Town council meetings have broken into debate. Fines have been issued. Obscenities have been furiously posted on social media.

All over those boxy, brightly colored food trucks that sell peculiarly garnished hot dogs, steaming heaps of pad thai or crispy empanadas.

Many New Jersey towns still don’t know how to handle the presence of food trucks and the disruption (according to some) or vibrancy (according to others) they create in the traditional dining landscape of brick-and-mortar restaurants.

The rules and regulations for operating a food truck can differ from town to town, making it complicated for owners to operate. Many cities are selective about where, when and how food trucks can sell in their town.

And with more than 1,000 food trucks plying New Jersey roads, the tension and questions surrounding them in local communities, many with vibrant dining scenes, is not going away anytime soon.

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in 2017 food trucks generated $2.7 billion in revenue nationally, a leap from 2008, when revenue just reached $650 million.

Some would argue that's $2.7 billion nabbed from regular restaurants.

“If I was just a customer, I would see a food truck and think: ‘Great, there’s a new food option.’ But because I’m a restaurant owner, I see things differently," said Lucia Santopietro, owner of V&T Salumeria on Main Street in Hackensack. "It’s already difficult enough to run a restaurant.”

Santopietro was a vocal opponent of Hackensack allowing food trucks to sell outside of city hall in 2019. She argued that they pay less money in taxes to the city than brick-and-mortar restaurants, so should not be allowed to sell in one of the most popular areas of town.

“A customer at city hall is going to say, ‘Gee, I can go five blocks down to get food, there’s going to be traffic, there’s not going to be parking, or I could stay right here and eat from this food truck,’ ” she said.

Sometimes, things get tense.

Tension brewing in Hackensack

Take last year’s brief skirmish in Hackensack. Brewery patrons rallied to support the allowance of food trucks in the city and restaurant owners pushed back.

According to Mike Jones, owner of Hackensack Brewing Co., and Mike Roosevelt, owner of The Alementary, which is also in Hackensack, in years past they never had any problems with the city granting permission for food trucks to set up shop near their breweries.

Regulations from the New Jersey Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control decree that food trucks cannot operate on the premises of a brewery — a concession to restaurants that sell alcohol and had to pay for a pricey liquor license that breweries are not subject to — though many food trucks park nearby so hungry visitors can grab some grub. This was the case for food trucks near Hackensack Brewing and The Alementary.

The breweries are located on offshoots of Main Street. According to Santopietro of V&T Salumeria, which is on Main Street, around the same time the town had begun allowing food trucks to regularly sell near city hall, which is a block away from Main Street. Santopietro and a few other business owners expressed their dismay to lawmakers.

“There’s not much business here, as opposed to a big city like New York. For us, it’s difficult, because we don’t have the luxury of getting in a truck and going right up to city hall, not getting ticketed and selling," she said.

“I own my shop. I pay taxes through my business and my real estate to the town of Hackensack. Food trucks don’t give as much to the city.”

So, the town cracked down and stopped granting permits to food trucks parked near the breweries.

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“They said they were just being nice in giving the food truck permits in the past,” said Roosevelt. “That in the absence of an ordinance, food trucks aren’t allowed. I had never heard that. They put it in the paper, and that’s the first time most people were aware.”

The Hackensack city clerk’s office maintains that the town never allowed food trucks in the city, except on a case-by-case basis.

The Alementary took to social media to express dismay over the sudden crackdown. A Facebook post on Sept. 9, 2019, declared that the Hackensack city council would be voting on an ordinance on Sept. 10 that would limit food trucks to attending a maximum of six events in the town a year, as well as limit every private location to hosting only six mobile vendors per year, except for “good cause.”

“This is a direct attack on the independently owned food truck business, and a direct attack on the grassroots craft product culture that has taken hold on the north side of town,” the post said.

Facing pressure from both brick-and-mortar business owners and brewery supporters, the town decided to push the decision about banning/restricting food trucks to a later date.

The case in Jersey City

Then there is this food truck squabble in Jersey City. In August, the city voted to designate specific areas where food trucks could park. This decision pushed food trucks out of the popular Grand Street area.

The new parking zones include Montgomery Street and Sussex Street between Greene and Hudson streets; and Bergen Avenue between Sip Avenue and Kennedy Boulevard.

“I like food trucks. I think they’re important to parts of the city,” said Jersey City mayor Steven Fulop. “But if there are no regulations for them, they have an unfair advantage.

“They don’t pay taxes as high as restaurants and they have mobility," he added. "They can market themselves by driving to a new place any given minute. So you want to level the playing field.”

Fulop said he received many complaints from restaurants about food trucks parking outside of their businesses.

“[The food truck industry] is very competitive as far as locations go," said Fulop. "You’re seeing them camping out to secure parking locations. That’s something that doesn’t work for us. We’re always trying to create balance with our regulations.”

Living the dream

Rafael Vargis, owner of Zoelily Empanadas food truck, which is typically parked near the gazebo at Parks Lake in Rockaway in Morris County, says operating a food truck has pitfalls of its own.

“We’re just trying to live our dream,” Vargis said. “There are some restaurant owners that get upset and think that food truckers have it easy. We don’t.”

According to Vargis, bad weather can cost him thousands of dollars. A food truck must secure a permit and undergo a health inspection in every city it operates in. (Vargis’ truck gets looked over by health inspectors about 100 times a year, he said.) Food trucks must also get a business license from the state.

“I’ve even had two health inspectors get in a fight because they had two different ways of following the code," he said. "It’s just crazy.”

In May 2017, the NJ Food Truck Association attempted to pass the One State One Permit law, which would streamline the permit and inspection process for food trucks. The effort fizzled out, but New Jersey Food Truck Association president Jon Hepner, who also owns The Thai Elephant, a food truck with a traditional restaurant of the same name in Verona, is still speaking to lawmakers to champion the food truck cause.

“If I’m inspected in Montclair at lunch and then drive to Hoboken for dinner, I have to be inspected twice," he said. "It’s a waste of time and taxpayer dollars.”

In South Jersey there is some reciprocity within a county. For example, if a food truck is inspected in one town in Atlantic County, it doesn't have to be inspected again if it travels to another town in that county. But in North Jersey, there's no such system.

This kind of red tape bogs down food truck owners, said Hepner.

Ruben Torres owns The Sombrero Tacoria, a taco food truck that opened in 2018. The success of his food truck led him to open a brick-and-mortar location of the same name in 2019 in Totowa.

As both a restaurant owner and a food truck operator, Torres sees the pros and cons of both business models.

“If you have a food truck, you don’t have much overhead. You put gas in the truck and it powers almost the whole thing,” he said. “But at a restaurant, you can have a larger variety of dishes. A food truck is basically like a large closet. You can't make that much.”

Rebecca King is a food writer for NorthJersey.com. For more on where to dine and drink, please subscribe today and sign up for our North Jersey Eats newsletter.

Email: kingr@northjersey.com Twitter: @rebeccakingnj Instagram: @northjerseyeats