NEW ORLEANS, LA – Rachel Billow parked her food truck, La Cocinita, at Perdido and Bolivar streets shortly before noon Wednesday, blocks away from the Central Business District and its mass of hungry workers who sought lunch. To park too much closer, Billow would have been in violation of a city law that forbids food trucks in the CBD.

La Cocinita NOLA food truck

Soon, though, that prohibition could change.

City Council President Stacy Head will introduce new legislation during next Thursday’s council meeting designed to give a broader area in which food trucks can operate and update decades-old laws that cap the number of permits at 100 and the time each truck can remain in one spot at 45 minutes.

She hopes to have the council vote on the new ordinances in February.

“It’s time to move on it,” she said of the issue.

Ultimately, Head wants to do a complete rewrite of existing city codes governing food trucks since, she said, they’ve been reworked in a piecemeal fashion during the years, and many do not dovetail with the modern-day food truck industry that began to develop post-Hurricane Katrina.

Meanwhile, she will focus on nine specific areas:

  • Increasing permit capacity to 200.
  • Increasing parking time to four hours.
  • Decreasing the restricted areas in the CBD without allowing them into the area’s core.
  • Defining “food truck” or “mobile food vendor” to allow on-vehicle cooking.
  • Prohibiting food truck operation in front of residences.
  • Requiring food truck vendors to clean up areas around their trucks and provide trash cans.
  • Reducing the proximity restriction for restaurants to 50 feet from the front door, on the same side of the street during operating hours with a possible two-truck limit per block.
  • Increasing the total permitting fee to $750.
  • Adding rules for suspension and revocation of permits.

Billow, who works with the New Orleans Food Truck Coalition, a network of food truck operators, said there has been a positive response from many restaurants to the idea of loosening the existing regulations.

Find the entire article by Danny Monteverde at TheAdvocate.com <here>