City promises to work with public on proposed ordinance

GREENVILLE, S.C. —After announcing proposed food truck regulations that would essentially keep the vendors out of downtown Greenville, it appears the city’s stance is softening.

Despite chilly temperatures Wednesday night, hundreds of people were in The Owl restaurant and its parking lot, where Neue Southern, Asada and Chocolate Moose served from their food trucks.  The bricks-and-mortar restaurant hosted the rally to encourage the city to reconsider the proposed regulations.

Aaron Manter, co-owner and chef at The Owl, said, “The night was an absolute smashing success on every level. It bordered on becoming a full-on festival. All of the trucks sold out of food, and we had perhaps the best Wednesday we’ve ever had while ‘competing’ with the trucks directly in our lot. Some extremely talented chefs dropped everything on their plate and charged down from out of state to show support for the cause. They weren’t making a paycheck — they did it because we asked and they’re our friends. Much like us and the trucks. Symbiosis.”

The proposed ordinance that led to the rally would allow food trucks downtown, which until now was off limits. But the trucks would be restricted to parking only on private property and must stay at least 250 feet from stand-alone restaurants.

“Regulating a town that is supposedly going to be the new foodie town of the South doesn’t seem along the lines with everything the magazines have been saying lately,” said Kensey Boyd.

City leaders say they want to be clear they are pro-food trucks, and the ordinance is likely to change as the City Council gets more input from consumers and businesses.

“This is an evolving process, but we are thrilled about food trucks,” said Council member Amy Ryberg Doyle.

The city says it’s also looking at ways to promote food trucks, and encourage more to come to Greenville.

The city plans to hold a workshop on the food truck proposal and once it receives more feedback from the public, the Council will vote on a revised ordinance.  That’s expected to happen in late spring.

Manter said, “I just hope we raised public awareness and elevated some discourse on the topic of trucks. The task force says they studied other town’s laws, but most cities are in a perpetual war with trucks. I hope that Greenville can stop looking to sub-par models of truck regulations and be innovative enough to be the town that other cities emulate.”

http://www.wyff4.com/news/local-news/greenville-news/Hundreds-rally-City-now-says-food-truck-rules-likely-to-evolve/-/9654794/19308568/-/9m77q5z/-/index.html

GREENVILLE, S.C. - A Greenville restaurant has planned a “peaceful protest” Wednesday to support food trucks, in the wake of proposed regulations for the mobile businesses.  The Owl, located on Wade Hampton Boulevard, is calling the event the “Food Truck Revolution.”  Hundreds of people have accepted invitations to the event on the restaurants’s Facebook page.

The protest comes in light of a new proposal that would allow the trucks in Greenville’s downtown area, but keep them at least 250 feet away from existing restaurants.  The proposal was made by a committee, formed by the city several months ago to look at the new industry.  “We’re excited they’re here,” says city council member Amy Ryberg Doyle.  “But at the same time we need to be fair to those restaurants who have made an investment downtown, and need to protect that investment.”

Scott Lariviere, who just opened up his own restaurant downtown, can understand the concern.  “It’s a tough business,” he says.  “I have absolutely no problem with people trying to make their money, but I don’t want them to do it at my front door.”

Lauren Zanardelli, who is co-owner of the Neue Southern food truck, believes there’s room for everyone.  “It’s one of the reasons we came to Greenville, because we saw so much potential here,” she says.  “We have no problem with regulations, but just believe everyone should be involved in the conversation.  And there should be some middle ground.”

The food truck fight is nothing new.  The city of Asheville faced the same debate more than a year ago, and finally agreed to allow the mobile eateries, but only inside a private parking lot.  City commission member Michael McDonough says Asheville did not even consider a “distance rule” like Greenville because it might have been “too tough to enforce.”  The plan has worked out so well, the city is now considering allowing removing the cap on how many food trucks they’ll allow, so more can move in.

Doyle says Greenville’s rules are far from set in stone.  The food truck committee will consider the proposed regulations, craft an ordinance, then hopefully present it to city council by late spring.  “We are confident this can work,” says Doyle.

Zanardelli is hopeful too.  “We would really like to expand, and hope downtown can be part of that.”

The protest will be held at the Owl, at 728 Wade Hampton Boulevard, from 5:30 to 10:30 Wednesday.

http://www.wspa.com/story/21632336/protest-planned-to-cook-up-support-for-greenville-food-trucks

Food trucks are relatively new to Greenville, but these mobile restaurants have been adding flavor and vibrancy to other cities for years. They could do the same for Greenville if the city can find a reasonable way to let them coexist with existing restaurants.

As Greenville fine-tunes a set of proposed rules for food trucks, it should look for ways to let the Upstate’s small — but, we hope, increasing — number of food trucks operate in harmony with the varied and dynamic downtown restaurant scene.

The proposed rules come from a city task force and they were just recently presented to City Council at a recent work session. It’s likely the proposal would undergo some revision as the council debates them and comes up with a final ordinance governing food trucks. As City Council members do so, they should keep in mind that part of downtown’s success is its diversity, and allowing food trucks to operate more freely near the central business district could add to the flavor that variety has created.

Local restaurants compete with one another all the time. Food truck owners convincingly argue that they, too, have made a substantial investment in their operations. The owners of the Neue Southern food truck recently mentioned in an interview, and in a video you’ll find with this editorial at GreenvilleOnline.com, that they had invested significant amounts of their own money in their operation. The city should be careful not to enact restrictions that would inhibit food trucks’ opportunity to succeed as legitimate businesses.

Competition between food trucks and brick-and-mortar restaurants should be allowed to occur with some limitations. That’s especially true given the logistical problems of having food trucks parked on Main Street that is relatively narrow and carries a large volume of traffic that moves slowly during peak times.

But rules should not be overly restrictive. And some in the task force’s proposal would be.

For instance, one proposed rule would prohibit food trucks on private property from being any closer than 250 feet from an existing restaurant. That would all but bar the trucks from downtown. Also, prohibiting the trucks from any public property except during special events when they have special permission could be a bit too restrictive.

Downtown Greenville is an inviting and exciting urban landscape. The latest trend of gourmet food trucks could offer another food option to the many people who roam downtown during the weekday lunch hours and on the weekends. Again, having a food truck parked on Main Street could pose a traffic obstruction, but what about one of the streets that intersects Main or runs parallel with it? How about considering a food truck parking area on a street that’s near the central business district where these trucks can do business during lunch hours?

Greenville has spent a lot of time and taken much care in creating a downtown that has become the gathering place of the Upstate and is nationally revered as a successful city center with one of the South’s best restaurant scenes. That success needs to be protected. If competition is a concern for some of the restaurants that have made downtown successful, the city could consider limiting the number of permitted food trucks so the market is not over-saturated. That would be preferable to saying the trucks do not have place in our vibrant downtown. But there should be ample evidence about the how much intersection there even is between food trucks and established brick-and-mortar restaurants.

As they debate these rules City Council should listen closely to what the food truck operators have to say and carefully balance it with the concerns of the established downtown restaurant owners.

These are not our fathers’ food trucks; they’re not hot dog carts or ice cream wagons. They represent a hip new urbanism that appeals to younger workers and is associated with cosmopolitan cities such as what Greenville is successfully striving to be. Food trucks are increasingly prevalent in many cities, and Greenville should find a place for them.

The rules that were proposed by the task force would require food trucks to have a city business license, proof of liability insurance and a DHEC food inspection report, according to a recent story ineGreenville by reporter Lillia Callum-Penso. Those are reasonable requirements given that the food trucks are legitimate food service businesses.

But city leaders should ease up on the other proposed requirements. City Council should find a way to let the food trucks serve customers in downtown Greenville. Restaurant owners often welcome the synergy that is created by clusters of establishments in an area — it’s part of the recipe for the success of downtown Greenville’s restaurants. Providing yet dining option for city residents and visitors — especially a hip one like food trucks — would seem to augment that synergy rather than detract from the fine restaurants we already have.

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20130312/OPINION/303120005/Editorial-Give-food-trucks-place-city

Background image courtesy TimothyJ, flickrContr

GREENVILLE, S.C. —An event hosted by an avant-garde Greenville restaurant in support of food trucks is expected to draw hundreds of people and will feature guests chefs from out of state.

The Owl restaurant on Wade Hampton is hosting what they describe as the “peaceful protest against the new food truck regulations.”  The event was planned after the Greenville City Council made public plans to prevent food trucks from parking within 250 feet of existing restaurants, essentially banning them from the downtown Central Business District.

The event has picked up momentum since The Owl posted an open invitation on Facebook.  By Tuesday afternoon, nearly 300 people had posted that they plan to attend.

The Neue Southern and Asada trucks will be at The Owl at 728 Wade Hampton Blvd. from 5:30-10:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Elliott Moss, chef at The Admiral in As heville, N.C., and Nate Allen, chef at Knife and Fork in Spruce Pine, NC., will be in The Owl’s kitchen with co-executive chefs Aaron Manter and Joey Fazio the night of the event.

The Owl will be selling from inside, but owners say “everything will be in our recyclable clamshell to-go containers and solo cups to encourage everyone to mingle. The one stipulation is liquor cocktails — those have to be consumed in the building by law.”

Those organizing the rally say the new food truck regulations are too restrictive and that no one currently involved with the trucks was asked for input or comments.

As things stand, Greenville Mayor Pro Tem David Sudduth says the city staff will share the proposed food truck regulations “with restaurant owners (particularly downtown), and then an ordinance would be considered by council requiring two readings,” so time for input from the community is running out.

For more information about The Owl, call 864-252-7015, or visit the restaurant’s Facebook page.

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Lauren Zanardelli and Graham Foster are the owners of Neue Southern.

Restaurants may have customers, but food trucks have groupies. And no wonder: Gourmet food on the move, from sustainable local sources, and at reasonable prices? Bring it on. These mobile eateries — with their niche menus, tech-savvy chefs and an urban vibe — have hit the streets from coast to coast, in New York and Los Angeles as well as cities such as Atlanta and Charlotte. Now Greenville has its own growing mobile food culture, thanks to two gourmet food trucks that rolled in six months ago.

Chefs Lauren Zanardelli and Graham Foster opened their gourmet food truck, Neue Southern, in September, and often “dock” their truck in the parking lot near Community Tap at Stone’s Point. Neue Southern (Neue is German for “new”) specializes in European/Southern fusion. Zanardelli, who grew up in Pittsburgh, and Foster, a Greenville native, met at Johnson and Wales culinary school in 2011. Both interned in Michelin-star-rated restaurants in New York City, experiences Zanardelli describes as valuable but “brutal.”

After some soul searching at the conclusion of their internships, she says they had an epiphany: “If we’re going to spend 12-hour days, six days a week in kitchens, we wanted it to be our own. Especially when we already have our own ideas.” Foster noticed the streets in their East Village neighborhood were lined with food trucks offering some of the best food he’d tasted. Why not open a food truck?

While they’re fully mobile—and required to be driven to a commissary for cleaning and storage at the end of each workday — the low overhead of food trucks appeals to many chefs who want to run their own kitchens. “We looked at a lot of cities,” Foster says. “We considered Asheville and Charleston, but … found there were no food trucks in Greenville at the time.”

They soon discovered fellow food truck pioneers Roberto Cortez and Gina Petti had come to a similar conclusion. Cortez and Petti, who moved to Greenville from California, opened their food truck, Asada, in August 2012. Spanish for “grilled,” Asada specializes in gourmet Latin American food from San Francisco’s Mission District, where Cortez and Petti met.

When the couple visited Cortez’s brother, an airline pilot living in Greenville, “we loved it. We went back to our cramped San Francisco apartment and decided we wanted to move here,” Petti says. A fine artist and graphic designer, Cortez designed the food truck’s logo, website and branding. They started out small, Petti says, preparing their Latin fusion specialties in booths at Upstate food festivals. “People kept asking us where our restaurant was,” she says. A property owner in the Pendleton Arts District agreed to let them park their food truck on his parking lot across from Village Studios, where they now serve lunch or dinner several times a week.

They love being surrounded by art galleries and studios, Cortez says, and serve dinner on “First Fridays,” a gallery crawl when dozens of galleries open their doors to the public on the first Friday of every month. Street performers sometimes show up, Cortez says.

The chefs from both food trucks regularly collaborate, arranging certain dates to join forces for what’s known as a “rodeo.” Teaming up, Foster says, draws more diners who appreciate the opportunity to order from both menus. Like most gourmet food trucks nationwide, Neue Southern and Asada rely on social media to announce such events as well as their weekly locations and specials.

Neue Southern’s menu changes with the availability of local ingredients, and includes such dishes as sustainably wild caught North Carolina flounder fillet with collard greens and pommes frites tossed in a smoked pimento BBQ rub. When the couple traveled in January to Asia, “we basically ate our way through Vietnam, Japan and Hong Kong,” Foster says. They came back with ideas for dishes to add to the menu.

Both couples say they would like one day to open brick-and-mortar restaurants but will keep their food trucks rolling. After all, in addition to made-to-order meals, food trucks are known for bringing something else to their customers: a sense of community. The friends they’ve met though the order window, and who meet each other, are what makes their 12-hour days worthwhile, the chefs say. “I love that we have such a variety of customers,” Petti says. “Men in suits and ties, nurses, artists, families.” Cortez adds how pleased he is to see diners network: “I see them eating lunch and exchanging business cards.”

Zanardelli says she’ll never forget one of Neue Southern’s most rewarding nights: “We had 12 gentlemen who chose us for their monthly sit-down dinner. They set up a dining room table with a tablecloth right there in the parking lot. I was so tickled. It was the best.”

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20130307/ENT/303080006/Food-truck-scene-finds-unique-vibe-arts-craft-beer-fans

Owners of Neue Southern Lauren Zanardelli and Graham Foster, along with employee Jared Crane, serve up lunch in the parking lot in front of Community Tap on Wade Hampton Boulevard on Tuesday, October 23, 2012. / MYKAL McELDOWNEY/Staff

How to regulate food trucks and how to balance food truck owners’ needs with those of owners of brick-and-mortar restaurants remains a much talked about issue in Greenville.

Greenville City Council revisited its November 2012 initiative to examine local food truck rules at a work session this week, where the task force developed to examine the issue presented some recommendations. The group of business leaders, City leaders and restaurant representatives kept most things the same – prohibited from any public space unless part of a permitted event.

New proposed regulations include no alcohol service, a City business license, proof of liability insurance and DHEC food inspection report and a requirement of a $500 annual permit fee.

Food trucks would not be allowed on City-owned property including parks and plazas unless approved as part of a permitted event.

On the issue of appeasing local restaurateurs, the task force recommended a 250-foot distance between a food truck and the door of a lawfully licensed restaurant during business hours. The number was based on regulations in other cities in the region, said Beth Rusch, Greenville special events manager.

Also important will be communicating with food truck owners about any new regulations that are passed, said Angie Prosser, the city’s director of public information and events.

“What we discovered through all the research is there is a lot of miscommunication out there about what is allowed and what is not allowed,” Prosser said. “So what we hope to do once we pass the ordinance is make sure the new potential food truck vendors know what they can’t do”.

The next step is to take the regulations to local restaurant owners as well as food truck owners, Prosser said, before presenting an official ordinance later this year.

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20130305/BUSINESS/303050070/Greenville-City-Council-presents-new-food-truck-regulations

Taste of the Bayou food truck in New York City
Credits: Donald Bowers/ Getty Images for History’s Swamp People

There is a new face in the upstate’s gallery of quality eating. Not only is it changing the plans we make for lunch, but it is also adding new meaning to the expression “meals on wheels.” Lunch trucks are the wave of the future. These new urban entrepreneurs and what they bring to the table have created a cult following here in the upstate. Dining out, thanks to them, is not limited any longer to crowded fast food joints or expensive restaurants. It’s as easy as driving into the parking lot of a strip mall and ordering.

Lunch trucks no longer wait at the factory gate for customers. They bring lunch to any and everybody, and it’s not a grease wagon either. The trucks bring a menu that is not about convenience or classical favorites; now it’s about the “nouveau, the different,” and the unique but affordable dishes that can’t be found anywhere else.

Neue Southern and ASADA are two gourmet delights that have taken Greenville’s lunch palate to the next level. Neue Southern has a deep-fried Brussel Sprouts dish that’s tossed in vinegar and sprinkled in popcorn that is so good it will make you, as they say in the South, “slap your momma” http://www.neuesouthernfoodtruck.com/tag/food-truck/.

The flexibility and mobility of food trucks make them the answer for workers whose jobs are in areas that have few eateries close by. The Greenville News commented on the benefit these trucks bring to an area calling it a “two for one situation where people can shop and fit a meal in as well.” The atmosphere that the trucks create is also a plus; “the ability of the lunch trucks to move from place to place and its ‘fair-like feeling’ is part of what has come to define food trucks.”

Try the food truck experience on Saturday,November 3, 2012 at the Humane Society’s Woofstock with Neue Southern. The Humane Socety is located in Greenville on Aviation Road.

http://www.examiner.com/article/food-trucks-bring-interesting-dining-to-the-upstate

]]> http://www.mobilefoodnews.com/2012/11/greenville-sc-food-trucks-bring-interesting-dining-to-the-upstate/feed/ 0 http://www.mobilefoodnews.com/2012/10/greenville-sc-new-regulations-on-the-table-for-greenville-food-trucks/ http://www.mobilefoodnews.com/2012/10/greenville-sc-new-regulations-on-the-table-for-greenville-food-trucks/#comments Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:43:54 +0000 MobileFoodNews.com http://www.mobilefoodnews.com/?p=29841

By Anna Lee | GreenvilleOnline.com

Neue Southern Truck

 Most people will agree that they’ve never tasted Brussels sprouts this good.

Deep fried, tossed in vinegar and sprinkled with popcorn, they’ve been known to sway even the most die-hard Brussels sprouts hater, according to Lauren Zanardelli and boyfriend, Graham Foster, the duo behind Neue Southern and Greenville’s newest kitchen on wheels.

The food truck has become something of a fixture outside Community Tap, where the lunch hour on a recent Tuesday brought a steady crowd of foodies, hipsters, office workers, even a surgeon still in his blue scrubs. One woman wanted one of everything, and the orders came in as fast as Foster could fry them.

On a good day, Zanardelli said a three-hour service can be expected to make about $500. In the month since Neue Southern has opened, though, it’s been averaging $600 to $700, and the business has spawned an almost cult-like following.

“We have regular stalkers on Twitter and Facebook,” Zanardelli said with a laugh.

Compared to the days of the factory-gate roach coaches and grease wagons, food trucks today are a whole different species. Now it’s all about the gourmet, the nouveau and different, low-cost foods you can’t find anywhere else, even in Greenville, where the food truck movement has just started to catch on.

They’re not as popular here as they are in cities like Charleston, Atlanta and Asheville, where food truck rodeos are known to spring up in parks and parking lots, but Zanardelli thinks that can change over time as the city learns how this new food scene works.

Getting a truck up and running now, vendors say, is a process loaded with red tape and unknown boundaries. Some of the rules don’t seem to make much sense, and city officials admit that food trucks don’t have many options.

They may, however, work in certain parts of the city where restaurants are sparse, which is why the city hopes to study the issue with a task force that will draw up a new ordinance that could dictate everything from where vendors can park and their hours of operation to the cost of a permit.

The end goal? Striking the right balance between the public’s health, safety and welfare and its new-found appetite for food trucks.

Getting the boot

Facebook gave one giant collective groan earlier this month when ASADA broke the news to its 400 friends that it had just been given “the boot” from an empty softball field across from Michelin.

It turned out that the field taco truck owners Gina Petti and Roberto Cortez thought was fair game is part of the Greenville County Recreation District, where only one vendor is allowed by private contract to serve food.

A “Fight for Their Tacos” campaign was soon launched as ASADA fans reached out to the county to get the restriction lifted. One man pledged to write a letter to the mayor. Another offered up the parking lot outside a North Main yoga studio, but finding a place to set up in the city limits, even on private property, is a lot harder than knocking on doors and asking for permission.

On private lots, temporary-use permits must be issued for each new location. Each permit costs between $50 and $100 and requires written permission from the owner, Foster said. On top of that, Neue Southern’s first and only permit took three weeks to process.

“We’re a mobile restaurant, but we’re not quite mobile,” he said. “The turnaround time is really just unacceptable because if we want to go park somewhere else next week, we wouldn’t be able to do it.”

The rules for public property are more straightforward. Trucks aren’t allowed anywhere in the central business district, and they can’t stay for longer than 30 minutes in public spaces outside downtown. Vendors are also required to have a business license and show a copy of a certified letter from DHEC, though they don’t have to pay property taxes like a brick-and-mortar restaurant.

Greenville gets about 35 to 40 calls a year from prospective vendors, according to Angie Prosser, director of public information and events. Only two, Neue Southern and ASADA, have business licenses, but there are a number of other food trucks that “pop in and out that may not be as familiar with our ordinances in what they can and can’t do,” Prosser said.

DHEC is taking steps to modernize its own food truck regulations to keep pace with the fast-moving industry. The current guidelines, last updated in 1993, take up less than two pages of a nearly 100-page long restaurant rulebook, and the focus is more on pizza and corn dogs than rabbit rillette and sweet potato mash.

Jim Beasley, director of DHEC’s media relations, said staff is working with stakeholders in the food service industry to gather input. Once a draft is prepared, it will be reviewed by the agency’s board, then forwarded to the state Legislature.

The new law could come as early as next year and may include more regulations and tougher standards, Prosser said.

Flexibility vs. predictability

There aren’t set hours or print menus in the food truck business.

Its pop-up nature, its impermanence, and its ability to move freely from place to place and the fair-like feeling that creates is part of what has come to define food trucks.

When cities step in to regulate the business, however, they have the power to change just how mobile food trucks can be.

At a recent workshop session, Greenville City Council took a look at how communities elsewhere have dealt with this new wave of urban development in which pedestrian traffic, a lack of food options and the sentiment of restaurants owners all have to be weighed.

Prosser said a common theme in all cities is the fear that food trucks will pull up outside an established restaurant and compete for the same customers who might choose novelty over brick and mortar.

That’s why the most severe food truck restrictions usually have to deal with where and when vending is allowed.

Charleston allows food trucks on private property with the owner’s permission, among other requirements, and sets up food truck zones that let multiple vendors onto one lot, according to Prosser. Columbia’s law states that trucks can’t set up within 100 feet of a restaurant, which is similar to ordinances in Chicago and St. Louis.

Other cities have found different ways to rein in food trucks. Boston requires food trucks to have four different permits; Evanston, Texas, only lets local restaurants operate food trucks; and Seattle gives restaurants veto power over whether food trucks can operate near their businesses.

Birmingham limits hours of operation in the city center from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on weekdays and requires food trucks to pay a $500 annual permit fee and an extra $300 to operate downtown.

These are growing pains that are happening everywhere to some degree, but communities tend to loosen their restrictions once they find how valuable food trucks can be, said Steve Palmer, co-founder and CEO of the mobile food-finding app, TruckyLove.

“It takes a few months, maybe even years, for some cities to kind of grasp how much they can do for the people in the community,” Palmer said.

In Philadelphia, entire events are designed around food trucks. Forty or 50 vendors will converge at once on a single street, and the city uses them as a mechanism to bring visitors into certain parts of town that may be underdeveloped or underappreciated, he said.

Small shopping centers, like Stone’s Point off Wade Hampton Boulevard, where Neue Southern is usually found, are also great places for food trucks since they draw foot traffic and create a “two-for-one situation,” where people can shop and fit in a meal or vice versa.

“That’s the question that a government has to look at,” Prosser said during the workshop. “Do we need that supplemental food in a certain period of time?”

City Council members pointed out pockets of the city where there are large concentrations of people but not enough restaurants to serve everyone, particularly at lunch when employees have short breaks and don’t want the hassle of coming downtown and finding a place to park. Augusta Road, West Greenville and Stone Avenue were examples.

The ideal location for food trucks, of course, would be downtown, but Zanardelli and Foster said they don’t necessarily want to be on the main drag where traffic congestion could pose a problem.

Back roads would be a better fit, but private parking lots that serve high rise office buildings should be allowed too, they said.

Petti said food trucks would make the most sense downtown late at night, when most of the restaurants are closing up but there’s still plenty of people out on the street. She’d love to be allowed at the TD Saturday Market, street festivals like Artisphere, or for the city to create designated food-truck zones while also allowing more freedom to move around.

When asked what restrictions will or won’t work, Foster said a perimeter between food trucks and restaurants is too “black and white.” Some restaurants only serve dinner, others just lunch, and there really is no competition between Neue Southern and first-rate fine dining like Devereaux’s.

Health or safety-related rules, like the ones now that require food trucks to have a certain size waste retention tank and be tied to a commercial kitchen they have to visit at least once a day, make sense, too, but things like time restrictions feel like regulation for the sake of regulation, Zanardelli said.

Whatever happens, both food truck owners want to have a say in the task force that will decide their fate.

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20121026/BUSINESS/310260005/?odyssey=tab%7Cmostpopular%7Ctext%7CPARENT&nclick_check=1

“We don’t want to go park in front of Two Chefs and take all of their business … but we do want our opportunity for success as well,” Foster said.

Sexy Taco is open 11 a.m.- 9 p.m. Monday-Saturday. The Sexy Taco truck, usually at the intersection of Garlington and Woodruff roads, is open from 11 a.m. until the tacos are gone, which is usually around 2 p.m. (Credit: Angela Cox)

By Lark Reynolds | Special to Metromix

Food trucks are the new rage in the restaurant industry. They’ve been bringing on-the-go meals to busy street corners in the big cities for some time now and have been spotted in other urban areas here and there.

The trend has reached Greenville with the arrival of Sexy Taco, a modest taqueria located in a strip mall at the intersection of Woodruff and Butler roads. The buzz isn’t about the taqueria itself, though, as much about its little sibling, the Sexy Taco truck, which has carved out a spot for itself at the intersection of Woodruff and Garlington roads.

“With the buzz about food trucks all over the media, we decided we would go that route with Sexy Taco,” said owner Terri Marshall, who has three decades of experience in the restaurant industry.

The key is social media, Marshall said. Sexy Taco relies heavily on its Facebook and Twitter pages to keep in contact with customers and let them know where the truck can be found. The social media pages can also be used by customers to suggest good locations for the truck to visit, or a type of taco not on the menu.

“Social media is really what drives our calendar,” Marshall said. “If anybody knows a good corner in Greenville where they think we should go, send us a tweet or let us know on our Facebook page.”

As far as the sexiness factor, Marshall said they don’t want to be misunderstood.

“We consider our food sexy,” she said. “We have an appealing staff—they’re beautiful inside and out—but our food is really sexy, and that’s how the sexy (in Sexy Taco) evolved.”

Marshall said they’ve been taste-testing tacos for several months, and the menu is packed with non-traditional varieties such as short rib and roasted chicken. All the tacos are served in a soft flour tortilla, and accented with high-quality, flavorful touches like mango slaw and habanero cream sauce.

One of Marshall’s previous ventures in Greenville’s restaurant market was the Blue Fire Grill, which she said gave her an appreciation of high-quality ingredients.

“We come from a high-end approach in terms of quality, but we know that we need to offer something people can afford,” Marshall said.

The tacos on the menu are all either $2 or $2.25, with taco bowls available for $4.95 or $5.95 depending on ingredients. Sides are either $1.50 (for petite) or $2.50 (for voluptuous).

One of Marshalls goals is to eventually branch out and franchise other trucks—say, maybe, Sexy Sliders—both locally and beyond.

For now, though, they’re focusing on building up a fan base. Marshall said new folks are finding the truck all the time, and then joining Sexy Taco’s social media pages, too.

“Just the idea of a food truck is really intriguing to most people,” Marshall said. “They’ve seen it on the Food Network. They’re enjoying becoming part of that circle, and I think they’re enjoying that connection. It’s more than just your lunch spot.”