No Kimchi Hot Dogs for Folks in North New Jersey

Cronyist protectionism in New
Jersey? Color me shocked.

The subject is food trucks, and the problem is that towns in
Bergen County in northern New Jersey aren’t letting them in. Elisa
Ung of NorthJersey.com delves into the all-too-familiar story of a
food truck operator struggling to survive not due to lack of
consumer demand, but due to
government intervention:

Instead, her bright turquoise Rosie’s Weenie Wagon is in storage
and Rosario D’Rivera, the 53-year-old unemployed corporate graphic
designer who turned to hot dogs to pay her bills, sat slumped
across from me in a diner booth, talking about scraping out the
last of her 401(k) for training to become a home health aide.

And there could go Bergen County’s one piece of the gourmet
food truck craze that is setting trends elsewhere. While trucks
selling ice cream or coffee have always been part of North Jersey’s
landscape, our towns have inexplicably not welcomed the trucks of
today, which offer foods that are so much more innovative and
unique.

The full impact of what we’re missing hit me a few weeks ago at
the Winter Blast festival in Secaucus. An artisanal taco truck
hawked slow-cooked carnitas tacos with caramelized orange peel,
while across the way, Neapolitan pizzas were being baked in
seconds. Trucks sold apple cinnamon empanadas, kati rolls and
biryani, fried cheese curds, authentic Thai soup, cake pops, all
within feet of each other.

Ung is a restaurant reviewer and seems particularly attuned to
the different flavors available from food trucks. In fact, Ung was
unfortunately responsible for D’Rivera’s predicament. She wrote
about the hot dog vendor last fall, prompting the city to kick her
out of her parking location the next day. D’Rivera fought for
changes in laws in Englewood, the Institute for Justice got
involved because the proposed regulations were too restrictive, and
then the city shelved them. Now city leaders blame her for fighting
against the rules.

Ung makes the notable point, with the help of a local chef, that
the low overhead allows food trucks to provide more expensive food
choices (fancy some high-end beef in that hamburger?) that don’t
always make sense for a restaurant:

“Grass-fed, organic beef is a tough sell,” [Arthur] Toufayan
said, because of the high cost of the product. He said the markup
becomes too high for a restaurant, where he has to pay wait staff,
servers and rent. But merely handing such a burger to a customer
out of a truck? That makes it more affordable.

That’s why so many food trucks are able to sell such
high-quality, edgy, affordable eats. But customers in Bergen
County haven’t been able to try Toufayan’s burgers. He had to
take his truck down to Newark. (He’s currently on hiatus for the
winter.)

And so the customers lose out. But who cares, as long as those
the same old pasta shops who have been around for decades are
happy?