More on Regulations

This morning I read an interesting article on the Wednesday’s city council meeting.  http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2010/11/food_trucks_will_require_speci.php

In the article Bill Rosendahl says,”It is a work in progress, but overall, (I want to see) food trucksrespecting the brick-and-mortar restaurants.”  Council member Rosendahl has been instrumental in our discussions with the Transportation Committee which he chairs.  But, this argument is getting old, especially when it’s coming from a committee that purports to be dealing with “transportation,” not competition.

It’s an argument I hear often… “respect the restaurants.”  I can understand how a restaurant owner’s desire to have a potential competitor or industry “respect” their business.  But, would that same restaurant owner want their food purveyors “respecting” each other?  I doubt it.

What if Foster Farms said to the restaurant owner, “I’m sorry I can’t sell chicken to you that cheap because Farmer Jones sells it at 4 dollars a pound and he has more overhead than I do.”

Every restauranteur wants their suppliers battling it out for their business… Some will pay more money to large companies such as Sysco Foods because of their dependability and “held harmless” insurance that protects all of their products.  But, some want the option of paying less to suppliers that have no bells and whistles and may not even deliver…  Sort of like how some people don’t want a full restaurant experience and some people want to grab a bite to eat off of a food truck.

Imagine a world where competitors were expected to “respect” each other.  Maybe Apple would have “respected” Tower Records and Virgin Mega Store and passed on creating iTunes.  Maybe Direct TV would have “respected” Cable and let their monopoly continue.  Maybe, instead of competition we would have competitors carving out segments of the economy to control fully.  Oh wait… We had something like that in the early twentieth century… Standard Oil?  Bell Telephone?

As a policy, most food trucks steer clear of restaurants.  We’re not fighting for the right to park in front of any restaurant we want.  However, we are concerned that our City Government seems to want to limit choices for Los Angelenos.  The question we should be asking the City is: Are you trying to regulate food trucks, or insulate restaurants? If it’s the latter, the people of Los Angeles are not going to stand for it.

Competition is good… And the argument of unfair competition is a red herring in this debate.  If you own a restaurant, your real foe is ridiculously high rents and unfair city permit requirements (not the health permits from the county, those are important).

Matthew Geller

This post was written by

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *