverse City (and Grand Rapids) could support more vehicles — at least during the summer months.

“I think in the middle of winter there’s certainly limitations,” he said. “It’s all about what the market will bear out. We’re going to find that out. I think Traverse City did a good job balancing the public and private element and opening up the market.”

Commissioners plan to review the ordinance in October.

http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2013/05/traverse_city_food_truck_owner.html

GRAND TRAVERSE CO. – Food trucks may soon be rolling into downtown Traverse City.

A vote allowing food trucks on city property is expected at Monday’s city commission meeting.

The ordinance would allow up to two mobile food vendors to operate on city property from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. in four different city parking lots. The proposed areas would be downtown and on State Street between Pine and Union.

Currently, food trucks are allowed on private property in Traverse City, where the rates are very expensive. Under the new ordinance, food trucks will be allowed on city property like parking lots downtown. Vendors would pay a fee of $1,225 per year to park on city property.

The ordinance would also open streets in near Northwestern Michigan College, the Civic Center, Munson Medical Center and several of Traverse City’s larger parks.

Some brick-and-mortar businesses downtown are not in favor of the food truck ordinance, saying it will devalue some of the current restaurants downtown.

Mike Busley, Owner of Grand Traverse Pie Company, is not against the idea of food trucks but would like to see the current policy stay in place. The current policy only allows food vendor trucks to operate on private property. Busley says, “it’s allocating what I consider very limited resources, our parking. During the prime summer months, we’ll be allocating parking for food trucks rather than our guests. There’s a lot of growth, a lot of food businesses downtown that operate on a very fair and competitive basis. We’re all paying rent, we’re all making serious investments…all I’m saying is let’s keep the playing field fair.”

But food truck vendors say they don’t believe they have a distinct advantage over downtown brick-and-mortar businesses. “I’m a weather dependent business for one, if it rains my dining room is soaked and people don’t show up. I have year-round lease, I have payments, this isn’t cheap. Just because someone may have invested more in a brick -and-mortar restaurant, I’m not sure that just because you own a restaurant and have downtown property taxes that you would get the right to all the business there,” says Simon Joseph, Owner of Roaming Harvest Food Truck.

The vote is expected to place at Monday’s city commission meeting. The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Governmental Center. Also scheduled is a public hearing on the $30 million operating budget proposal.

http://www.upnorthlive.com/news/story.aspx?id=894114#.UYhPKKJmiSo

Roaming Harvest at Seventh and Elmwood, Traverse Cit

Downtown Traverse City business owners are being asked where food trucks should be allowed. The issue has been simmering since the cost of a permit went up last year.

There aren’t that many people trying to sell food out of trucks in Traverse City but there are a few. And at least 500 people on Facebook think Traverse City should develop its reputation as a foodie town by being more open to vendors on wheels. But last fall, the cost of a permit downtown went up to $100 per day, a price that keeps vendors out. An ad hoc committee studying the issue is looking at a significantly lower fee structure.

Another question is whether there should be some parts of the downtown food trucks cannot park. Some business owners have complained about competition from food trucks. But a memo from the city clerk says it’s unconstitutional to create rules designed to favor certain businesses over others.

Traverse City’s Downtown Development Authority board will discuss the issue at a study session Tuesday night.

http://ipr.interlochen.org/ipr-news-features/episode/food-truck-debate-resumes/2013-02-11

The Roaming Harvest Food Truck operated by Simon Joseph of Lake Ann. Joseph as been vocal in the debate about food trucks in Traverse City.

TRAVERSE CITY, MI — After stops in Kalamazoo, Detroit and Grand Rapids, the Great Food Truck Debate has now parked itself in Traverse City.

The northern Michigan city, fast becoming known around the country as a destination stop for foodies, is currently in the throes of a debate over mobile restaurants that has played out in numerous cities around the U.S. in recent years.

Although the debate takes on a unique flavor in each new locale, in Traverse City, as in other spots, the central question remains the same: How does a city strike a delicate balance between the established, property tax-paying brick-and-mortar restaurants and the surge of entrepreneurs with fully-loaded, mobile kitchens?

“We’re really trying to meld a policy around allowing the food truck thing to happen in Traverse City,” said Jim Carruthers, a city commissioner who is part of a special city ad-hoc committee designed to review locations, regulations and fees pertaining to food trucks in the city limits.

“All the studies we’re reading show diverse food options and opportunities for young people is only good for your community.”

Related: Traverse City’s growth fueled by small businesses, entrepreneurs

Tracing its roots in the West Coast, the food truck revolution has finally reached northern Michigan, a place that may seem perpetually behind the times in some ways, but really no more so than its municipal neighbors to the south, which went through the great culinary debate mere months ago.

On Tuesday, Feb. 12, the city’s Downtown Development Authority is holding a special meeting to solicit opinion from business owners downtown. The city has asked the authority for input on the new mobile food vending ordinance drafting, and DDA officials say they are still in “information gathering” mode.

Bryan Crough, DDA director, said the authority has received a couple dozen emails from concerned parties, split evenly for and against relaxing regulations for food trucks. He indicated the DDA will likely sway with the wind of public and downtown business opinion at tonight’s meeting.

The Traverse City Area Chamber of Commerce staff indicated they were in a similar opinion-seeking mode and are surveying membership support this week.

In Traverse City, the debate has intensified since last summer, when the city updated a “peddlers” ordinance originally passed in 1994. The two main ingredients appear to be questions about exactly where food trucks can locate, and how much in city fees their operators must pay.

Discussions have orbited around whether to allow food trucks to set up on city-owned property a certain distance from open restaurants, as Kalamazoo officials approved in August, or limit them to private property for extended periods, as Grand Rapids officials did last June.

ridgett Blough, owner of The Organic Gypsy talks with customers from the window of her truck parked alongside Bronson Park.
The Organic Gypsy Food Truck gallery (9 photos)

Officials in Traverse City have closely studied the Kalamazoo ordinance, said Katie Lowran, deputy city clerk. “We’re kind of using that as a launch pad.”

Currently, food trucks are considered “transient merchants” who pay variable fees to vend on private property in Traverse City.

Fees have been a point of contention since last summer, when, on the DDA’s recommendation, the city doubled the daily fee for transient merchants during peak season from $50 to $100 throughout the entire city. The city later relaxed that fee outside of the downtown district after some confusion between the city and the DDA as to the intended boundaries of the new fee recommendation.

About that time, Simon Joseph of Lake Ann opened Traverse City’s first food truck and “started speaking up at City Commission meetings,” he said.

Joseph operates Roaming Harvest, a food truck with menu items like red chicken curry, braised beef burritos, vegetarian chili and tacos featuring pulled pork and BBQ chicken. Joseph said the truck focuses on serving food sourced from northern Michigan producers.

He has been vocal online, starting a TC Street Food Facebook page to advocate for food trucks, as well as an online Change.org petition that’s pushing for no location limits to food trucks on private property in the city.

Joseph, whose been a fixture outside the growing Right Brain Brewery, contends that food trucks pay substantial operating costs and says they also help create a vibrant downtown that benefits surrounding businesses by drawing foot traffic to the area.

“This debate would never happen if I opened a restaurant downtown right next to another one,” he said. “But when a food truck comes to town, we have an ‘unfair advantage.’”

The debate in Traverse City is unique, Joseph said, due to support for food trucks among brick-and-mortar restaurant owners like Eric Patterson of The Cook’s House.

He characterized the current fees structure as confusing and “somewhat protectionist.”

Still, “location is where the discussion has heated up.”

The location discussion includes questions like whether the city should allow food trucks to squat in city parks like the Open Space. Access to Lay Park along Union Street would give food trucks visibility in Midtown and the River’s Edge development, and the hundreds of nearby Hagerty Insurance office workers.

And what about Front Street? Downtown Traverse City is not a large place, but the heart of the district is Front Street, an upbeat one-way shopping spot that’s just south of the West Bay waterfront, where annual summer activities like the Cherry Festival and outdoor Film Festival screenings take place.

Downtown Traverse City’s Front Street in full boo

Crough said there appears to be support among property owners for allowing trucks to set up in parks, or adjacent to city parks, but opposition to trucks taking up city parking spaces along Front Street, home to numerous restaurants.

“I think the question being asked is, when we already have such a variety with 50-some downtown restaurants, do we really need to give up parking for food vending?”

With so much food already downtown, some have suggested locating food trucks in areas of the city that are “underserved,” but Carruthers indicated that kind of thinking potentially ignores a central need of food trucks. Namely, people.

For food trucks, “once you leave downtown, it’s difficult,” said Carruthers. “We don’t have a multi-block downtown.”

“They need to be in proximity to Front Street,” he said. “We all know that tourists don’t deviate from Front Street. Why locate the food trucks on the edges of town when the people aren’t there?”

Dave Denison, chef/owner of Amical, a popular upscale Mediterranean bistro-style restaurant next to the State Theatre, said he’s interested in seeing the city draft something that will “help promote food trucks as well as protect the interest of merchants who have made investments in private property.”

Denison is helping on the ad hoc committee, and said he’s a fan of food trucks and doesn’t really consider them direct competition because they are filling a different market niche than his 100-seat sit-down style restaurant.

However, he said, eateries like House of Doggs, a hot dog joint on Union Street, might feel differently if a food truck parked on the block, home to a cluster of bars.

“They would be a direct competition with some kind of unfair advantage.”

Denison said he considers the current mobile vendor fees too high, ostensibly designed to protect against sunglasses peddlers from setting up right in front of the souvenir shops. He’s in favor of a simple, $1,000 annual permit that’s good all year.

An annual fee, he argued, would remove gray areas from an enforcement perspective and separate “committed” local vendors like Roaming Harvest from those “coming up to skim the cream off the top” by only visiting Traverse City during the busy summer months.

“If you pay an annual fee and make a deal with a private property owner to park on their property, no problem,” he said. “That’s what others do to operate a business — they make a deal with a landlord and have a lease.”

But, “the food trucks want that to not be applicable to them.”

Denison pointed to a plan by recent Brooklyn transplants Gary and Alison Jonas to open a bar in the former Jack’s Market space at 448 East Front Street and open their parking lot all year as a hot spot for food trucks, in place of having a bar kitchen.

“I think that’s an awesome idea,” Denison said. “But I don’t know how that guy would feel if the city allowed a beer truck to pull up right across the street and sell beer for $2 less than he’s selling it.”

Looking at the big picture, Carruthers said the debate underscores the strides in growth and development Traverse City has made in the last decade.

Grand Traverse County’s population increased 12 percent between 2000 and 2010, and during that time the city gained a Frontier League baseball team, saw the reopening of classic venues like historic City Opera House and State Theatre downtown, gained a gleaming new culinary institute campus and has found adulation among famous faces like Michael Moore and Mario Batali.

“It’s growing pains and we have a very vocal and concerned community,” he said. “We all care so much about this town and its growth that sometimes we limit it, and I don’t think that’s what we want to do.”

Carruthers said the city wants to have an ordinance in place by this summer. Many others parts of the state, like Ann Arbor, he said, are watching.

“I’m sure we’re going to see this in Grand Haven, Ludington and all the beach communities along the Lake Michigan coast” sooner or later.

http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2013/02/traverse_city_food_trucks.html

Roaming Harvest at Seventh and Elmwood, Traverse City.

Traverse City is a foodie town.  You can find locally-sourced meals and treats everywhere.  So some people were surprised when the city commission doubled the cost for street vendors to do business in town.

Now, the issue is back before the commission.

Roaming Harvest started rolling just as the commission decided to double fees for street vendors to do business.  The converted delivery truck operates at different locations around Traverse City, four days a week and at local events.

On Wednesdays, you can find Roaming Harvest across the street from the Munson Emergency Room on Elmwood and Seventh.

Simon Joseph and his wife, Rebecca, decided to try something new – and contribute to Traverse City’s reputation as a “foodie” town.  After two years of planning, they rolled onto the city streets.

The Cost To Do Business In Traverse City
“We’ve been open for a month and a half, and we paid the city of Traverse City 750 dollars to operate.”  Joseph continues, “This is on top of a lease we have on Cass Street—that is not in the city limit.”

If the Commission decision stands, Roaming Harvest’s fees will double, to 100 dollars a day, beginning September 15.  Joseph says they took the daily fee structure into account when they made their business plan.

“At 50 dollars a day, it was a stepping stone to have this conversation.  At 100 a day, I mean that’s almost forbidding me from coming downtown,” Joseph explains.  “I mean realistically.  We’re a food truck that can carry only so much food.  In order for us to do enough business to pay that, it seems a bit of a stretch.”

The commission passed the new fee structure on July 2, 5 to 1.  But the mayor, who voted in favor of the hike is now on the fence and thinking about rolling the fees back altogether.

City Commission Revisits Fees For Mobile Businesses
“And I will tell you that this is not yet a done deal with the fee adjustment,” Mayor Michael Estes says.  “There’s a lot of commissioners who think that maybe we shouldn’t raise the fees at all.”

Estes says part of the rationale for upping the ante is that the fee to do business on the streets of Traverse City hasn’t increased in over 30 years, and likened it to taxes that the downtown merchants pay.  And of course, taxes have gone up, and so have rents.

But it seems as if the Commission didn’t realize their action could put a food truck out of business.  And it’s unclear if downtown restaurants feel food trucks are in direct competition with them.  IPR contacted several restaurants on Front Street, and they didn’t appear to know about the new fee structure for mobile food businesses and none would comment.

Commissioner Carruthers Lone Dissenting Voice
Commissioner Jim Carruthers cast the lone “no” vote in June.  He says he’s against raising the fees “mainly because we pride ourselves in Traverse City to have this entrepreneurial spirit.”

And Carruthers doesn’t believe the city should make it difficult for people to make a living.

http://ipr.interlochen.org/ipr-news-features/episode/food-trucks-caught-fee-hike/2012-09-04