City leaders to let food trucks serve cooked meals

Some oppose move to let trucks go beyond prepackaged items

Riverside leaders have decided to welcome food truck operators who cook and process food on site.

In the past, operators in the city have been limited to selling prepackaged food.

Following a lengthy hearing Tuesday night, the Riverside City Council voted 5-1 to expand the opportunity for food truck vendors to operate in the Inland Empire’s largest city, while setting limits on where and when they may sell meals.

Councilmember Chuck Conder voted no, saying he worried that competition from vendors would trigger the closing of restaurants while the hard-hit dining industry is recovering from the coronavirus pandemic.

Councilmember Ronaldo Fierro was absent because he was returning from a National League of Cities conference in Washington, D.C., said Caleb Ragan, Fierro’s field representative.

While acknowledging opposition to the policy change from some restaurant owners, Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes said the city needed to remove barriers to food truck operations. It is important, she said, for both types of food providers to flourish.

“I think that we can create a world and a space in the city of Riverside where they can exist together,” she said, according to the meeting videotape.

Food trucks can serve meals in areas “where we still have food deserts,” Cervantes said.

In addition to allowing food trucks to cook, the council voted to restrict operations to sunrise to sunset in residential areas, and sunrise to midnight in other places. The new rules bar trucks from selling food in several open-space and wilderness parks, including Box Springs Mountain, Challen, Mount Rubidoux, Pachappa Hill, Quail Run and Sycamore Canyon — places also declared off limits to sidewalk vendors in an earlier move aimed at expanding entrepreneurial opportunities.

The rules generally bar

food trucks from setting up in alleys, while leaving the door open to possible exceptions, following an amendment offered by Council Member Erin Edwards.

“There may be some alleys where having food trucks may make sense,” Edwards said.

The opposition, while not as intense as when the council eased restrictions for sidewalk vendors months ago, came with similar suggestions that food trucks would have an unfair competitive advantage.

John Perrone, whose family has run the popular D’elia’s Grinders sandwich shops in Riverside for decades, said “they have not put the years of effort in that we have, paying the property taxes and all of our fees that have gone up.”

“We just don’t think it’s a fair deal for the local businesses,” he said.

Code Enforcement Manager Gary Merk said food trucks face similar requirements and inspections from Riverside County environmental health officials as do brick-and-mortar restaurants.

Pam Nusser, who owns a restaurant that specializes in barbecue dishes, said the change comes at a bad time.

“Let’s face it, the past two years have been very, very difficult,” she said, in urging the council to table the item.

Nusser suggested food trucks weren’t needed to expand the array of cultural food choices available in Riverside.

“When people start talking about diversity and stuff like that, it just makes me so upset,” she said. “This has nothing to do with diversity. There are Mexican restaurants. There are Asian restaurants. There is every kind of restaurant you would want to go to for diversity.”

About 10 people — some of them requiring English translation from Spanish — called in to make phone comments in support of changes. Some said they planned to sell food from food trucks.

One caller, Austin Johnson, said food trucks should not be restricted because of “perceived competition,” according to the videotape. And he said they will bring “activity and vibrancy to areas that may otherwise just be empty streets.”

Janice Penner, executive director of the Riverside Downtown Partnership, said downtown merchants generally don’t oppose food trucks, but want time-of-operation limits enforced.

Penner said some food trucks have operated after midnight in the downtown area, and their presence has generated safety problems.

PHOTOS BY TERRY PIERSON — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Lily Sarabia, 4, keeps her eyes on people behind her in line as her parents, Ernie and Josey Sarabia of Moreno Valley, place an order at The Sweet Stop food truck in the Woodcrest area near Riverside on Wednesday.

Summer Randall, manager of The Sweet Stop, makes a strawberry funnel cake for a customer. Food trucks operating in Riverside have been limited to prepackaged items.

TERRY PIERSON STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Ernie Sarabia of Moreno Valley place an order for his family at The Sweet Stop food truck at the corner of Van Buren Boulevard and Porter Avenue in the Woodcrest area near Riverside on March 16.