You have food trucks in your neighborhood?
I do.
We have lots of them, and I like them.
They provide good, different foods at good prices.
Laura Pekarik drives a food truck in Chicago.
She sells cupcakes
and the truck let her open a business
without having to hire a staff
and
rent a whole building.
I was able to rent a kitchen space
instead of renting a whole brick and mortar and
managing a team of people.
It was just me and one baker at the time
and everything kind of was under my control,
to kind of get my feet wet in the business.
Joey Vanoni's a food truck entrepreneur in Baltimore.
He sells pizza.
Not just any pizza,
delicious pizza.
When did you get the idea to open this food truck?
I was looking around for some jobs
and I could not find anything.
It's kind of a new idea.
It really started taking off
right around the recession, you know
2008 timeframe.
A lot of restaurant entrepreneurs,
the capital they had was not enough
to actually go out and start
a restaurant on their own.
Banks weren't willing to give loans,
so the food truck phenomenon really took off.
Food trucks are just a way for people to enter.
Dick Carpenter of the Institute for Justice
studied food trucks and concluded
they're an important part of the economy,
because they provide a first rung
for people starting out.
The costs are often much less for a food truck.
So it's a way for them to get into business
and then grow that business into something bigger.
But new rules now make that tougher.
Some cities restrict food truck sales
to two hours.
Others tell food trucks you may not park
near an established restaurant.
It became ever more difficult
to find parking locations when we went to the city
to try to sell our cupcakes.
I would have customers calling me, trying to find us
and I was like I'm trying. I'm trying to find a parking spot,
I'll post as soon as I land.
Every moment that we're driving around
and not parked in the location with our window open
meant that we couldn't sell.
Parkings limits it
because politicians want to protect
existing restaurants.
And you can't be 300 feet next to a restaurant
that offers the same product.
Well there are pizzerias all over Baltimore,
so that means Joey is severely restricted
in where he can go.
They're paying taxes.
They had to use brick and mortar.
Baltimore's just trying to keep things fair.
Well, it's funny you say that John
because I also invested in my business
and
I pay taxes as well.
So you can still run your business,
you just have to stay away from those restaurants.
There's almost no place left for me to operate.
But we must protect existing restaurants,
says Chicago Alderman Tom Tunney.
I'm going to be prejudicial
towards those kind of businesses
because that keeps my neighborhood.
A brick and mortar is a much more stable enterprise.
This is a prime example of protectionism
Wait, who are these kids
talking about protectionism?
I'm Ethan
and I'm Emily.
Together we're the Tuttle Twins.
More on the Tuttle Twins in another video.
But, they rightly ask
"Why would the government favor
a business over another?"
That's a good question.
Often times it's because one side
lobbied for regulations.
Sometimes that side also donated money to a
politician's campaign.
Man, the government can be so shady.
Yes,
it can be.
And by the way,
Tunney the politician
who's in charge of limiting food truck parking
in this district
just happens to own some brick and mortar restaurants.
At least he discloses that.
For obvious transparency reasons, I'm a restaurant
operator in the city of Chicago
for almost 40 years.
They want to keep competitors as far away as possible
The guy who opened the restaurant
and had to pay real estate taxes
and pay for his building,
isn't he getting ripped off
by these new guys?
That assumes that the food truck operator doesn't pay
expenses of the same type.
In fact, food truck operators pay
taxes, they pay rents,
and through their rents they pay property taxes.
Laura and Joey
now are fighting the regulations in court.
They argue it's unconstitutional to
favor one industry
at the expense of another.
To try to push us back and down and
prevent us from doing business is unfair.
This case with Laura,
five years
and going.
The Restaurant Association
has so much influence
over those
who are elected officials.
That gives existing restaurants
the power
to stop newcomers
by imposing lots of rules.
The nerve of them!
That's getting in the way of new jobs!
This is true of all bottleneckers.
Yes, it is.
Like closing a lane on a highway,
bottleneckers stop all sorts of progress.
Cosmetologists take jobs from hair braiders,
optometrists ban computer eye tests,
union bus companies
ban these minivans,
florists say,
you may not do flower arrangements without a license.
These bottleneckers say they're protecting us,
but mostly
they collude with government
to protect themselves.
In this case,
taking away our choices
one meal at a time.