I disagree with this. The failure rate for restaurants is extraordinarily high. Competition for market share is high. That's incentive to innovate and deliver a good product, especially in dense cities like New York.

I think why food trucks are able to innovate as much as they can is not because of their lack of monopoly but rather their lack of overhead. It's easy to try out concepts, see if they stick, and iterate as necessary. You can't do that in a traditional restaurant where you have lots of staff, rent, utilities, a larger menu, and furnishings/decorations.

I definitely agree that allowing for food trucks improves quality of life for those with access to them, but I'm not willing to attribute their success to breaking up restaurant monopolies.

I think increasing the supply of "prepared food selling space" should give low-end stationary restaurants more leverage in their rent negotiations.

High end restaurants and food trucks do not compete, so it isn't a big deal for them.

But I'm sure you'd still agree that food trucks disrupt existing interests (whether you use the word "monopoly" or not) and that on the whole this is probably a positive thing.

We have "food truck tuesday" about 5 minutes from where I work on a sleepy side road. Three problems:

1) No variety. "I saw the Korean BBQ truck did great on the food network show, lets open one". Times 5 entrepreneurs. Whoops. The brick and mortar restaurants have MUCH better selection. Suddenly you have 5 Korean BBQ trucks on the street sometimes 2 or 3 of them in a row. This also feeds into a narrowcasting disaster of focusing ever more tightly on a ever smaller fraction of the population trying to obtain a very small local maxima of profit.

2) Cost is insane, locally. The cost of a truck is basically fixed nationwide by the auto dealers etc. The cost of rent varies by a factor of 10 maybe 20 across the country. So whats "cheap" in NYC or SV, relatively, is extortionate, relatively... pretty much anywhere else. Entrepreneur sees the food network TV show and they charged $20 for a sandwich in NYC and had lines down the road. Hmm lets try the same $20 in Milwaukee. Whoops the local brick and mortar charge $5 not $25 for a sandwich so that's not going to work. There is the business model option of selling to drunk people who can't rationally evaluate prices but its hard to make all your money at 2am off of drunks.

3) I have to walk past numerous brick and mortar restaurants with wider selection and cheaper prices to get to the trucks that have a narrower selection and higher prices.

The initial idea of a truck was taking food out to some distant underserved industrial area and sell sandwiches at a premium to hungry coal miners or whatever. This doesn't work long term in a rich urban area with a wide selection and heavy competition, other than as a fad. Right up there with cupcake shops.

The "food truck street" is also highly unpopular with the trucks because of intense competition. OK 25% of all trucks will be Korean BBQ because it was on TV. Fine. Across a city that works. All of them lined up on one street means almost all of them go out of business.

A final problem is weather. There are parts of CA where the weather is perfect all the time and everyone is always outside. That is not the case where I live. If I cared, I would have moved a long time ago. The problem is centralizing a foot traffic oriented business in a town where the weather is not foot traffic compatible perhaps 75% of the time. Across the street in a downpour or 10 degrees or 110 degrees works for me. Not a long walk away past 10 other trucks.

So generally speaking, no, formally govt supported "food truck Tuesday" down the road from me, has not been much of a success. Its possible the restaurant establishment has permitted the politicians to support the concept only because they know its a fad and in the long run doomed, in this town, so they don't need the cops to beat them down like in NYC.

1) On any given day in SF and LA: I have a choice in a single location of: sushi, indian, indian fusion, japanese fushion, Mexican, Korean tacos, Pizza, Cajun food, salads, and a deli. The fight in Raleigh seemed to the locals to be more about the food trucks out competing on quality. Most of the restaurant owners that had shitty food had the most to say, with the higher quality restaurants not giving a damn.

2) Cost even in LA and SF will seldom rise above $10 unless you get an entree and an "appetizer" at which point it hovers around $14. Usually the appetizers are enough for a whole meal.

3) Agreed, there are a lot of instances where the prices are the same as a brick and mortar.

I think Roy Choi is great, and is most the reason for the Korean explosion in food trucks, however he only seems to have 2 real competitors at the locations I frequent. The rest as you suggest have either gone out of business or changed to another cuisine which is more lucrative.

They ultimately approved a new regulation that, while probably not perfect, seems to be a compromise most sides could live with.

http://www.raleighnc.gov/home/content/Inspections/Articles/F...

and am unsure how it ultimately turned out in terms of variety.

Not sure about that bit. I live "next door" to Raleigh in Chapel Hill, but rarely have much reason to venture into Raleigh during the day, so I haven't had much chance to partake of their food trucks. But the Triangle, as a whole, seems to have a thriving food-truck scene.

http://www.crankydiners.com/food-trucks/

http://www.wral.com/triangle-food-truck-rodeos-planned-this-...

I believe a lot of fads and prices are driven by the food network food truck series.

That doesn't necessarily have anything to do with customers. That's just the normal trajectory of small businesses.

Also .gov sponsored food truck alley is located between two office buildings. They'll likely never totally starve, but they'll never be a huge hit. Like subsistence farming, but selling lunch.

I often walk around town at lunch and in the winter very few trucks show up. I don't know if that implies they outright close, or migrate, do they re-open in spring or new owners every spring?

Same sandwich from a corner deli (cheapest brick and mortar place that you will find a sandwich) is $5-$8. The competitive advantage that corner shops have is that they will, if they are clever enough to make themselves a "restaurant", sell beer.

Lunch trucks are not "cheap for NYC of SV", they are just cheap.

Furthermore, lunchtrucks do great business in Philadelphia during the brutally hot summers and icy winters because they are cleaver enough to part places where where they are the option that involves the lease amount of time walking outside.