Proximity bans force food trucks into low-traffic dead zones

Cities like Chicago ban food trucks from operating within 200 feet of any brick-and-mortar restaurant, with fines of $1,000-$2,000 per violation. San Antonio pushes it to 300 feet. In dense downtown cores, where restaurants occupy nearly every block, these buffer zones eliminate 80-90% of viable high-foot-traffic locations. Food trucks are effectively pushed into industrial parks, highway frontage roads, and office park parking lots where walk-up customer volume is a fraction of what downtown sidewalks offer. The operator who invested $100K+ in a truck now depends entirely on pre-committed catering gigs or corporate lunch programs rather than the spontaneous foot traffic that makes street food viable. This persists because brick-and-mortar restaurant associations lobby city councils hard — they pay property taxes and lease costs that food trucks don't, so councils protect incumbents at the expense of mobile vendors who have no permanent address in the district and therefore no political constituency.