Confusion, controversy reign as foodtrucks move to Va. Beach burbs
Angela Kirby pulled up on Lancelot Drive on April 3 to find someone she didn’t expect waiting for her: A zoning inspector.
Kirby had been invited by housebound locals to bring her food truck, Pittsburgh’s Best, to the Avalon Terrace neighborhood of Virginia Beach to sling her Italian sausage and ham BBQ sandwiches to residents who didn’t want to leave their neighborhood for food during the coronavirus pandemic.
But instead, says Kirby, she was told she could get a citation if she opened her food truck windows. This was news to her, says Kirby. “We had food pre-ordered, but we couldn’t open.”
Kirby, who is also Vice President of the Hampton Roads Food Truck Association, was able to eventually get her food truck open after calling city officials. But first, she says, there was a more than hour-long standoff, with a crowd of would-be customers standing on the sidewalks.
Food truck regulation has become the subject of confusion and controversy in Virginia Beach, after a city announcement addressing the presence of food trucks in residential neighborhoods.
The temporary rule change allowed food trucks to operate on private property with permission of the owner, without first getting approval from the city. Food trucks had previously required advance permitting from the city.
But the city also appeared to outline restrictions on food trucks doing business in residential neighborhoods. This caused Kirby, alongside Capt’n Crabby food truck owner MJ Medlar, to kick off an email campaign.
“The neighborhood people started an uproar, because they were mad it was being taken away from them,” Medlar said. “It was like their one treat of the week.”
Virginia Beach zoning administrator Kevin Kemp said that all the to-do is the result of a miscommunication. He says his office’s intention was to ease up on regulations during the coronavirus crisis, not clamp down on food trucks, and that they view food trucks as a vital food delivery service to residential neighborhoods.
But his office also wanted to make sure trucks didn’t block streets, or encourage crowds of customers that might flout Governor Northam’s ban on public gatherings during the coronavirus crisis. He said zoning enforcement officers were instructed to give warnings to any trucks attempting to do business on public streets.
“We want to permit them and get them out into the community,” he said. “Before, without a use permit, they couldn’t get out there…. But they can’t be on the street, and it needs to be pre-orders. They couldn’t have random walk-up customers.”
The city’s website now explicitly states that licensed food trucks are allowed in residential neighborhoods without having to apply for special permits.
“Food trucks can go into residential areas to deliver preordered food, much like other delivery drivers,” according to the city’s explanation of the new rules.
“They must be parked on private property (with permission of the property owner), and may finish and distribute their orders in an orderly manner with safe social distancing. They cannot accommodate walk-up customers and they cannot park in the street. It is important to not park in the street because of potential obstructions in the road due to the size of the food truck, which may conflict with residential streets.”
The revised rules are in place until June 1.
Not everyone is in favor of relaxed food truck rules during the pandemic. The Virginia Beach Restaurant Association, which represents mostly brickand-mortar restaurants, opposes the changes to zoning ordinances on food trucks, including the removal of the requirement to petition the city for use permits.
“While we have no opposition to food trucks in general,” wrote VBRA director Elizabeth Baumann, “they can do the same thing that restaurants have done for years, buy property or lease property or get a private property owner’s permission to park. We agreed earlier that the Conditional Use Permit was an acceptable form to use for food trucks.”
Capt’n Crabby’s Medlar says she doesn’t see why the restaurant association should have a say.
“My customers right now, these are people who don’t leave their neighborhoods. They don’t leave their houses,” Medlar said. “They order their food, they walk their dog, they get their food, and they go back in the house — and somehow the restaurant association is pissed.”
Serving in residential neighborhoods is a matter of simple survival, Medlar says. Food trucks’ usual business model — setting up at breweries and special events — had become impossible during the coronavirus pandemic.
“I thought we’d just have to close the trucks,” she said. “Then I said, ‘Wait a minute. The trucks can go where the people are.’ I put up a post (on social media) and within 12 hours I have 900 followers, 600 shares, emails from people saying ‘Yes, yes, yes, bring this in!’ People are desperate for anything.”
Medlar says that business at her food trucks is still down, but not quite as much as at her brick-and-mortar Capt’n Crabby location in Norfolk.
“It’s enough to just pay our rent,” Medlar said. “It’s enough keep us going and our staff employed.”
Matthew Korfhage, 757-446-2318, matthew.korfhage @pilotonline.com