Life Began in Jersey City

Gourmet food trucks are a business uniquely suited to our times. A global financial crisis has made credit tight for the past several years but left the skills and ingenuity of American workers intact. An obvious response to this: business plans that can be executed with a minimum of up-front capital—a van, not the whole restaurant.

But selling food out of carts has always presented a problem. In principle, mobility ought to be a business advantage, but it’s hard to sell food unless people know where you’re going to be. Twitter, which lets you follow your favorite trucks so they can inform you when they’ll be in your neighborhood, is the ideal solution. So it’s not surprising that upscale trucks have been booming recently, earning plaudits and even their own Food Network show.  

The result is a win for entrepreneurs, but a headache for incumbent restaurateurs. There are only so many meals in the day, so proprietors of fixed-location food service establishments worry that every lobster roll that’s handed over from a truck is $18 lost from their own kitchen. In an ideal world, this would trigger a frenzy of competition, as restaurants with walls and chairs scramble to prove that they’re offering a premium service in exchange for their higher fixed costs. In reality, it has sparked a frenzy of lobbying.

The entire story can be found @ Slate.com.