Pastor Michael King is trying to start a food truck ministry. He’s converting old buses his church bought into food trucks to employ the poor and homeless in Rowan County. The first truck — the Mac-Attack Wagon — is ready to hit the road, but has been stopped in its tracks by a state regulation called the commissary rule.

The rule requires “pushcarts or mobile food units [to] operate in conjunction with a permitted restaurant or commissary and [to] report at least daily to the restaurant or commissary for supplies, cleaning, and servicing.”

Public health officials say the rule is necessary to give the local health department a permanent brick-and-mortar location to store food, obtain potable water, and dispose waste.

Food truck owners say the commissary rule is the most difficult regulation they must follow. Restaurant owners are reluctant to rent out their kitchen space to would-be competitors, and in the rare cases they do, it’s at a high price.

The Mac-Attack Wagon, which specializes in fried chicken, is not the only mobile food vendor to be slowed down by the rule. The owners of Café Prost haven’t been able to get their food truck off the ground in Raleigh for lack of a commissary agreement, and the owner of Outlaw Dogs hot dog stand in Durham is still fighting the commissary rule in court, after being jailed twice for operating without one.

As with most mobile food vendors, for King, it’s a matter of money. He went into the street food business because he didn’t have a lot of it. Instead of buying a restaurant and paying all of the associated taxes and fees, he bought an old bus and transformed it into a kitchen on wheels with his own two hands.

Now, he says, the commissary rule is defeating the purpose of his low-capital enterprise. It leaves him with two choices: find a restaurant that will rent space or build his own commissary. So far, he’s been unable to find a restaurant willing to rent to him, and if he did, it probably would be expensive. The Cookery in Durham charges $500 a month. Now he’s looking into building his own commissary, but is finding that’s not going to be cheap.

What troubles King the most is that, in his eyes, a commissary is completely unnecessary. He says he has everything he needs on his truck: a grill, a deep fryer, a refrigerator, dry storage shelves, dishwashing sinks, a hand-washing sink, and counter space.

What he doesn’t have is a toilet, a permanent potable water supply, an approved place to dump his dirty water, or a place to clean his trash cans, said Larry Michael, head of the Food Protection Program for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

These are all things a commissary is required to have, Michael said.

King argues he has no need for a toilet because his employees would spend most of their time on the truck, which could stop for bathroom breaks at public restrooms.

“A bathroom at a commissary is of no benefit to the mobile food truck that is out on its route anyway,” King said. “No one is going to drive all the way back to a commissary just to use a toilet. That is totally unrealistic.”

As far as a permanent water supply for filling up the water storage tanks on his truck, King says he could use water from the break room of his old law office, which he now owns, since “they are freakish about getting potable water from a residence.”

King said he also could use the break room for dumping dirty dishwater at the end of the day, since the home cannot be used for dumping water. King’s church, which currently is under construction, does not have a kitchen.

As for trash disposal, King says the truck does not produce much waste. The grease from his fryers can be recycled and used as biodiesel. And the paper plates and plastic utensils the food is served in ends up in whatever trash can his mobile customers take it to.

Still, Michael said, King needs a commissary.

In a meeting with Judy Daye, a regional environmental health specialist with the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources, King asked if the law office’s break room could serve as his commissary.

Daye told him that if all of the cooking equipment on his truck was certified by NSF International, a non-profit public health organization, his law office might serve as a commissary. Even so, King was told he’d probably have to install a grease trap in the sewer line to trap any grease remaining on his cookware after the recycling process. King said grease traps are very expensive.

But Michael suggested that King might have to do more to “convert” his office break room into a commissary.

“Mr. King’s commissary would have to meet the same standards any other commissary has to meet,” Michael said. “We can’t lessen the standards for one person and not for the rest.”

But Michael wasn’t clear on what exactly the standards are.

“At a minimum he needs a two-compartment sink,” Michael said. “What else is required in the commissary really depends on what type of food he’s serving.”

The only thing specified in writing, in the rules, is the two-compartment sink, but Michael said other things may be required on a “case-by-case” basis.

“There is a plan review process,” Michael said. “The local health department would have to decide.”

Michael said a group of public health officials and industry representatives currently is working on revising the mobile food unit rules, which were written by DENR in 1985 and last revised in 1991. He said King or anyone else with comments or suggestions can submit them to [email protected] or to NC Department of Health and Human Services, 1632 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-1632.

King originally contacted Rep. Pat McElraft, R-Carteret, who chairs the Joint Regulatory Reform Committee. McElraft said she is working with the Department of Health and Human Services to see if the regulation can be rewritten.

King, who worked as a lawyer for close to 20 years before becoming a pastor, says he has no intention of dropping the issue until it’s settled. He wants the commissary requirement removed altogether or at least rewritten so it’s clear exactly what is required of a commissary.

Sara Burrows is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.