Ampersand Ice Cream went out to Gazebo Garden's on Friday for their ongoing event where they have live music and a dozen or so other food trucks that roll into the nursery and park, ready to serve. Photo by Edward Smith

What began as the city of Fresno’s way of protecting children by regulating ice cream trucks to ensure that operators are free of criminal pasts became an obstacle for event coordinators and restaurateurs after the recent food truck boom.

On Thursday, the Fresno City Council voted 6-0, approving an amendment to city ordinances that waived the requirement of food truck owners to fingerprint their employees every year, get additional insurance and place a $500 bond in order to serve food.

“The biggest burden that’s lifted on all food trucks is the financial one,” said Amelia Bennett, owner of Ampersand Ice Cream, who has a food truck and a brick-and-mortar location at Echo and Weldon avenues.

Before Thursday, Fresno required food trucks to pay a $500 bond that worked like a deposit to ensure that business license fees would be paid.

“In the restaurant business, margins are so small that any sort of external taxation fee really does take a hit on the business’ success,” Bennett said. “It’s stressful enough as it is.”

On top of the bond requirement, Fresno also required that food truck owners get their employees fingerprinted with the city.

In an industry that is known to many for a high-turnover rate for employees, paying the fees to get people registered can be a financial burden as much as it is a hassle.

Lisa Quiroz, who owns and operates a shaved ice truck called Kona Ice, employs between five and seven people and most of them are young and only there seasonally.

“To have each one of them go through a background check, fingerprinting—they’re college kids, they’re coming in and working for a few months. I thought it was unfair,” Quiroz said.

The last part of the reform got rid of the additional insurance requirement to operate, as the city determined the insurance required through the DMV was enough, according to Zack.

The reform came in response to issues that arose following FresYes Fest in March, which hosted more than 12,000 people with almost 20 food trucks, according to Zack.

While the restrictions and fees were in place before FresYes, the city didn’t have the staff to enforce the process and, according to Zack, most of the food truck regulation was done on the “honor system.”

When Mike Osegueda, who has coordinated FresYes Frest since 2012, as well as Taco Truck Throwdown, was securing all of the permitting necessary, the city told him he would need to secure licensing for all of the trucks, which he thought was normal. That was until he received a letter a few days later that contained all of the additional requirements the city had never asked before.

“It didn’t seem like it served much of a purpose,” Osegueda said. A lot of the rules seemed to him to be outdated and overlapped with a lot of what the county required.

He sought out help from the city in fixing the issue.

“I was really happy with how fast they moved once they realized the law wasn’t effective,” Osegueda said.

Things came to a head as numerous forces worked to pass a temporary solution that waived the fingerprinting fee for food trucks that had a brick-and-mortar location. The temporary solution also lowered the bond.

Getting out in the community is marketing for some food trucks like Bennett’s and relaxing the rules will mean showing up to other events. “We can say ‘yeah we’ll be there,’” said Bennett.

Event coordinators are hopeful this means getting commitments from vendors might be easier.

“A lot of the vendors aren’t doing it because of what was going to happen,” said Robert Micinski, who is co-coordinator for the Fresno Pride festival and parade, who was worried because he only had two vendors signed up. “But now that this has passed, we’re hoping that the vendors are going to go ‘yay, we don’t have to do the five hundred, we don’t have to the background check.’”

Visalia is also attempting a revision to their food truck code. The Community Development Department is in the midst of reviewing plans to create a new classification that would extend the amount of time food trucks are allowed to operate in the city to one year from six months, according to Andrew Chamberlain, one of the principal planners in the Community Development Department.

The need arose from two key areas that Chamberlain and the Food Truck Task Force found where existing food trucks laws limited both access to food and an entertainment draw.

Currently, food trucks are allowed to operate under a temporary conditional use permit. That permit allows a food truck to operate in one location for up to six months and after that six months is up, no other food truck can operate there for another six months. This is done to protect brick-and-mortar restaurants from competition from food trucks who may have lower overhead, according to Chamberlain.

But, in the new industrial park in the northwest part of the city that is undergoing a combined 689,000 square feet of renovation, many of the workers only get 30-minute lunch breaks and a drive to get food in that time is difficult, so the city is looking into allowing food trucks to operate there longer than the 6-month period.

In the area east of downtown Visalia, which Chamberlain describes as along the Santa Fe Street alignment between Central Street and Mineral King Avenue, Visalia is trying to establish as their brewery-overlay district. Part of what Chamberlain is looking into is whether extending the amount of time food trucks can operate would be a good thing as well.

For Barrelhouse Brewing who opened in July of 2017, they’re “absolutely excited,” according to Matthew Nation, general manager. “When we first brought Barrelhouse to Visalia, I don’t think they understood the positive presence a food truck brings to an area.”

Nation describes Barrelhouse Brewing as being family-friendly, with games and soft drinks for kids. Their aim was to give parents and adults access to craft beers without having to get a babysitter. The other part of the equation, however, was getting food for their customers.

Kitchens are costly, and one of the ways Nation tried to avoid the investment was by having pop-ups come to the area—vendors who aren’t much more than a grill and some food. According to Nation, however, in Visalia, the city doesn’t allow more than 25 pop-ups in 90 days, and that idea was nixed. So, Nation is hopeful the food truck issue can be resolved.

Chamberlain has now gotten the green light from the Visalia City Council to begin coming up with a plan.

“It’s one of those classic journeys of discovery,” Chamberlain said. The task force has gone to business and property owners to seek out their opinions and by June, Chamberlain hopes to have a plan ready to be brought to the development department.

Similar to Fresno, their code began with a response to ice cream trucks, according to Chamberlain. A peddlers code was established that allowed trucks to stop for up to ten minutes in an area and sell food. But, for most food trucks, that isn’t even enough time to get set up.

So, the temporary conditional use permit was established to allow food trucks to operate. In Visalia, food trucks need to go before site plan review like any other business. The city wants to make sure that the proposed location doesn’t restrict accessibility or pose a fire danger. But Chamberlain boasts of Visalia’s one-week turnaround time for reviews that are free to applicants.

Fresno reviewed its own food truck laws in 2015 to encourage food trucks to come in and supplement events and breweries, according to Zack. On top of standard parking laws like time limits and parking meters, the only thing Fresno requires is a requirement of 300-foot distance from a brick-and-mortar restaurant while it’s open to protect business owners from competition.

Zack now hopes that as the food truck phenomenon grows, Fresno can be a part of it.

“We’re excited about it,” said Zack. “The changes we’ve already made have worked well. I think this last thing is going to be the last piece of the puzzle to make it really great.”