Do Food Trucks Hurt Business at Alameda Restaurants?

The weekly gathering of food trucks at South Shore Center has its enthusiastic fans — and its detractors. Among those who wish the trucks would roll away permanently are some Alameda restaurant owners, especially those with eateries in the Park Street shopping district.

This past June, Alameda Planning Board member Lorre Zuppan said several local restauranteurs have said the trucks negatively affect their businesses. Zuppan asked city planning staff to provide an update on the trucks and their impact.

That report comes to the Planning Board tonight. It relies mainly on data about sales tax revenues from area restaurants.

Background: the first line-up of trucks launched on June 2, 2012, at South Shore Center after a lengthy planning process that included crafting a new city ordinance with regulations designed to "level the playing field" between food trucks and brick-and-mortar restaurants.

The trucks are coordinated by Off the Grid, a company that operates a number of other regular food truck events in the Bay Area. At South Shore, up to 10 rtrucks serve a varying menu each Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., year-round.

In tonight's report to the Planning Board, the city's development manager, Eric Fonstein, says the trucks attract about 1,400 customers a week, with about 400 present at any given time.

Property managers at Jamestown, which owns and operates the shopping center at Park Street and Shoreline Drive, say attendance has been steady since the start of the program. They consider the weekly food truck event their best marketing tool, according to Fonstein's report.

To assess the trucks' impact on other businesses, Fonstein says, city staff used what they saw as the best available quantifiable data. They compared sales tax revenues for year-to-date sales through the second quarter of 2012 (ending in June 2012) to revenues for the same period in 2013.

By that measure, Fonstein says, traditional restaurants at South Shore Center showed a 6 percent increase in sales from 2012 to the same period in 2013.

At restaurants along Park Street (south of Lincoln Avenue), the increase in sales during that period was 10 percent.

"Data does not exist to analyze Saturday lunchtime sales, which some food establishments claim have specifically suffered with the advent of the food truck events," Fonstein says.

"It is difficult to prove this cause and effect relationship.

"The HdL data suggests that overall, the Park Street Business District and South Shore restaurants are doing well in all categories.

"Because of the gap in the data, it cannot be definitively determined whether restaurants would be doing even better without the food truck events at South Shore.

"It is equally uncertain if the restaurants would be doing worse without the events, given their ability to consistently attract 1,400 people, primarily traveling down Park Street, to South Shore every Saturday."

Fonstein notes that the comparisons include only restaurants that were in business both years. Fast food establishments were not included in the analysis.

His report shows some differences in growth at various types of restaurants.

At South Shore, sales were essentially flat for restaurants that do not serve alcohol, while at establishments serving wine, beer and/or liquor, sales grew 7 percent.

Park Street restaurants showed a different pattern, with 10 percent growth at restaurants serving no alcohol, 12 percent at those serving beer and wine, and only 3 percent at those serving liquor.

Currently food trucks are permitted to operate in the public right-of-way at regularly scheduled times at four locations: Harbor Bay Business Park, the 700 block of Central Avenue (by Eighth Street) and two sites on Park Street near South Shore Center.

Food trucks are also allowed at the weekly flea market held on Saturdays at College of Alameda.

The city has approached Marina Village Business Park and the Harbor Bay Business Park about hosting events similar to the one at South Shore, Fonstein said.

The Planning Board will meet tonight, Monday, at 7 p.m. in the City Hall council chambers, 2263 Santa Clara Ave.

The board will also hold a public hearing tonight to identify issues that should be addressed in an environmental impact report for a Harbor Bay residential and athletic club project.

Harbor Bay Isle Associates is proposing to build up to 80 new homes on the site of the Harbor Bay Athletic Club on Packet Landing Road and to build a new athletic club on a vacant site located on North Loop Road in the Harbor Bay Business Park.  

You may find the complete meeting agenda and related staff reports on the City of Alameda website here.

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