Having spent more than fifteen years working in law and public policy, I still find Chicago’s permit regime for food vendors perplexing.
As with many large progressive cities, Chicago faces sharp critique for burdensome regulations and a government that moves slowly. It ranks fifth among big American cities for the difficulty of securing a business permit. It also has some of the highest rates of commercial property tax and sales tax in a major city. And, as is typical of heavily regulated locales, the burden of all this red tape inevitably falls hardest on the smallest firms.
In Chicago, mobile food carts and food trucks confront a particularly rough path. For instance, Chicago magazine recently spotlighted the dilemma faced by the city’s food cart operators, who cannot legally prepare food at the carts themselves. Instead, they must conduct any food preparation in a shared kitchen—requiring a shared-kitchen license that costs $330 for two years—and are only permitted to sell prepackaged and sealed foods.
This has produced ridiculous outcomes, such as operators technically breaking the law simply by putting a hot dog into a bun and handing it to a customer. The magazine profiles Geaby Figeuroa, a Mexican immigrant who runs a food cart in the Windy City. Each time she shaves ice and pours syrup over it at her cart, she’s deemed to be in violation of the law. (The city does not clarify how one could realistically prepare such items ahead of time.)
Chicago makes a distinction between food carts and food trucks, with the latter allowed to cook on site. The key difference between these two mobile-food setups is that trucks can be motorized and use equipment such as propane and gas for cooking. Yet the city’s licensing system is far more fragmented, intricate, and opaque, featuring a slew of mobile-food vendor permits, each governing a different business model.
For example, one may obtain a “mobile food dispenser” permit, which authorizes operating a motorized vehicle but does not permit on-site food preparation; the food must be prepared beforehand and wrapped. Alternatively, there is a “mobile food preparer” license, which permits both motorized movement and on-site preparation of the food.
And then there is the similarly named—but markedly different—“mobile prepared food vendor” license, which allows only nonmotorized handcarts and restricts sales to preprepared and wrapped foods. (Rounding out the lineup is a mobile frozen-dessert vendor, which resembles an ice-cream truck; it can be motorized, but the frozen desserts must be packaged elsewhere.)
By comparison, cities such as New York maintain a catch-all “mobile food vending license” that covers both motorized and nonmotorized vendors. (New York City then requires a separate permit for the specific cart or truck used.)
Even for someone with more than a decade and a half in the field of law and public policy, Chicago’s municipal code requires repeated reading to grasp the different licenses. And that’s before one even begins the application process. Asking small business owners to navigate such regulatory thickets is unfair and unnecessary, especially given that roughly 80 percent of Chicago’s food-cart operators are immigrants who may face language barriers.
Chicago’s hostility toward mobile food extends beyond the preprepared mandate for carts. The city upholds its infamous 200-foot rule, enacted in 2012, which prevents food trucks from operating within 200 feet of a brick-and-mortar restaurant. A lawsuit aiming to overturn this protectionist rule failed, and in the years following the rule’s implementation, the city saw a near-50 percent drop in food trucks.
According to the Chamber of Commerce’s Food Truck Nation report in 2018, only 3 percent of Chicago’s central business district—known as the Loop—has legal space for food trucks to operate. Fines for violating this restriction are ten times higher than those for parking in front of a fire hydrant.
Chicago points to a lack of funding as one of the main drivers behind the city’s struggles with mobile-food regulation. The magazine contrasts New York City’s “army of inspectors,” suggesting that Chicago—already contending with a budget crisis—simply cannot keep up in a way that would allow it to modernize its regulatory framework.
While the city may need to make targeted, prudent investments in its regulatory process for mobile food, it is also worth noting that, according to Food Truck Nation, the average food truck in Chicago endures about 15 inspections annually. (There has been substantial debate about how often Chicago’s food trucks are actually inspected, with the 15-per-year figure potentially including festival inspections.)
Regardless of the exact annual inspection tally, it appears higher than in peer cities like New York, which employ a yearly-inspection regime. Even if Chicago does require additional inspections, the city’s bloated budget leaves room to cut spending in ways that could accommodate this need.
It’s easy to scorn major cities for out-of-control regulations. Yet behind the dense web of permits, licenses, and 200-foot restrictions are real people and small business owners trying to navigate a system that would overwhelm many trained lawyers.
