City Hall
Portland Beats Seattle on Street Food. But Why?
This post has been updated with comments from city council member Sally Clark and stats on street food from the city's Department of Transportation.
Sightline's Eric Hess had an interesting (if a bit dispiriting) post last week praising Portland's thriving street food scene (and panning Seattle's), crediting our southern neighbor's "laissez-faire attitude" toward regulation on food carts for the difference. Last July, the city changed the rules governing food vendors in city rights-of-way, in an attempt to make it easier for vendors to set up shop outside. Has it worked? Not yet.
Hess wrote:
It's true: Seattle's street food scene is pretty anemic---particularly when you get outside of downtown and South Lake Union, where the bulk of those new food carts and trucks are located. In fact, all eight of food trucks that have been licensed since the new rules passed are between Pioneer Square and South Lake Union, and most operate just three or four hours a day.
What's more surprising is that, in some ways, Seattle's street-food restrictions are now more liberal than Portland's.
Whereas food carts and trucks can now locate on many public sidewalks in Seattle (subject, of course, to nearby businesses' potential veto) Portland's outdoor food service is limited to private property---hence the emergence of "food pods," groups of trucks that gather in a single space every day. Yet competition for space at these pods is so fierce that they're actually prone to inner-pod disputes over which vendors are eligible to join a pod; Portland's rules dictate that you can't open a food truck selling a similar product as your neighbors.
So what's the difference between Seattle and Portland? Hess thinks it isn't so much the rules as the way they're enforced. "Portland only disciplines when there’s a complaint, while Seattle is more likely to hunt down offenders," he told PubliCola. "And generally, regulations are still tighter here: private lots can’t spill onto public sidewalks, carts have to close up at night, must be attached to commissary kitchen, and can’t be next door to a restaurant."
"Put those together and you get mostly trucks that service big east-side businesses who’ll let them use their parking lots.” Oh, the irony.
This afternoon, I asked City Council member Sally Clark, who oversaw the food-truck legislation as head of the council's land use committee, why she thought the change hadn't resulted in a street-food renaissance. Basically, she said, she has no idea. One theory, though, is that scarce street parking makes it more profitable for parking-lot owners to use them for parking than lease them to food trucks. "The thing is, actually think seven or eight is a good number for people who want to serve in the parking area or in the sidewalk," she adds. "It's just not all that well tested in Seattle yet."
Sightline's Eric Hess had an interesting (if a bit dispiriting) post last week praising Portland's thriving street food scene (and panning Seattle's), crediting our southern neighbor's "laissez-faire attitude" toward regulation on food carts for the difference. Last July, the city changed the rules governing food vendors in city rights-of-way, in an attempt to make it easier for vendors to set up shop outside. Has it worked? Not yet.
Hess wrote:
Since July, the city issued seven new permits for food trucks—defined in Seattle as self-powered vehicles with kitchens onboard—to vend from public streets, and six permits for food carts—think hot dog vendors or push carts—to vend from sidewalk spaces. The numbers don’t signal an explosion of street food. In fact, the number of food cart permits actually dropped a bit since the new regulations took effect.
It's true: Seattle's street food scene is pretty anemic---particularly when you get outside of downtown and South Lake Union, where the bulk of those new food carts and trucks are located. In fact, all eight of food trucks that have been licensed since the new rules passed are between Pioneer Square and South Lake Union, and most operate just three or four hours a day.
What's more surprising is that, in some ways, Seattle's street-food restrictions are now more liberal than Portland's.
Whereas food carts and trucks can now locate on many public sidewalks in Seattle (subject, of course, to nearby businesses' potential veto) Portland's outdoor food service is limited to private property---hence the emergence of "food pods," groups of trucks that gather in a single space every day. Yet competition for space at these pods is so fierce that they're actually prone to inner-pod disputes over which vendors are eligible to join a pod; Portland's rules dictate that you can't open a food truck selling a similar product as your neighbors.
So what's the difference between Seattle and Portland? Hess thinks it isn't so much the rules as the way they're enforced. "Portland only disciplines when there’s a complaint, while Seattle is more likely to hunt down offenders," he told PubliCola. "And generally, regulations are still tighter here: private lots can’t spill onto public sidewalks, carts have to close up at night, must be attached to commissary kitchen, and can’t be next door to a restaurant."
"Put those together and you get mostly trucks that service big east-side businesses who’ll let them use their parking lots.” Oh, the irony.
This afternoon, I asked City Council member Sally Clark, who oversaw the food-truck legislation as head of the council's land use committee, why she thought the change hadn't resulted in a street-food renaissance. Basically, she said, she has no idea. One theory, though, is that scarce street parking makes it more profitable for parking-lot owners to use them for parking than lease them to food trucks. "The thing is, actually think seven or eight is a good number for people who want to serve in the parking area or in the sidewalk," she adds. "It's just not all that well tested in Seattle yet."
