CEDAR RAPIDS, IA – When Kyle Sieck turned his farmers market burrito stand business into the Local Burrito food truck three years ago, the Corridor’s food truck scene was sparse.

He was only aware of two others at the time — Ladora-based the Box Lunch and Cedar Rapids-based Keepin’ Up With the Jones’s. It was hard, he said, for new trucks to break into the downtown Iowa City market.

“At that time, there was just a full out ban on food trucks. We were a fairly new thing,” he said.

That’s partly what motivated him and the others to get organized. They formed the Iowa City Mobile Vending Association and have been pushing for more favorable food truck rules from the Iowa City Council ever since.

Now with about a dozen affiliate trucks, their efforts are slowly but surely paying off. In 2014, they worked with the city to create a pilot program to test allowing food trucks to park at Chauncey Swan Park, just east of downtown.

That didn’t work well due to low foot traffic to the park, so last year they worked with the city on an ordinance allowing limited food truck participation in downtown Iowa City itself.

Now they are going back to the city council in hopes of a second pilot program next spring that would test expanding the hours they are allowed to operate to accommodate late-night diners and to expand where they are allowed to park.

“We like to stick together so we can accomplish things, so we can approach the city council,” said Diego Rivera, owner of Tacos Don Diego food truck. “If we want to get anything done, to have our voice heard with the city, we realized they’ll listen to a group more than just one or two people.”

Find the entire article at thegazette.com [here]