Evansville launches downtown food truck pilot program

Now through the end of the year, the city of Evansville is allowing food trucks to park in a designated Downtown location between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. weekdays. The designated zone is on Third Street between Locust and Walnut streets.

The program is part of a larger effort to make the city more friendly to mobile food vendors.

“This is a test to see if it works, and if there’s traction to do an ordinance,” said Josh Armstrong, director of the Southwest Indiana Chamber’s Downtown Alliance. The Chamber is working with the city on the food-truck program.

As currently written, Evansville’s municipal code does not properly address food trucks, said Lana Abel, senior project manager at the city’s Department of Metropolitan Development.

For instance, the code says that street vendors can set up on city streets and sidewalks only during a special event like a festival or a parade. And the code gives size limits on vendor carts, but says nothing about trucks.

So this pilot program is a way to iron out details as the DMD works on a new ordinance, Abel said.

“We’re trying to do our homework first,” she said.

“It’ll be easier than just blindly asking the City Council to do something, and nobody knows what the consequences are.”

The lack of a city ordinance has deterred some entrepreneurs from investing in food trucks, Armstrong said.

“When your business is mobile and you’re limited to where you can put it, that presents a challenge.”

So, especially as Evansville is set to begin construction on some big projects Downtown, Armstrong said, the goal is to establish a food truck culture now.

Pilot program participants must be licensed by the Vanderburgh County Health Department and purchase a $25 street vendor permit.

As of Monday, only one vendor, The Lunch Box, showed up to serve customers.

The truck’s co-owners, Stephen and Kirsta Johnson of Newburgh, served a variety of burgers, hot dogs and sandwiches, including the Big Bubba: a double-decker cheeseburger with barbecue pork and onions.

Kirsta Johnson said she and her husband plan to be Downtown every day through the end of the year, and they hope to see other trucks show up, too.

“We don’t want to be the only one here,” she said.

One reason the Third Street location was chosen, Abel said, was that it is at a distance from established Downtown restaurants. That block has a parking garage on one side of the street and an office/residential building on the other side.

Kirsta Johnson said The Lunch Box aims not to take away business from traditional eateries, but to offer customers a different option.

“You can’t eat at The Lunch Box every day. We’d love for you to, but you can’t.”

Around noon on Monday, the food truck was doing a steady business.

Among the customers were Tina Seger and Christian Ward. They said they were attracted by the convenience: Their lunch break lasts only 30 minutes, and the food truck was right outside the door of Meritain Health, where both women work.

“I’ve always thought they should do a food truck Downtown,” Seger said.

“With the right food choices, this would be an everyday thing,” Ward added.

In crafting the pilot program, Armstrong said his office looked at other cities that already have a vibrant food-truck culture: Louisville; Austin, Texas; Memphis, Tennessee; San Antonio; and Grand Traverse, Michigan.

Armstrong, who has experience running restaurants, said food trucks can serve as “restaurant laboratories” where entrepreneurs can test menu items, win customers and establish a reputation.

The trucks, he said, can also add a “fun factor” to a city. Downtown, Haynie’s Corner and North Main are all spots that might work well for food trucks, he said.

Evansville is not the only Tri-State city to experiment with food trucks.

For the past two summers, Princeton’s downtown has hosted Food Truck Mondays. It’s a program of Downtown Princeton, an organization that works to strengthen the city’s downtown.

Kelly Dillon, the organization’s volunteer president, said the seasonal program has been “moderately successful,” drawing an average of three food trucks a week.

One hurdle, she said, was continuity. Vendors came and went from week to week, depending on other opportunities. “We would like to have more variety and more consistency, but it’s very challenging,” Dillon said.

Evansville might find these issues easier to tackle, Dillon acknowledged, because it is much larger than Princeton.