It’s no secret that Chicago’s food truck scene lags behind the city’s restaurants, despite complaints from many residents. Earlier this year, the topic boiled up on Reddit, where a user lamented the lack of food trucks in the city, especially compared to comparable food scenes with abundant trucks like New York.
Theories abounded on the Reddit thread, but one common theme arose: Chicago has unusually high regulatory restrictions that have stifled the growth of the food truck industry in relation to other major cities.
Many of the complaints lead back to sections of the city’s municipal code that were established in 2012 as part of an effort to actually improve conditions for food trucks in the city. Before that, truck owners weren’t actually allowed to cook food on their trucks; food had to be prepared in a brick-and-mortar kitchen, which trucks could then keep heated. Then the city council loosened restrictions, and it seemed like Chicago food trucks could finally play catch-up.
But today, the city doesn’t even crack the top 10 according to a national survey of Food & Wine readers, and the number of licensed vendors has actually declined since the new ordinance, from 127 trucks in 2012 down to just 82 (including nine that only sell previously prepared food), according to the office of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, which oversees restaurant licensing in the city. This has been a huge letdown to folks who hoped the new ordinance would spark the food truck scene Chicago always deserved.
“There was a sense of excitement to be building the food truck culture in Chicago from the ground up,” says Sam Barron, who owns and operates The Fat Shallot with his wife Sarah Weitz. “Sadly, the restrictions the city has imposed since the beginning did what they seemed to have been designed to do: halted the growth of a promising industry.”
The law was riddled with problems for truck operators. Other than a few specified parking zones, trucks would not be permitted to park within 200 feet of any brick or mortar restaurant, including chains like 7-Eleven and Starbucks, severely handicapping where mobile business owners could set up. The city’s designated parking areas were also open to the public, not specifically held for trucks; if another car is parked in a designated spot (which is often the case), the food truck has no choice but to drive to the next location. Spots also had a two-hour limit for chefs, including prep and clean-up time, not leaving much time to serve customers. Steep fines awaited food truck operators in violation of the law, forcing many out of the game altogether.
“There’s very few of us that are still around from the beginning,” Weitz says.
Critics argue the law was structured to favor brick-and-mortar restaurant owners. The ordinance was spearheaded by restaurant owner and former 44th Ward Ald. Tom Tunney, the former president of the Illinois Restaurant Association and owner of Chicago’s legendary Ann Sather’s Restaurant. Glenn Keefer, owner of the now-defunct Keefer’s Restaurant, penned a viral op-ed for Crain’s Chicago, saying it wasn’t fair that mobile restaurants didn’t have to pay the high cost of real estate tax, building permits, or fees for signs.
Still, advocates for food trucks hailed the law’s passage, acknowledging the inherent problems while arguing the law was a baby step toward a longer-term goal.
“This is Chicago politics. You can’t try to grab everything up front and be angry that all things weren’t passed right away,” said Matt Maroni, a former food truck owner and a proponent pushing for the law, in 2012. “My goal was to get cooking on food trucks for all of Chicago. This is a process and a long one”
More than a decade after the law was passed under then Mayor Rahm Emanuel, many food truck owners say it has sucked the life out of Chicago’s food truck scene.
“We haven’t tried [sending our food truck out] in years,” says Rachel Angulo, co-owner of La Cocinita, a Latin American street food operation with food trucks and permanent locations in both Chicago and New Orleans. “We’d send it out every day and hope for the best. I’d get texts from our driver saying he tried multiple spots. It was pretty brutal. There’s no rotation, there’s no lottery system, there’s no way to sign up and reserve a spot, nothing like that. My husband was waking up at three, four in the morning to go reserve spots downtown for lunch. It just got to the point where it was like, ‘Okay, well, it’s not even worth it to try.’”
Angulo has made her business work by relying on catering orders and private events. It’s a practice also employed by Heather Bublick, co-owner of Soul & Smoke, a barbecue restaurant with locations in Evanston, Avondale, West Loop, and at Soldier Field.
“We’re never going to just pull our food truck up on the side of the street and start selling. That is almost impossible,” Bublick says. “We only sell for private events or for festivals and organized events.”
Similarly, Weitz and Barron have come to rely on food hall locations to grow the Fat Shallot, which now consists of two trucks, two food hall locations (at The Mart and Sterling Food Hall), a full restaurant in Lincoln Park, and another in suburban Evanston with a soon-to-open beach location in suburban Wilmette.
Even operators who can successfully navigate the parking fiasco hit other challenges with regulators.
“It was more difficult than it’s ever been to renew my license,” says Weitz. “[The City of Chicago] is less efficient than they have ever been. The city is going backwards.”
Her frustrations are echoed by other food truck owners, who pointed out unnecessary meetings for reviewing paperwork; inspectors who move goalposts on operators by asking for additional changes late in review processes; and exceedingly long wait times between appointments.
“Getting a restaurant inspected and licensed is so much easier,” says Bublick. “A lot of times you get an inspector who would tell you, ‘Oh, you need to get refrigeration units.’ Well, that’s a restaurant rule and not a food truck rule. So you have to know the rules almost better than they do.”
Attempting to undo years of bureaucratic damage, City Hall has begun making some changes. In January 2020, a new ordinance backed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot doubled the time trucks could stay in a designated spot from two to four hours. In 2024, as Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration searched for more ways to attract people downtown following the COVID-19 pandemic, the city waived fees for operators to participate in Chi Food Truck Fest. In its 10th year, the annual summer gatherings have become a warm-weather lunch ritual for downtown workers near Daley Plaza.
“We are big proponents of food trucks because there are small businesses,” says Ivan Capifali, commissioner of BACP, which organizes the fest. “We like to think that our food truck scene is better than anywhere in the world. And what we do here at BACP is promote small, medium, all businesses.”
Many truck operators, especially those who have witnessed thriving scenes outside the state, like in nearby Michigan and Wisconsin, would disagree. The 200-foot rule continues to be upheld, despite a legal challenge that went all the way up to the Illinois Supreme Court in 2019.
“We need more support,” says Weitz. “I started 12 years ago. Not many restaurants last 10 years. A food truck is a lot more viable than a restaurant for so many reasons. It’s less expensive to get started, it’s less expensive to run. It should have a higher success rate than a restaurant for all of those reasons, and right now in Chicago, we don’t.”
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