Last night, Giga Granada Hills posted a very interesting article on the growing food truck war in Granada Hills, and it’s led to some interesting discussion on Facebook.
For those unfamiliar with what is going on: “Old Town” Granada Hills is the original commercial portion of Granada Hills, on the stretch of Chatsworth St. between Encino and Zelzah.* For the past year or so, it has been a growing food truck capital, with the trucks parking along Chatsworth. Originally there were just a few, who evidently showed up at the invitation of a new cupcake store on the street. We would see them every evening as the vanpool trundled along Chatsworth after dropping off ellipticcurve. The crowd of trucks has grown, especially on Fridays. Last night I rode my bike up there (had some good barbeque at the Smokin’ Willies truck), and there were 15-20 trucks on both sides of the street over a two block area.
Well, this has created some tension with the brick and morter restaurants in the area, in particular one of the original Numero Uno outlets. Evidently, the trucks often park in front of their business and drive away customers, plus making it hard for take-out customers to park. Numero Uno (which has great pizza, by the way…. when I order take out pizza, that’s where I get it from) has been writing about this problem for a while on their Facebook page. There have been a number of solutions offered, but for them to work, Numero Uno needs parking. But the trucks block the parking, and it’s become a battle… even becoming nasty at times.
Now, I’ve go up to the trucks a couple of times, more out of curiousity than anything else. I went to this spring’s Food Truck Festival at the VFW (which even had minature golf). I was up there last night. For all the trucks, I’m not finding much to eat—either the fare is too spicy, has peppers (which I can’t eat), is too greasy (which I won’t eat), or is overpriced for what you get. But there are a few that look interesting, and I can see the benefits of having the trucks there. It brings attention to a long-neglected part of Granada Hills, and it could benefit the merchants… if they were open. There’s got to be a compromise that benefits both local merchants and the trucks.
Here are my ideas:
- Work with the owners at Granada Village (which is under reconstruction) to make this a designated parking area for those patronizing the trucks. Signage directing people to that lot might help. Depending on the construction situation in that lot, perhaps trucks could even form an informal food court in that lot.
- Work with the city to restrict the density of trucks in a given block, which would permit the trucks but also provide space for parking.
- Work with local businesses to have them be open later on Friday evenings, using the food truck traffic to grow business.
- Restrict truck parking in front of local restaurants. There are only a few in the area (Menchie‘s, which is OK with the trucks), Vegetable Delight, Numero Unos, A Sweet Design, O’Grady’s Lounge, Ali Baba’s (an excellent Persian restaurant), Red Devil Pizza, Frosty Queen and the few restaurants on Zelzah). There’s plenty of other spaces for the trucks to park, so why antagonize?
I still don’t see a good way of ensuring that only restaurant patrons use a particular restaurant’s patio seating (i.e., so food truck patrons don’t drive away restaurant patrons). There should be a way to make this win-win..
* And for those unfamiliar with Granada Hills: it is a community within the City of Los Angeles, located in the northern San Fernando Valley. See this map.
