Greensboro, NC – Food-truck enthusiasts have certainly gotten the ball rolling in the Triad, and if anticipated attendance at the city’s first food-truck festival in September is any indication, it will be difficult to stop the momentum.

More than a month before the Spring Garden Food Truck Festival, scheduled for Sept. 23, about 750 people on Facebook have said they are attending. While anyone who’s ever organized an event online knows the numbers can be deceiving, if anything this event will probably draw a larger crowd throughout the day.

While the concept of food trucks is nothing new, Southern cities have been slow to catch on to the rising trend, Guilford County Environmental Health Director Tobin Shepherd noted while addressing the board of health Monday. After a request from board Director Justin Conrad, a former conservative candidate for state Senate and owner of Libby Hill seafood, Shepherd addressed the board to explain how food trucks are regulated and monitored from a health perspective.

Officially called “mobile food units,” Shepherd explained that food trucks must have a relationship with a permitted restaurant for things like potable water and solid waste disposal. Any food truck operating in the county would notify the health department and would be inspected regularly.

Conrad, who has expressed concerns that food trucks from other counties would operate locally and pay taxes elsewhere, asked Shepherd if there had been problems with food trucks in other parts of the state where many more already operate and raised several other questions, but Shepherd said there weren’t any problems and assured the board that they would be fully regulated.

Find the entire article by Eric Ginsburg at yesweekly.com <here>