Supervisor Scott Wiener(Photo: Rick Gerharter)

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – San Francisco is getting closer to putting the brakes on food trucks near restaurants.

On Tuesday, Supervisor Scott Wiener’s revised four-piece legislation package —first introduced last November — went before the Board of Supervisors.

If passed, legislation would “clear up” some of the rules in San Francisco’s Public Works, Planning and Transportation codes to amend how close food trucks and carts can be to brick-and-mortar restaurants, allow more flexibility in their proximity to schools and all together more heavily regulate the city’s growing number of mobile food vendors.

“We realized there were very few restrictions on the concentration of food trucks and where they could go, as well as arbitrary restrictions that have led to over-concentration in downtown,” Wiener said.

As a result, the biggest change would amend the law to create a 75-foot buffer around existing brick-and-mortar restaurants that would be completely off-limits to trucks.

If passed the law would limit the number of food trucks that can operate in downtown San Francisco. Wiener said that trucks with existing permits would be grandfathered in. However, after seven years, those trucks will have to go through the permitting process once more.

Find the entire article by Renee Frojo at the San Francisco Business Times <here>