Joel Friedman talks about Zuma Coffee opening back up in downtown Marshall
Joel Friedman opens a Zuma coffee truck in downtown Marshall that was heavily damaged by Tropical Storm Helene
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- Local business owners expressed concerns about potential competition from food trucks, despite supporting the idea of increased downtown activity.
- The board postponed a decision, sending the issue back to the Planning Board for further review.
MARSHALL – The Marshall Town Board weighed a change to its town ordinances to allow food trucks downtown, but board members and business owners said they’d like to see the downtown restaurants get back on their feet before any changes are made.
Longtime Marshall resident Pete Whitlock, who rents to seven restaurants and owns two, including the soon-to-be-open Star Taco in downtown Marshall, appeared before the board June 16 to request a change to the Town Board’s Unified Development Ordinance.
Food trucks are laid out in Section 4.9.6 of the Unified Development Ordinance.
“The ordinances saw food trucks 10 years ago as a problem,” Whitlock said. “They were siphoning off business from traditional restaurants. But now they’re a part of our mainstream. Smokin’ Joes, the one at the Lowe’s parking lot, the Grey Eagle, even Zuma downtown for a while.”
Whitlock said he felt the food trucks would add to the vibrancy of downtown.
Whitlock’s plan is to offer three food trucks, each offering different food choices, including a Celtic food truck, Celtic Monkey, run by Hollie West, owner of the former Marshall brick and mortar kitchen and bakery Sweet Monkey.
Whitlock said the leases would stipulate that the food trucks would be forbidden from offering items already provided downtown, including pizza, which is offered at Mad Co. Brew House, and tacos.
“It’s not a matter of trying to compete with people, it’s trying to add to the mix of things that we have in Marshall,” Whitlock said.
But with downtown Marshall businesses still recovering from Tropical Storm Helene, board members and local business owners said they were apprehensive about the proposed change, as it could potentially take business from restaurants that were here before the storm.
Board member Aileen Payne said her main concern is the restaurants that are trying to get back into their businesses and get their businesses built back up.
“They’ve been through blood and mud and everything,” Payne said. “They’re people here in the county, they’ve got their businesses here.”
Payne added that the loss of the courthouse operations in downtown Marshall was another factor impacting business to preexisting businesses.
Local business owners’ reactions
A number of Marshall business owners, including Rhesa Edwards, who owns Mad Co. Brew House with her husband Brandon, and Josh Copus, owner of Zadie’s Market and Old Marshall Jail, appeared before the board to offer their support of propping up local businesses first.
In addition to West’s truck, Shawn Barry, who owned New York-styled bakery Ivy and the Poet in downtown Marshall through September 2023, also expressed a desire to operate a food truck, Whitlock said.
“We’re trying to bring people down to Main Street, and by offering them something unique and different,” Whitlock said.
Edwards and Copus both said while they’re supportive of businesses in Marshall, they had concerns with the proposed changes to allow food trucks.
Edwards has operated Mad Co Brew House for nine years, and served on the Downtown Marshall Association board.
“I’ve always believed that the more businesses and restaurants we have downtown, the more attractive and more vibrant our town becomes,” Edwards said.
But with an equal number of businesses aiming to reopen as existed before Helene, Edwards said she felt the proposed change could negatively impact preexisting businesses.
Edwards said she felt it would take two to three years for many of the restaurants to recover and return to their previous sales.
Copus said adding three food trucks to downtown Marshall right now makes him uncomfortable as a small business owner in the restaurant industry.
“I think now, coming out of the flood, it’s an uncertain economy, and I just reinvested a ton of money putting my business back and made a commitment to this town, a long-term commitment,” Copus said.
“I know that our revenues are not what they were, and they’re not going to be what they are for like a long time. I don’t see the world as a competitive place. I’m a person that wants to make a bigger pie, but we’re bringing back all the restaurants that we had before the flood, with the exception of one.
The food trucks would sit in Whitlock’s lot next to Star Taco and Pisgah Legal Services, at 18 N. Main St., across the street from Mad Co. Brew House.
“That being said, I wholeheartedly support Hollie and Celtic Monkey. She’s been a downtown staple in Marshall for over 10 years now,” Edwards said. “I’d love to see her be able to continue in that space, but I understand that doing so would not be allowed under the current UDO.”
West said she felt there wasn’t enough business downtown currently to bring the food trucks downtown.
“We’re all in the business of making money. Until we have a need for the food trucks to be down here, I’m sorry, but it’s going to take a while,” West said. “We need to cultivate the people to be here for there to be a need for the food trucks.”
Board member Billie Jean Haynie said she’d like to hear from more local business owners.
“We may be just a little bit early in trying to start this,” Haynie said. “We’ve just opened in the last month. Maybe we need to give them a chance to get back on their feet and see what it’s going to be like
One of the proposed changes relates to grease disposal and its release into the town’s sanitary sewer collection system.
The proposed change forbids releasing grease into the collection systems “unless the restaurant or commissary has installed a permanent grease trap of a sufficient size to handle the grease generated by food trucks located on the property and has an agreement to have the grease trap serviced in accordance with the Madison County Health Department regulations for restaurants and commissaries.”
According to Town Maintenance Supervisor Jamie Chandler, the town has no designated areas for dumping grease.
Whitlock said he hopes to prevent town maintenance staff being tasked with the grease disposal.
“What we’re proposing is to put a grease trap in, just like a restaurant, and have it in the parking lot,” Whitlock said. “They’re only discharging their dishwater. Their grease, they have a fryer, goes into a grease receptacle inside the building. It’s just their dishwater that may have some grease into it that we’re asking to put in the system, let us intercept it and get pumped out, just like a restaurant.”
Town Administrator Forrest Gilliam said the grease trap issue is “complicated,” as there is a state regulatory component that falls on the county’s environmental health department, and another that falls on the town.
“It is something that the town has not been set up to do for some time, because (Town Maintenance Supervisor) Jamie (Chandler) is doing a lot of other stuff,” Gilliam said.
According to Land of Sky Regional Planner Kaitland Finkle, who works with the town, Marshall’s ordinances currently don’t allow food trucks to dump into the sewer system.
The board voted to send the issue back to the Marshall Planning Board to further study the proposed amendment.
Johnny Casey is the Madison County communities reporter for The Citizen Times and The News-Record & Sentinel. He can be reached at 828-210-6074 or [email protected].
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