By Roger Brown
The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) While this article focuses on the food truck scene in Jacksonville Florida, the issues regarding trucks vs. brick and mortar restaurants are familiar ones for many cities across the United States. Can traditional restaurants and food trucks truly work in harmony? Columnist Roger Brown takes a look.
Jacksonville
Food trucks.
Traditional, brick and mortar restaurants.
We want both in Downtown Jacksonville. We need both in Downtown Jacksonville.
But can both coexist in Downtown Jacksonville?
It is a big deal for Downtown Jacksonville’s present and future.
PASSIONATE VIEWS
It sure is a big deal to Jeriees Ewais, co-owner of the Zodiac Bar & Grill.
On this weekday morning, there is an air of calm preparation as Ewais and some employees get ready to open the doors to the Zodiac — a fantastic Mediterranean restaurant that’s been an 18-year fixture on West Adams Street — for lunch.
But as he takes a brief break and takes a seat at a dining table, Ewais’ calm demeanor steadily become one that’s much more animated.
Why?
It’s because he’s talking about the havoc that he says food trucks are wreaking on traditional brick and mortar restaurants in Downtown Jacksonville.
“No question, they are really hurting the restaurant industry Downtown right now — and what’s even worse, they will keep new restaurants from deciding to come into Downtown in the future,” Ewais says.
“If I wanted to open an exciting new restaurant in one of the vacant properties we have Downtown — and just look around, we have a lot of them — why would I end up doing it?” Ewais adds.
“Why would I do it when I know that after I spend hundreds of thousands in investment, there will be five food trucks set up near me at lunchtime? Food trucks that don’t invest anything close to what I do but can still park near me, grab as much money as they can during lunch — and then drive away and do the same thing parked outside a nightclub that evening?”
Ewais sighs.
“To me, the problem is a pretty clear one,” he says.
“I don’t know how some people in this city just can’t see that.”
But there is no problem from where Jack Shad is standing.
During this windy but sunny weekday lunch hour, Shad is standing amid a lively crowd of people.
They’re congregating in the Court Urban Food Park behind the SunTrust building Downtown.
They’re lined up to order fare from the five food trucks — serving everything from burritos to fusion Asian to burgers to cupcakes — arranged in a neat row in the food park.
And the scene leaves Shad — who served as the director of the city’s public parking division Office of Public Parking in former Mayor Alvin Brown’s administration — wearing a smile.
“You know, when you’re the parking director of a city, you get used to doing things that don’t make people happy,” Shad says.
“But look around at all of these people. Look at how many of them are smiling. Look at how many are laughing.
What’s not to love about doing this?”
Shad and business partner Mike Field are the co-founders of the Court Urban Food Park, which they opened in February 2017 after reaching an agreement with SunTrust to rent space on a portion of bank property located on Hogan Street.
Since then, the food park — which operates from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday — has drawn sizeable lunch crowds who are able to order from the ever-changing row of food trucks and then eat their fare while sitting amid an eclectic mix of picnic tables, benches and other provided seating.
“We’re here to provide another food option,” Shad says.
“It may not be the right option for every person. Or for every day. But it’s pretty obvious that lots of people Downtown do like it. And they like it a lot.”
In fact, Shad says, the clear popularity of food trucks and the Court Urban Food Park should make Downtown’s traditional restaurants feel inspired — and not threatened.
“I absolutely think we can co-exist,” Shad says.
“I know we can.”
The challenge, as Shad sees it, is for the traditional restaurants to be willing to embrace that the old ways of doing things in Downtown Jacksonville are changing and fading away before everyone’s eyes — and the rising tide isn’t going to roll them back.
“I don’t think this reality only applies to the restaurants when it comes to our Downtown and I truly respect what they provide,” Shad says.
“But when a lot of us look at Downtown, we have this tendency to want to keep doing what we’ve always been doing — even when it’s no longer working — because it’s all we know.”
Adds Shad: “If we’re truly going to have a successful Downtown, we’re going to have to do things differently. We’re going to have to embrace new ideas, even if not all of them will work. To me, the food trucks perfectly represent the attitude of ‘Let’s put ourselves out there, let’s try something new and make it work.'”
But that still leaves the question:
Can traditional restaurants and food trucks truly work in harmony in Downtown Jacksonville?
A SMALL PIE SLICE
One thing is for certain: Downtown Jacksonville isn’t starved for food options, whether they are served from food trucks or traditional restaurant kitchens.
According to Downtown Vision Inc., the nonprofit that advocates for living, working, visiting and investing in Downtown, there are approximately 90 traditional brick and mortar restaurants within the city’s center.
It’s not as easy to have an exact number of food trucks operating in Downtown.
But most weeks the Court Urban Food Park has as many as 20 different food trucks rotating in and out of the space each Monday through Friday.
Now add the regular presence of food trucks at Hemming Park during weekday lunch hours and special events.
Then add the other food trucks scattered at various sites in the Downtown area (like On the Fly, a sandwich food truck that has a fixed site in a parking lot on West Adams and Jefferson streets, near the Duval County Courthouse ).
OK, but so what?
Shouldn’t everything still work out fine for restaurants and food trucks alike given that some 59,100 people work in Downtown Jacksonville (according to the stats in Downtown Vision’s 2016-17 State of Downtown report)?
Shouldn’t there still be enough customers, money and attention for everyone?
Alas, not really.
That’s because when it hits 5 p.m. in Downtown Jacksonville, there aren’t enough people leaving their offices and staying Downtown to have dinner.
They are leaving their offices and getting OUT of Downtown Jacksonville, period.
And not enough people are driving into Downtown Jacksonville after 5 p.m. for dinner, either.
So that leaves the weekday lunch hours, roughly 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., as the narrow sweet spot that Downtown restaurants and food trucks must hit — in terms of lots of customers and revenue — to thrive in the city center.
“If you don’t make a huge segment of your revenue and business during the lunch time hours, it’s going to be a challenge for you to really prosper (as a restaurant or food truck),” says Jake Gordon, CEO of Downtown Vision.
“The pie isn’t as big as we want it to be right now,” Gordon says.
“So that means that everyone for the moment is getting smaller slices of a smaller pie.”
It’s a reality that’s hitting home for Downtown restaurateurs like Ewais.
“I would say that we’ve lost 5 to 10 percent of our lunch business over the past year,” Ewais says.
“I would bet that’s similar to what other restaurants are suffering in lost business,” he adds.
“And we’re not even talking about places like the Bank Bar BQ (a traditional restaurant on West Forsyth Street that recently closed after less than a year in operation).”
Ewais notes that during the last few years, the Zodiac was able to have dinner hours because it made enough revenue during lunchtime to cover the predictable drop in evening business.
“I really felt it was important to give people as many dinner options as possible Downtown, even though it was a stretch for us to stay open for dinner,” Ewais says.
But several weeks ago, the Zodiac finally had to throw in the oven mitt.
It ended its dinner service.
The reason was simple, Ewais says: The 5 to 10 percent loss in lunchtime revenue has left no cushion to support dinner hours.
“Absolutely, it’s related to the food trucks,” he says of the drop in lunch money.
But Shad suggests it may be overly simplistic to link any reduction in lunch business among brick and mortar restaurants solely to food trucks.
“When I was the parking director, I’d always get numbers on what kind of activity we had going in and out of our Downtown parking garages,” Shad says.
“One thing that would always amaze me would be the number of people who would leave one of our parking garages around lunchtime, be gone for about an hour or 90 minutes, and then come back and park back in the garage.”
With a pause, Shad adds: “Do I know where all of them were going? Of course not. But you would have to think a lot of them were leaving Downtown, going somewhere outside Downtown to have lunch and then coming back to work. And there was no food park like this back then. So I think our food trucks are actually helping to keep some of those people Downtown.”
Yes, it’s the old the-chicken- or-egg debate.
But this time, there actually are real chickens and actual eggs on the line.
THE LAW
Currently, food trucks operate in Downtown Jacksonville under city ordinance 2014-472, which was championed by City Councilman Reggie Brown and approved in 2014.
Among other things, the ordinance requires food trucks to be more than 50 feet away from a traditional brick and mortar restaurant.
The aim, according to the ordinance’s language, was “to allow both the Mobile Food Dispensing Vendor and the established restaurant industry to co-exist without negative financial impact to the other.”
Obviously, not everyone thinks that has been the result.
Ewais and other members of the Downtown Restaurant Association of Jacksonville — an evolving group of local restaurants that seeks a greater voice for local eateries in shaping Downtown’s future — contend the 2014 ordinance is outdated because it neither foresaw nor reflects the explosion in food trucks that has happened since it originally took effect.
The group is pushing for revised legislation that would significantly increase the distance that food trucks must stay clear from traditional restaurants — “50 feet is nothing, really,” Ewais says — and require the food trucks to be spread out across a wider area rather than heavily concentrated in the heart of Downtown.
“There’s just too many of them Downtown,” Ewais says.
“There’s just too many of them too close to all of us (traditional restaurants).”
But Shad suggests the current ordinance is largely working well by encouraging entrepreneurship and making Downtown a more vibrant place in general.
“I think in reality we have become an established element of Downtown — and the city is benefiting from that as much as the individual patrons,” Shad says of food trucks.
“The food truck operators are true entrepreneurs. They have to buy trucks. They have to buy fuel. They have to buy supplies. They have to pay rent. They have to be innovative to stand out from everyone. So there is a real sense of energy and boldness in what they do. And it’s really valuable to have that kind of energy in a Downtown that’s still figuring out how to shape its future.”
Adds Shad: “I don’t see food trucks going away. I don’t see concepts like the Court Urban Food Park going away. Why should we?”
MIXED FEELINGS
The most striking thing about the food trucks vs. traditional restaurant debate is that it has plenty of city officials admitting they don’t have some easy, magical answer to resolve it.
Indeed, Gordon says it’s impossible to applaud and support the “can do” initiative of the Downtown food truck operators who are putting their ideas and business plans into the free market without also totally understanding and respecting the concerns of traditional restaurant owners — some of whom have been in Downtown Jacksonville for decades and genuinely love and care about it.
“It’s a hard thing to figure out,” Gordon says.
“What I do know is that when food trucks and restaurants are both succeeding Downtown, all of Downtown is succeeding. We want them all to thrive.”
To Gordon, the food trucks vs. restaurant issue may solve itself if Downtown Jacksonville is successful in attracting more economic development and activity.
‘The more development we have going on Downtown, the more activity we have in general going on Downtown, the bigger the economic pie becomes for everybody Downtown — including our food trucks and restaurants,” Gordon says.
“That’s the best answer to this that I can come up with. Let’s grow the pie, so everyone in every business in our Downtown benefits by getting bigger slices of the pie.”
Gordon’s view is echoed with gusto by City Councilman Scott Wilson.
While chairing City Council’s Neighborhoods, Community Investments and Services Committee last year, Wilson held sessions with food truck and restaurant operators to hear their perspectives and explore whether the 2014 ordinance needed to be dramatically revised.
And what was Wilson’s verdict after those discussions?
“I came away thinking it was a complex issue,” Wilson says with a chuckle.
‘I came away from it with really torn feelings. I could really see both sides of it. I could absolutely see how the food truck operators felt and how the restaurant owners felt, too.”
But Wilson says he didn’t come away from the sessions feeling that the 2014 ordinance will dramatically change anytime soon.
‘I don’t get the sense there’s any great movement among my colleagues (on City Council) to do anything,” Wilson says.
“And I kind of go along with that. Do we really want to try to change something that’s already in place?'”
Wilson adds that it’s beyond doubt that “both restaurant owners and food truck operators are making huge investments in their businesses. Both add something to our city. So what I would like to see is both co-exist and both thrive.”
And Wilson may have come up with the best way of all to resolve all of this:
“Look, I like to eat good food, whether it’s at a food truck or in a restaurant,” Wilson says with a smile.
“And I know I’m not alone in this city when it comes to that. So just give us good food to eat, and we’ll find a way to get there to eat it — wherever it is Downtown.”
