by Clark Fouraker | WLTX

Columbia, SC (WLTX) – A new city ordinance would have parked food trucks operations, but city leaders say they have a plan to work it out so the trucks can stay on the road.

Scott Hall and the crew of Bone In BBQ On Wheels were busy Wednesday at the food truck food court in the parking lot of Cromer’s Peanuts in downtown Columbia.

“This time I got the pulled pork,” said Lee Drummond, who has eaten at Bone In before.  “I think this is some of the best BBQ around.”

The city ordinance requires food trucks to submit plans to the city on where they would park.  That would take away some of the unpredictability of the business model and hurt the operation, many of them say.

“It’s an unintended consequence of a much larger issue,” said Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin, who showed up at the event.

Benjamin said the ordinance was supposed to help cut down on illegal street vendors.

“We’ll figure it out, it’s not rocket science.  I think the crowd assembled today is indicative of the popular support that exists out there,” said Benjamin.  “The food’s great and we can get it done and get it done right.”

Hall feels optimistic as well.

“I’ve had a lot of good conversations with everyone from the mayor to leaders on city council.  Everybody wants to find a good compromise and I think we will.”

http://www.wltx.com/news/article/149550/2/Mayor-Says-Citys-Working-on-Food-Truck-Issue

Joey Thompson takes an order from Melanie and Jeff Stanley, who met for lunch in front of her job at General Sales on Huger Street. "It's convenient having them come to us," Melanie Stanley said. "I don't have to deal with traffic." - Kim Kim Foster-Tobin

Columbia’s mobile food-truck vendors, who offer a new and increasingly popular dining option, are worried they might get gobbled by city regulations of peddlers that take effect next year.

Starting in February, any vendor who wants to set up shop on private property to sell anything from puppies to produce must have written permission from the landowner. They also must provide city officials with drawings of the sites they frequent and must meet zoning requirements, especially having sufficient parking spaces.

“I think this has the potential to regulate us out of existence,” said Scott Hall, the 34-year-old owner of Bone In Artisan Barbecue on Wheels, whose menu includes pulled pork in chipotle and peach sauce that it sells under the name “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” after the 1979 Charlie Daniels Band hit song.

City leaders say food-truck vendors are the unintended victims of requirements aimed at other mobile businesses that effectively are moving flea markets. City Council approved those rules Aug. 2 after a citizens committee had recommended tougher regulations that would have restricted vendors to no more than three times per year at any single location.

“I just feel that we are a side effect of some other issue,” said Hall, who is using a public relations firm to help mount a campaign against the impending restrictions.

The effective date of the rules was postponed six months to give businesses time to be licensed and educated about the new law. The most troublesome provision for the food-truck vendors is that their vehicles cannot occupy parking spaces that a business must have by law. Very few businesses spend the money to have more spaces than city zoning laws require.

City officials heard no complaints about the new regulations until about two weeks ago, when truck vendors began learning about the rules. Some thought the more restrictive proposals recommended by the citizens’ committee had become law, said Krista Hampton, the city’s director of planning and development services.

Columbia officials and members of City Council are working to devise ways to lift the regulations from food-truck operators or write a new law specific to that business, Hampton said. Any decision to change the law could be adopted by the end of November, she said.

Social media have proved to be key to the success of food trucks and haven risen to their defense.

Chef Scott Hall packages an order inside the Bone-In Artisan BBQ truck, in the parking lot at Mad Platter. photo - Tracy Glantz

The vendors advertise their menus and tell people where the trucks will be through Twitter and Facebook. Their backers say food trucks add texture to a city often stuck in a culture of sameness. They want city government to leave them alone.

Pottery studio owner Margaret Nevill is among the backers. She invited Bone-In to serve lunch to customers and neighbors most Wednesdays since spring in the parking lot of her Millwood Avenue shop.

“They make it seem like they add a little more cosmopolitan feel … a bit of funkiness,” Nevill, of the Mad Platter, said of the four food-truck businesses, which are an outgrowth of similar operations that have succeeded for years in major cities.

“My goal was not to bring myself business,” Nevill said of the studio she’s run for 14 years and lives near. “My goal was to bring something different to my neighborhood.”

It has worked, she said.

“The first day we had them, it was awesome,” Nevill said. “They sold out. The (pottery studio) customers started liking it. Neighbors liked that they could come over for lunch. It was like having a neighborhood restaurant.”

Two of the four food trucks have city licenses to operate: Bone In and Pawley’s Front Porch, owned by former city councilman Kirkman Finlay. 2 Fat 2 Fly Stuffed Chicken Wings got its permits Friday afternoon. Alfresco Mobilista Bistro does not have its licenses, business license office director Brenda Kyzer said Friday. Owner Adams Hayne said he did not know he needed the licenses. Violators can be fined up to $677.50 per day, Kyzer said.

Finlay said he thinks the new rules are over-regulation, making it hard for food trucks to respond quickly when customers invite them onto their property.

“It’s, by definition, supposed to be a spontaneous thing,” Finlay said. “If it’s a very cumbersome process to apply for a site, it takes all the profit out of it.”

Hampton said the city is allowing each food-truck business to get one permit for a number of locations where it has written agreements with property owners. She also said permits can be issued any business day between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. at the zoning office. “The only problem would be if he’s driving down the road and someone says, ‘Come immediately,’ ’’ Hampton said.

Ramone Dickerson and his business partner started 2 Fat 2 Fly in November because the Columbia-area natives wanted to help bring something new to the community. “There was definitely a lure about pioneering this in Columbia,” Dickerson, 31, said. “We’ve been building a very strong following.”

His menu offerings include chicken stuffed with macaroni and cheese or Cajun rice and sausage.

Dickerson said he’s convinced the city will not regulate the business out of existence. “It doesn’t appear they’re going after us.”

Hall, who said he was in the food business for 13 years in New York City, also views food trucks as expanding Columbia’s dining scene.

“It shows that we’re in line with the rest of the country as far as culinary, cultural expression … of a really interesting subculture,” he said.

Read more: http://www.thestate.com/2011/08/22/1942250/food-truck-owners-fighting-new.html#ixzz1WIQhUiIX

Mayor Steve Benjamin confirmed today he is willing to reconsider the ordinance so it doesn't hamper the food truck business.

A new city law could have some unintended consequences for Columbia’s budding food truck scene.

The ordinance, which passed August 2 and takes effect in six months, was designed to crack down on roadside vendors selling produce, flowers, furniture and other wares at sprawling, semi-permanent outdoor locations that some city leaders felt were a nuisance. The law restricts the hours those vendors can operate and requires them to submit a letter from the property owner and a site plan to the city for each location they plan to use.

But Columbia’s food trucks have just discovered that they also fall under the new law — and some are worried it’ll hamper their ability to do business.

Scott Hall, who runs Bone-In Artisan Barbecue on Wheels, says it would be tough for him to get a permit for each site he wants to park his truck. For example, sometimes he’ll get a call from a business asking him to set up there the very next day.

“It would just make it so difficult for us to do business,” Hall says. “It would completely eliminate our ability to bounce around, to function like a real food truck.”

Krista Hampton, the city’s director of planning and development services, says city staff are looking for ways to make the process as easy as possible for vendors. For example, she hopes to be able to issue permits for all a truck’s proposed sites at once, for the price of one zoning permit.

She also says the city will turn a new permit around as quickly as possible if a truck wants to add a location.

“It can be issued immediately,” Hampton says. “They just have to have the owner’s permission.”

But there’s another concern for the trucks: City zoning laws require a certain number of parking spaces for each business in the city, depending on the type of business. Under the new ordinance, the site plan must show that the temporary vendor won’t occupy any of a business’ required parking spaces.

But many businesses have just the number of spaces required by law, not more. And trucks will often take up a few of those spaces.

“It would eliminate every spot we currently park,” Hall says.

One business that regularly hosts Hall’s truck is Baan Sawan Thai Bistro, a small, family-run restaurant on Devine Street. On Saturdays, the Bone-In truck parks in Baan Sawan’s parking lot, blocking off some of its required spaces, while the restaurant sets up outdoor tables and serves drinks specially designed to pair with Hall’s menu.

Chef Sam Suaudom and bartender/manager Alex Suaudom, two brothers who own and manage Baan Sawan with their parents, are distressed by what the new ordinance might mean for their Saturday partnership with Hall.

“We’re seeing people trying very hard to bring new products and methods to Columbia and at every step being stymied,” Sam Suaudom says. “[The ordinance] doesn’t seem like it’s well thought out. It’s a shotgun effect, taking down way more than it should.”

And Alex Suaudom calls the ordinance “misguided city protectionism” that hurts the kind of entrepreneurs the city should be trying to encourage.

“Aren’t food trucks the epitome of small business?” Alex Suaudom asks.

The Suaudom brothers say they’ve never had a complaint about their Saturday collaborations from a nearby resident or business.

Columbia has just four food trucks, and they’re all relatively new. And while cities like Los Angeles have been learning how best to regulate food trucks for decades, Columbia is new to the experience.

Indeed, Columbia’s food trucks met with another obstacle last week, when the city police said the trucks weren’t allowed to set up along Hampton Street in front of the Columbia Museum of Art during its Friday evening Arts & Draughts event. At the museum’s invitation, the trucks have parked there at previous events, but were told this time that the space was city property and they couldn’t be there.

Hall’s truck set up behind the museum instead. But he says the incident just reinforces the feeling that his business isn’t on secure footing with the city.

“I feel like if they wanted to crack down on us they could find some way,” Hall says.

Council currently has no official plans to take up the ordinance again; City Clerk Erika Salley says no discussion of the law is scheduled for August 16, as has been reported elsewhere.

However, Mayor Steve Benjamin confirmed today he is willing to reconsider the ordinance so it doesn’t hamper the food truck business.

A Facebook group called Friends of Columbia’s Food Trucks and Carts has been pushing the issue online — and the group’s members say they’re calling city leaders.

City staff and council members spent more than a year revising and debating the new ordinance — particularly after The State reported that the ordinance might put local artist Ernest Lee, also known as the Chicken Man, out of business. Under the final version of the law, the Chicken Man is safe — but it turns out the truck that sells stuffed chicken wings might not be.

http://www.free-times.com/index.php?cat=1992209084141467&act=post&pid=11861208110476356

COLUMBIA (WACH) — Columbia’s City Council is set to take up amending an ordinance governing temporary vendors or food trucks in the city limits.

The city’s Code Enforcement Task Force would require the food truck operator to get written permission from the property owner where the merchant intends to operate.

Food truck operators would also be limited to no more than three sales per location, per year.  Read the proposed amendment by clicking here.

City staff say they’ve received numerous complaints about mobile restaurants from brick and mortar restaurateurs, ranging from health and safety issues to equity.

A food vendor located next to a restaurant has not had to make the same capital investment as a traditional restaurant, according to some petitioners.

A Facebook group supporting Columbia’s food trucks and carts is defending the current ordinance.

What do you think about mobile food vendors in Columbia?  Should they operate under a stricter ordinance, or are the current rules enough?  Leave a comment below to weigh in with your thoughts.

http://www.midlandsconnect.com/news/story.aspx?id=650070#.TkMAE6hu85s

Bone-In Artisan BBQ on Wheels served lunch Thursday in the 701 Whaley parking lot, from 11am-2:30pm!. This is the newest of a couple of food trucks that are starting to show up in the Midlands. There are other, more stationary trucks on Decker, and a couple of food trucks have been at five points on weekends. - TIM DOMINICK /tdominick@thestate.com

For years now, food trucks — featuring gourmet-style menus with a hipster vibe — have been rolling in places such as Austin, Texas; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; and Los Angeles.

Food trucks now are parking in the Midlands, using Twitter as a digital beacon. Two new food trucks in the Midlands are serving street food with gourmet touches. Bone-In Artisan Barbecue began its road trips around town last month. The 2 Fat 2 Fly stuffed wings truck began roaming lately after establishing last fall at a base at a bar in Five Points.

Street food meets Top Chef on the menu in this newest generation of roadside diners.

Bone-in Artisan Barbecue sandwiches are made with focaccia bread and pork slow cooked over three days. The cole slaw is made with red cabbage, buttermilk and cilantro. The hand-cut raw fries are seasoned with dill and cumin. Earlier this week on the menu: a bacon brownie sundae with (as described in an appetizing tweet) “maple ice cream, bourbon caramel, red wine cherries and Caw Caw Creek candied bacon.”

Yes, bacon and ice cream. And it was good.

2 Fat 2 Fly experiments with stuffed wings — literally prying open the chicken wing and stuffing it with such delights as jalapeno and cheddar, macaroni and cheese or jambalaya rice and smoked sausage — to make them more portable. “It’s messy on the outside, so we put the mess on the inside,” said co-owner Ramone Dickerson.

And the fried okra side dish? It can win over any okra-phobic with its light but firm batter and delicate taste inside.

The trucks park on private property, usually outside a business, from 11 a.m. to about 2 p.m. (or whenever the food runs out), then head to another place for dinner. Twitter and Facebook fans keep track of the trucks’ whereabouts.

This month, both trucks have been along the perimeters of outdoor festivals, including Crafty Feast and the Urban Tour. Bone-In Artisan Barbecue has a weekly gig at the All-Local Farmers Market on Saturdays outside 701 Whaley. Each is expanding weekly.

Scott Hall, who runs Bone-In Artisan Barbecue, was influenced by the street food culture he saw while working as a caterer and chef in New York City. Hall, whose parents still run Corley Mill House and Garden catering business in Lexington, thought a modern take on the traditional Southern barbecue could anchor the menu.

The pulled pork and brisket are cooked at Corley Mill ahead of time. More of the work in the truck is assembly. “Speed is essential,” said Hall a couple of weeks ago after a successful lunch date at 701 Whaley.

Branding is essential, too. Hall enlisted the event planning duo of Flock and Rally to get the word out about the food truck and build up the 700-plus Twitter followers who make the core of the customer base. The use of social media works as a virtual word of mouth — and the businesses get instant feedback that they often retweet.

2 Fat 2 Fly already had a good reputation among wing lovers when it was catering and working out of a kitchen at China Garden (now Grandma’s). The wings won over fans at the Capital City Music Fest and Wing Fling in 2009.

In November, Ramone Dickerson, one of the two owners, decided to hit the road. 2 Fat 2 Fly has a little more than 200 Twitter fans and also sets up shop outside larger businesses. A regular date a few weeks ago at South Carolina Oncology Associates drew a steady stream of customers.

Both trucks have permits to serve food. Neither is classified the same as a taco cart proposed to operate in the Vista. And they differ from the semi-permanent food trailers, such as a taco truck parked along Decker Boulevard, or the rolling barbecue grills that dot tailgate parties.

The startup financing is much less expensive than for a brick-and-mortar restaurant, but it’s not a cheap venture. Hall has enlisted his parents to help as the business grows. Dickerson, who runs the truck with partner Cory Simmons, contemplated settling down, but when the opportunity to get a truck came up unexpectedly, he took it. The mobile kitchen “is heaven,” he added.

While food trucks are the dining de rigueur for culinary hipsters elsewhere, the sight of one here still mystifies some drivers, though that’s changing.

“If they don’t start looking for a fair or a carnival nearby, then we’re good,” Dickerson said.

David Roberts wants to put a taco cart on the sidewalk at the corner of Main and Gervais streets. Photo by Jonathan Sharpe.

Must the City Choose Between Bricks-and-Mortar Businesses and Street Vendors?

At the South Carolina State House this week, legislators are arguing over whether to renew a tax break for the massive online retailer Amazon, which is building a facility right across the river in Lexington County. Amazon has threatened to cancel the project — which is supposed to create more than 1,200 full-time jobs by 2013 — unless the state gives it a sales tax break on goods sold inside South Carolina.

Right across Gervais Street from the capitol, the City of Columbia is locked in a much smaller but oddly parallel battle. Council members and local businesses are fighting over what will happen to a small expanse of sidewalk in front of the 18-story Main & Gervais office tower on the northwest corner of the intersection.

David Roberts wants to put a taco cart there.

Ellyn Season, who’s building a Southwestern restaurant called Taqueria Fever just across
Main Street, does not want Roberts to put a taco cart there.

“What we’re being asked to do is pick and choose between who is more worthy,” a frustrated Councilwoman Tameika Isaac Devine told her fellow council members at a March 29 public hearing.

Incredibly, these taco wars have dragged on for more than a year.

And the debate gets right at the heart of Columbia’s economic development and Main Street revitalization dilemmas. How far should governments go to attract and retain businesses that want to relocate here? Should politicians have to choose between a taco cart and a taqueria — and how should they make that decision?

And why the heck does everyone want to sell tacos at the corner of Main and Gervais Streets, anyway?

Start with a Cart

David Roberts seems like a practical guy.

By day, he investigates car accidents; his clients are mostly law firms. He owns the North Main Street building that houses his business. He and his wife have young daughters. They go to soccer games. He likes golf.

But he also wants to run a taco cart.

Not just any taco cart, but one with a rotating menu of fresh, local meats and vegetables, with a creative approach to what goes into a taco.

“Some days it might not even look like a taco,” Roberts says. “It might be chopped barbecue, might be shredded barbecue. We can take a lot of the Lowcountry flavors we have — like a chicken bog, even,” he says. “A holiday comes up, Cinco de Mayo, we go Mexican … The Fourth of July comes around and they’re having fireworks over the capitol, we might have hot dog tacos.”

Following the lead of popular food trucks and carts in other cities, he’ll tweet each day’s menu.

His business plan involves converting part of his North Main building to a commercial
kitchen, where he can park the cart and prepare each day’s food.
The kitchen will also be available for rent to businesses that don’t need a full-time kitchen of their own but still need to process and prepare food in a health-department-approved facility — local beekeepers bottling honey, for example, or bakers, or small-time caterers.

With a rough business plan in place, Roberts first applied for a sidewalk vending permit for Der Tacos in September 2009. The city has 11 pre-approved sidewalk vending locations, half of which are occupied. The Main and Gervais site was among the handful of available sites — and, Roberts says, it was clearly the best.

“I checked out just about every restaurant book in our library over there, and they all say ‘location, location, location,’” he says.

Unlike some other parts of downtown, the surrounding buildings are all at high occupancy:
The Holder Properties-managed Main & Gervais tower is full except for a restaurant; across Main Street, the Capitol Center is at 80 percent capacity, Roberts says. The State House across the street provides plenty of traffic while the Legislature’s in session.

Also, it’s almost literally the center of town.

“When you go to Google Earth and put in Columbia, South Carolina, you almost come down right on top of it,” Roberts says.

At the time Roberts first applied, Holder Properties was building the new office tower, and city staff asked him to wait until the construction was finished. He did; then he put in his application.

The city’s planning and business license staff helped him along, he says.

“I know the city gets a bad rap,” Roberts says, “but in this particular case, I am on the record that the city bureaucracy did everything that I expected in a timely manner, kept me informed and was not a hindrance.”

In March 2010, with all the preparatory work done, Roberts’ permit came before City Council for approval. And that’s when he learned some major downtown interests were lined up against him.

Holder, which built and manages the new office tower, didn’t want anybody selling anything in front of their new building, and asked the city to remove the site from the list of approved sidewalk vending location. It had been on the list since 2004 and wasn’t re-evaluated when Holder opened its new building.

And the City Center Partnership, Columbia’s downtown business coalition, stepped up to protect a new business they’d just recruited to Main Street: a planned Southwestern restaurant called Fever. Competition from a taco cart was not in owner Ellyn Season’s plans.

“We think it’d be counterproductive,” Amy Stone, vice president of retail recruitment for the
City Center Partnership, told City Council.

City Council fretted and debated; they delayed their vote and rescheduled it for a later hearing. They asked the parties to meet and find a compromise.

In the end, Roberts made the decision for them, asking the city to put his permit on hold for one year.

“It gives time for Ms. Season to open her restaurant,” Roberts said at the time. He would work on his business plan, he told Council.

“I want Main Street to succeed,” he said, describing a taco cart as the “last layer on Main” once other businesses had time to get established.

“The little guy will get out of the way,” Roberts said.

That was one year ago.

Feverish

Season, a Charlotte entrepreneur, spent several years looking around Southern cities for the perfect place to launch a restaurant before settling on Columbia.

When 1202 Main Street became available — Dunkin’ Donuts had planned to open a store
there but the franchisee went bankrupt before they could do so — she decided the 75-year-old space was perfect.

She’s planning for 40 seats — about 10 tables — and an eight-seat bar, three seats of which will be reserved for to-go business.

She’s told Council and others around town that she plans to hire 25 to 30 full-time employees in addition to part-time employees. (Privately, several people in the industry say the estimate is high.)

The still-unopened Fever is directly across Main Street from the prospective taco cart location. Photos by Jonathan Sharpe.

But renovating and upfitting a 75-year-old space is not an entirely predictable process.

“At every turn, there were unforeseen issues with the building,” she says.

She’s sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into the space — even dipping into her 401K retirement funds, she told City Council.

The tab so far for renovations: $400,000.

She’s invested almost as much in the space as her landlord paid to buy the building, in fact.

And she’s been paying rent on the space since last June.

She also hired consultants to help her design the menu and develop her restaurant concept. And she’s already hired a chef, whose salary she’s paying. Those expenses are in addition to the $400,000.

After some delays, and pending some building and health department inspections, Fever is now scheduled to open at the end of April.

Season opposed Der Tacos last year, and she still opposes it. The food concept is similar enough, she says, that Roberts would be direct competition for her business.

“If he were selling peanuts, I’d be fine,” Season told Council on March 29.

“We’re building out a space. It’s not a two-wheel cart,” she said. “I need the support of the city,” she pleaded.

In a follow-up interview, she said a food cart just doesn’t pay into the system the way a bricks-and-mortar business does.

“Whatever money you make, you can hide a lot of your revenues,” Season says. “It isn’t a level playing field,” she said.

“Somebody comes over there, takes two to three hours out of the biggest part of your day,” Season said. “Meanwhile, we’re still paying staff, property taxes, utilities — all those things.”

She suggested Roberts find a new spot.

“If I had a taco cart, I’d go over by the school [USC]. Kids love that stuff … There are other locations for him to go; we are where we are.”

What Main Street Means

In May 2010, shortly before Mayor Steve Benjamin took office, he sat in his transition office — a long, narrow space on one end of City Hall, with the building’s typical ’70s carpet and fixtures — and talked about Main Street.

He’d been noticing the clocks, he said: those big, round clocks on poles at certain downtown intersections. He’d been thinking about putting an amphitheater next to City Hall, where the parking lot is now — just somewhere for small events and speeches. He wanted to find federal and private money to renovate City Hall.

His eyes shone. The mayor was in love with Main Street.

The sidewalk where Der Tacos’ cart would stand is in front of the glassy new NBSC building. Photo by Jonathan Sharpe.

One of his first acts as mayor was to organize a parade down Main for the national champion USC baseball team.

This year, at a March 8 conference announcing a new grant program to spruce up Main Street, Benjamin explicitly staked this council’s career on the success of downtown.

“The revitalization is quite frankly a core tenet of how we will determine if we have been successful as city leaders,” Benjamin said.

It’s a tough road. When Benjamin took office, the central business district had over 1 million square feet of empty office space. SCANA had recently moved its headquarters from Main across the river to Cayce. A private group was building a controversial homeless center at Main and Elmwood.

As of December, the downtown office occupancy rate hadn’t improved, though commercial realtor Colliers Keenan predicts it will improve in 2011.

Things are already looking up.

Mast General is opening a store in the old Lourie’s building in May; they’ve told downtown business owners that Mast will draw 1,500 to 2,000 people downtown each weekend day.
The Nickelodeon Theatre is renovating the old Fox Theatre and will move from its current location near USC later this year.

Workers have already torn the façade off the 10,000-square-foot former Main & Taylor Shoe Salon, exposing an older Art Deco façade and the old W.T. Grant department store lettering. That building will go up for retail or restaurant rent later this year.

S&S Arts Supply moved to Main Street recently. With the mayor’s support, an artist is trying to get some city money to open an arts center in the Tapp’s building. A new city parking garage is in the works.

The city is also offering grants to Main Street businesses to fix up their façades.

Through all the streetscaping and business recruitment, the city has explicitly made sidewalk food vendors part of a revitalized Main Street. On March 29, without discussion,
City Council approved two new downtown hot dog vendors — which will be within a block of existing hot dog vendors, not to mention bricks-and-mortar restaurants.

It was only on Roberts’ application that they got stuck.

Deciding Factors

With all the empty office and retail space, business recruitment is clearly key to the city’s plans to revitalize Main Street and improve Columbia’s economy.

That’s what council members Leona Plaugh and Belinda Gergel emphasize when they talk about Fever and Der Tacos.

“I want to thank you for the investment you have already made,” Gergel told Season at the March 29 hearing on Der Tacos’ application.

“We are presented with two very attractive alternatives,” Gergel told her fellow council members, “but one is already there,” she said, referring to Fever.

Plaugh also said Season’s investment outweighs Roberts’ proposal.

“I have to support somebody who is financially vested,” Plaugh said. “Twenty-five employees is not lost on me.”

But Councilman Sam Davis wants to support Der Tacos — and not just because Roberts already runs a business in Davis’ district and would be opening the commercial kitchen there as well. Roberts played by the rules set by Council, Davis said. To be consistent,
Council should approve him. It’s not fair to protect Season at the expense of another businessperson.

“Did the folks that you worked with [City Center Partnership] guarantee you no competition?” Davis asked Season.

Tameika Isaac Devine echoed those concerns, asking what Season would think if Monterrey’s, a local Mexican restaurant chain, opened a location in the Capitol Center.

“Are you expecting us to keep away anyone in that block who’s doing what you’re doing?” Devine asked Season.

“We can’t continue to string this man along if this is a location we’ve advertised,” Devine told her fellow council members.

The Forgotten Taco Vendor

All this time, a local business has already been selling tacos at the corner of Main and Gervais.

On Tuesday nights, The Whig, a hip bar in the basement of the Capitol Center, sells tacos for 50 cents apiece.

They’re nothing fancy — basic beef or beans with cheese and a few other fixins. But they bring in big crowds: Taco Tuesday has become a feature of Columbia life.

Phillip Blair, a co-owner of The Whig, says the bar doesn’t feel threatened by Der Tacos.

“We all would love to have a taco cart out there,” Blair says. “We officially want a taco cart.”

The Whig’s management is involved in the city’s Main Street revitalization, from partnering with the Columbia Museum of Art on its Arts & Draughts series to participating in the Urban
Tour to applying for a grant as part of the city’s façade improvement program. So they’re invested in the success of the street.

It helps that Der Tacos and The Whig would have different business hours, Blair says. But
even if they didn’t, he sees more businesses as a plus. And he welcomes Fever, too.

“It just brings more people here,” Blair says. “If anything, we’ll share customers. We say ‘The more the merrier.’”

Alex Keyser, one of the two hot dog vendors whose applications were just approved by Council, agrees. He’s been selling hot dogs in front of the Art Bar at night; with his new application, he moves into tougher, more competitive territory.

“Everyone would love to just monopolize a place,” he says, “but I think competition’s good.”
Taco Cart Redux

One year later, Fever stands unopened, and Der Tacos’ application is before Council again.

And just like a year ago, City Council members spent more than an hour fretting over the decision at their March 29 meeting before deciding to delay a vote on the permit. They’ll vote April 19 instead. In the meantime, they’ve asked Roberts, Season and other interested parties to meet and try to find a compromise.

According to the mayor, Holder Properties is still opposed to the site hosting any kind of sidewalk vendor — taco cart, peanut seller or otherwise. Several attempts by Free Times to confirm Holder’s position have gone unanswered.

The City Center Partnership, Main Street’s business coalition, is siding with Holder and
Season.

“I don’t feel like our organization has a position,” says CCP director Matt Kennell — however, “We do know that a couple of adjacent owners have real concerns about the cart.
They feel like their investments would be undermined.”

“Who we really represent and who supports us is the owners of property downtown and the tenants who pay their leases,” says Kennell of CCP. “Which in the case of sidewalk vendors is neither. They’re just not our constituency.”

The CCP does receive other city funding, Kennell added.

Season also urges City Council to deny Roberts’ permit.

“I don’t believe that it should be that difficult of a decision,” Season said. “Just knowing what it has taken, I would like for people to side [with] people who have made a really significant commitment and attempt to do what we’re doing. We’ve invested this, and Mr. Roberts has a $2,500 cart.”

“I don’t begrudge him any kind of livelihood,” she continued, “but I think he has a lot of other options in the city.”

But Roberts doesn’t like the way everyone’s framing the discussion.

He sent council members a thank you note after the March 29 meeting, he says.

“I expressed that I understood they have a difficult decision to make. One group is going to say ‘Hooray, you support a street vendor,’ and the other group, with that vote, is going to say ‘How dare you do that to somebody that’s just invested in downtown?’”

“But I disagree with the whole premise,” Roberts continues. “Because I don’t think it’s us versus them. I think we succeed. And the fear is that if we both don’t succeed, then we both fail and the corner doesn’t get any better.”

http://www.free-times.com/index.php?cat=1992912064227409&ShowArticle_ID=11010604112980585

COLUMBIA (WACH) – It’s the latest food trend sweeping the nation and it’s picking up momentum right here in the Midlands, as many chefs and cooks forgo opening up expensive restaurants in favor of a more mobile way to serve food.

Scott Hall remembers the first time he heard of a food truck.

“I remember associating food trucks with hot dog carts and pretzel carts,” said Hall.

Currently a big hit on the west coast, the Columbia chef quickly warmed up to the idea.

“When I started to see these amazing trucks that had all these crazy graphic designs and like interesting food, I got really excited about it,” said Hall.

Hall was so excited, that he now owns a food truck of his own.

Hall calls his business “Bone-In,” Columbia’s first artisan barbeque restaurant on wheels.

From inside the truck, Hall creates unique barbeque dishes with a gourmet flare.

“We’re taking traditional southern preparations of barbeque and kind of tweaking it and bringing new things to it,” said Hall.

Hall says what excites him the most is how people can find where he and his truck will be located.

“You can follow us on Facebook or you can follow us on Twitter. We tweet our locations out every morning,” said Hall.

And while Hall continues his unique business, he hopes Columbia will embrace the idea.

“I think that’s kind of what I would like to bring to Columbia, people who have not really been a part of, or seen this movement, to give them a chance to see it in a way that really relates to the South,” said Hall.

http://www.midlandsconnect.com/news/photos.aspx?id=590521