Free the Food Trucks: Palm Coast Will End Strict Regulations on Popular Roving, Popup Businesses

Palm Coast is ready to make it easier for food trucks to sell in the city–at public parks, in commercial parking lots, on private property–with basic permitting. Council members don’t yet agree on the details. But they all agree that regulations must be loosened, that food trucks be more accessible on public and private grounds, that the city control them with a much lighter hand, and that local food trucks be given preference. 

The aim is to make it easier for people like Joseph Sherman to run their food trucks in the city. Right now, Sherman, a Matanzas High School graduate, doesn’t feel welcome in Palm Coast. His father explained: “When he first came in and applied, what he was told was, ‘We have to issue a license. We don’t have to let you make money.’ That was word-for-word, what my son was told about opening a business. So he wrote a business plan for himself and said, I’m going to do it out of town.” He’s operated mostly in Volusia County. 

The owner of Crazy Good Eats, another Palm Coast-based food truck, spoke likewise: “I travel from Orlando to Jacksonville to make money in our food truck. That shouldn’t be,” the owner, Sue Guarino, said. “You guys do control what we can do.” 

Palm Coast’s proposed regulations as presented to the council on Tuesday would liberalize a rigid, centrally planned system fit for 1977 East Berlin to broader options, but not quite a smorgasbord. Council members want that smorgasbord. At least they want it for Palm Coast residents. 

“I think the intent missed the mark,” Council member Theresa Pontieri said of a proposal heavily focused on creating “food truck parks” rather than allowing food trucks freeer range, especially on private property. 

By law, cities and counties are now allowed to prohibit food trucks outright. They may regulate them, and regulate them strictly if they wish. But they must make allowances for them. 

Currently, Palm Coast has a monopoly on where and when food trucks operate. In sum, they operate at city-sponsored special events, and they are the centerpiece of Food Truck Tuesday, the monthly foodie feast in Town Center. Everything else is considered rogue–including private property owners or developers opening their land to food trucks. (It’s not clear how Grand Haven managed to slip a few by as a substitute when its restaurant was being renovated, or how Walmart had a weekly arrangement with a local food truck.)

Food trucks are proliferating, as are rogue pop-ups in the city. Rather than go to war, Palm Coast recognized that its regulations were too stringent. The administration set up a committee, studied ways to loosen the rules, and generated proposals. 

Parks Director James Hirst and Senior Planner Michael Hanson presented those ideas to a very receptive council on Tuesday. None of the proposals would change what the city is already doing with food trucks. 

One approach would be to open five of the city’s parks to food trucks–Indian Trails Sports Complex, Holland Park, Ralph Carter Park, the Stage in Town Center, and Seminole Woods Park. The proposed ordinance doesn’t limit food trucks to those sites, but could potentially open any city land to food trucks. There would be a reservation system for trucks, allowing the city to “mix it up” throughout the year. Food trucks would have to pay about $100 per event. 

Council members are concerned about food trucks crowding out limited parking at those parks. 

Private events could also be catered by one or more food trucks for up to six hours without tripping over city regulations, as long as the food truck is not catering to the general public. 

There would be temporary allowances for situations such as at Grand Haven, allowing restaurants closed for renovations to station a food truck on the property meanwhile. 

More significantly, the city would allow so-called “food truck parks” on private property zoned for commercial and industrial uses. Such sites would have to provide accessible restrooms, dining areas, including indoor areas, minimum seating, garbage collection and parking. There would be time restrictions. 

It gets a bit more complicated when the regulations differ between “principal” and “ancillary” or “accessory” use. The difference: for a principal use, a site developed for a food truck park would have to provide amenities like restrooms and parking, and would have to have a minimum lot size of 20,000 square feet. A site where food trucks are ancillary would not. 

At a “principal” site, the food trucks don’t have to be removed overnight, as they would at an ancillary site. There are more granular proposed regulations about pad sizes, limits on the number of trucks, signage, waste, and so on. 

Any application for a food truck park would have to comply with regulatory steps similar to other forms of development. The application applies to the park, not to the food trucks that would set up shop. It would be a one-time review. “This gives our technical review staff the ability to make sure that all the safety mechanisms put in this draft ordinance can be followed and adhere to before it gets the development order,” Hanson said. 

Council members want more focus on food trucks as ancillary or accessories to a given location than as its principal use. They are more interested in roving food trucks than in “food truck parks.” 

The administration didn’t want food trucks to compete too directly with established restaurants. Council member Theresa Pontieri considers that an overreach. “Capitalism will dictate whether or not a food truck that comes into a park is going to draw business away from a brick and mortar, and if the people want to eat at that dispensary, that’s their choice,” Pontieri said. 

“The competition with brick and mortar, it’s not the same, and it’s on a smaller scale,” Mayor Mike Norris said. “I’m not concerned with that too much.” 

As currently crafted the proposal would not allow for, say, the scenario Norris suggested: Home Depot inviting a couple of food trucks to set up in the parking lot and sell. “You’d have to come in for site plan modification to identify a pad area that wouldn’t take away from your required parking area,” Hanson said. 

“I would like for someone to be able to do that,” Norris said. “I think we’re kind of making it too cumbersome for these guys to operate,” meaning the food trucks. Council members agreed. 

Would a food truck be allowed to stop in Town Center, say, along the Promenade not far from City Hall, and operate, the mayor asked? No, Hanson said, but “there are mechanisms in the existing language that it could be done fairly easily.” The one-time fee would be around $1,000 for the property owner rather than the food truck.  

Norris found the process “cumbersome.” He also considers the fees onerous. “We will find ourselves killing people with small margins to begin with,” he said. 

To Pontieri, as long as the approach is even-handed and the food trucks are not reducing parking availability based on city code and existing ratios,  “if there wants to be a food truck in the parking area, and it’s safe, and it’s meeting all of our other parameters, then it should be permitted, and we should not make a difference between public and private.” She was less eager to change fees if that were to prevent the city from recovering its own costs. Council member Charles Gambaro echoed Pontieri’s approach. 

“I appreciate you having this meeting. I appreciate you listening to us and trying to make these regulations,” Sheila Hines, a food truck operator, told the council. “The overreach is astounding, and I don’t know where to start. I want to let you know that at $2,000, it would take–my funnel cakes are $8–I would have to sell 250 to pay for a site plan that already exists. You’re overreaching. These are private properties.” 

She let the city know that last year she set up at Walmart, by invitation. “I was welcome there once a week. There was no permitting. There were no inspections,” she said. “We are regulated by the state. We just all upped our permit on September 17. We’re good for another year. We all have insurance. We all regulate ourselves.” Based on what the council had just heard, Walmart’s arrangement did not appear to have complied with city regulations, though the regulations were just as clearly not enforced. 

Tuesday’s discussion precedes a revised proposed ordinance going to the city’s planning board for its recommendation on Nov. 19, and a first read before the council on Dec. 16. Gambaro doesn’t think it’s “ready for prime time.” He wants more input from food truck operators. 

“I don’t want to see this put off anymore. I want to see this move forward yesterday,” Pontieri said, “to allow these folks to start operating.” But she wants the ordinance seriously reworked to reflect the council’s intent–and submitted to the planning board on Nov. 19.