[LMich]

This article discusses the ins-and-outs of trying to operate food trucks here in Metro Lansing, with the local ordinances not having exactly kept up with the trends:

Nina Santucci and Anthony Maiale of The Purple Carrot food truck in East Lansing. (Tricia Bobeda | Lansing State Journal)

Mobile resaurants on the move in Lansing, East Lansing

Tricia Bobeda | Lansing Noise

June 9, 2011

Nina Santucci and Anthony Maiale of The Purple Carrot Food Truck are taking working in close quarters to a new level.

The couple's been dating for six years and have worked together in restaurants nearly all that time.

Before moving to Michigan, she was a general manager and he was the chef of a Philadelphia restaurant.

"We were there 70 hours a week but there were days when I wouldn't see him all day because we were in completely different parts of the restaurant," Santucci said. "Now I'm a foot apart from him."

"And she's in my kitchen," Maiale said.

The East Lansing couple opened a mobile restaurant in May, inspired by the popularity of food trucks in other cities.

"I had lived in Austin (Texas) and they have a ton of food trucks there," Santucci said. "It's such a fun idea. It's so cool to be able to go up to a truck and get some gourmet fare that's cheap and casual."

The couple hopes to build a customer base using the food truck so they can afford to open a permanent restaurant in the Lansing area.

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Jesse Hahn has a similar goal. After years of working in the kitchens of larger restaurants around the state, Hahn was ready to start cooking his way, and opened a mobile restaurant this spring.

His kitchen is in a trailer and he pulls it with his truck, which inspired the restaurant's name, Trailer Park'd.

"We're trying to help move the food scene forward," Hahn said. "There's some good restaurants here, but there's not really anybody doing farm to table.

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City officials are updating language for concessionaire's licensing and then the East Lansing City Council will have to approve the new ordinance.

"We don't want to discourage people from going through the process because our language is confusing," Schmitt said. "We're trying to streamline the process."

The policies determine how, when and where a food truck or trailer could operate. As part of the licensing, the mobile restaurants have to pass health department inspections.

"Of course you're going to get different opinions across the table from business owners and the downtown development authority but I think overall they see it as a positive thing," Schmitt said. "I think things like that have been proven in other communities (and) have the potential to bring people downtown to go to other businesses as well."

Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope said food trucks and trailers can get transient merchant permits to operate in the city and need to get each location approved before serving food.

"There is a requirement for transient merchants that they cannot be in any location within 300 feet of a permanent business dealing in the same goods," Swope said.

That means a food truck selling tacos couldn't get a permit to open next door to a Mexican restaurant.

Hahn is disappointed he hasn't been able to get a permit to set up in downtown Lansing.

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I'm a bit surprised how inflexible the local governments have been in allowing these things in more high-pedestrian-traffic urban districts in the city's downtowns. Sounds like something that needs to be changed, and quickly.