HONG KONG FOOD TRUCK RULES OUTNUMBER PATRONS
Raft of guidelines governing new tourist initiative has vendors worried about making ends meet in the former British colony
For the 23rd year running, Hong Kong is, in the opinion of the conservative Heritage Foundation, the most free economy in the world. With low taxes, an efficient government and private businesses running the city buses and its spotless subways, this place is a libertarian dream come true.
So the story goes. Many people who live in Hong Kong beg to differ. This has long been a city of tycoons, with a few families holding sway over the supermarkets, drugstores and real estate market, limiting competition and keeping prices high. This former British colony is no free-market nirvana.
Hong Kong, a culinary paradise that is arguably the dim sum capital of the world, was until this month sorely lacking in something that other financial capitals, like New York and London, have in spades: food trucks.
Something had to be done to close the yawning food truck gap. Enter the Hong Kong government, keen to draw in more tourists. After more than a year of preparation, and even cook-offs to pick the lucky few, the food trucks are finally here. Eight for a city of 7.2 million. There are plans for eight more.
The trucks are sights to behold. Gleaming and new, they are brightly and imaginatively painted, with names like Ma Ma’s Dumplings and Mein by Maureen. One is emblazoned with a panda that bears a striking resemblance to Po of “Kung Fu Panda” fame.
And the food — in the opinion of this hearty eater — is fabulous. The Shanghai barbecue pork bun from the Book Brothers truck melts in your mouth. The “five coloured dumplings” at Ma Ma’s are delicious — an authentic taste of northern China. Just one ingredient seems to be missing: customers.
Food trucks in most cities are mobile. They can move from place to place. They are, after all, trucks. In New York, one might hit the lunch crowd in Midtown, then head uptown to Columbia University to catch hungry students in late afternoon.
In Hong Kong, the government agency that devised the Food Truck Pilot Scheme had a new, bold and innovative idea: stationary food trucks that don’t park on the street.
A spokesman for the city’s Tourism Commission explained why in an email: “Since the urban area of Hong Kong is already saturated with traffic, it would not be desirable from the traffic management and road safety angles to allow food trucks to park and operate on public roads. Moreover, as many locations in Hong Kong have already got a number of food establishments, it would thus be desirable to introduce food trucks away from those areas.”
It’s all explained in a raft of guidelines. There are seven annexes in all, including licensing requirements (Annex D), special government loan programmes (Annex B) and fixed venues (Annex F).
Then there is Annex C — “Mandatory Requirements for a Food Truck” — that lists in painstaking detail what each truck must have. Some examples: The kitchen floor space must be at least 6 square metres. Each truck must have a potable water tank with a capacity of about 32 gallons, and a wastewater tank at least 1.5 times that size. The sink must be at least 45 centimetres in length. And so on.
To meet all of those regulations, Hong Kong food trucks must be custom vehicles, bearing little resemblance to the decades-old trucks that congregate near the National Mall in Washington, the capital of a country that has only the 17th freest economy in the world.
All these rules and regulations have Liu Chun-ho, the owner of Ma Ma’s Dumpling, very worried. To meet the stringent requirements, he paid about HK$1 million (4.5 million baht) for his new Isuzu truck.
On a sunny afternoon recently, his truck was attracting a trickle of customers in a square near the Wong Tai Sin Temple, one of eight places where food trucks can operate, with the venue maximum set at two food trucks.
The trucks must pay a monthly service fee to park. At Wong Tai Sin, it is HK$17,000 a month or 15% of the gross revenue, whichever is higher (Annex E).
Mr Liu illustrates his challenge in units of dumplings. He needs to sell 200 bowls a day, at HK$40 each, just to cover his fixed costs, he said. He is barely making that now and fears business will plummet once summer comes with the monsoon rains and pounding semitropical sun that will keep customers away from the treeless, concrete square.
He hopes he will be able to make more money at a venue his truck will occupy in the future — a patch of landfill jutting out into Victoria Harbor called Golden Bauhinia Square.
To get there, pedestrians must take a zigzag of narrow paths through a giant construction project. The square, whose main attraction is a golden statue of a bauhinia flower, an emblem of the city, is also frequented by buses filled with tourists from mainland China.
There, on a weekday afternoon, four employees of Book Brothers waited for customers to buy their delicious barbecue pork sandwiches, which come with a Hong Kong flag planted in the bun. Over a 15-minute stretch, they had one sale.
One woman from mainland China balked at the price, HK$38, for the small sandwich, saying she thought that was the price for three. That’s a problem, said Chen Qiuling, one of the workers, who said two-thirds of their customers were from China.