San Bernardino County supervisors on Tuesday will consider amending its food truck ordinance, which if approved would lift the permit requirement for vendors at businesses or nonpublic events.
The county is the only one in California that does not allow roaming food trucks. In April 2012, the Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance establishing guidelines for food truck sanitation and inspection as well as a permitting process for major and minor events.
Board Chairwoman Janice Rutherford, who proposed the ordinance in 2012, is pushing to lift restrictions so food trucks can roam freely and vendors can sell their wares wherever they want.
“I think particular business owners who want to have food trucks on their property should be able to do that without another layer of red tape,” Rutherford said Friday. “I’m certainly going to raise that to my colleagues on Tuesday and see if we have the support to get there.”
The requested amendment to the ordinance came after a vendor complained to the county that they needed to get a three-year permit to sell food to workers at a construction site for about six months, said Scott Vanhorne, Rutherford’s communications director.
During an inaugural food truck festival Thursday in the parking lot of San Bernardino City Hall, lines were so long at the trucks that people wound up going to the neighboring Molly’s Cafe to eat because they didn’t want to wait so long, Rutherford said.
“There’s a synergy that food trucks bring that the county could benefit from,” Rutherford said.
The amended ordinance would only apply to unincorporated areas of the county and not impact the county’s 24 cities. County staff is also recommending that events with a minimum of 100 attendees be required to obtain permits from the county, redefining under minor food truck events as those with 100 to 499 attendees and major food truck events as those with 500 or more persons, according to a staff report prepared for supervisors.
Many cities in San Bernardino County have not embraced food trucks and outright ban them out of concern they will negatively impact local brick-and-mortar restaurants and markets.
Keith Kahn, the former owner and operator of I.E. Gourmet Food Trucks in Mira Loma and now the business’s event planner, said the proposed revision to the San Bernardino County ordinance, while a step in the right direction, is “nowhere close” to where it needs to be to benefit food truck operators.
“The county needs to basically open up the entire county and let the food trucks roam in both the unincorporated and incorporated cities,” Kahn said.
As it stands, cities in the county have discretion to impose their own restrictions for food trucks.
“Waiting for each city to adopt their own guidelines — nothing is happening,” said Kahn, who now owns Carolyn’s Restaurant in Redlands. “There’s not enough business in the unincorporated areas to help food trucks out.”
