Mayor Bass Just Told Los Angeles Mobile Food Vendors They Do Not Belong. Los Angeles Already Settled That in 1979.

By Matt Geller, Founding President, National Food Truck Association. Founder and former CEO, Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association. JD, UCLA School of Law.

Published August 2026. Last updated August 2026.

At a mayoral debate this month, a moderator complained that a taquero had set up in the parking lot of a Sherman Oaks restaurant. Mayor Karen Bass could have said that vendors and restaurants both make this city worth living in. Instead she said this:

I do not believe that you should have a food vendor in front of a restaurant, period. — Mayor Karen Bass

She went further. She wants vendors off the streets entirely and into brick and mortar locations. And she compared their presence outside restaurants to homeless encampments. Her words: "just like you shouldn't have encampments in front of restaurants or in front of schools. You just should not do that."

I have spent sixteen years working on mobile food policy. I have sat across the table from a lot of city attorneys who felt the way she does. I want to be precise about why that answer was wrong, because it was wrong three separate ways at once. It was wrong about the law. It was wrong about who these vendors are. And it was wrong about what Los Angeles is.

Los Angeles passed this exact law, and Los Angeles lost

The mayor is not proposing something new. She is proposing Los Angeles Municipal Code section 80.73(b), which made it illegal to sell food within 100 feet of the entrance to any restaurant, cafeteria, or lunch counter in the city.

A catering company called Ala Carte challenged it. In 1979 the Appellate Department of the Los Angeles County Superior Court struck the provision down as arbitrary and irrational under the Equal Protection Clause.

Read what the court actually said, because the city's arguments then are the arguments now. Los Angeles claimed the trucks were a traffic hazard. It claimed mobile vendors served a public need on empty stretches of road but were unnecessary near an established restaurant. The court was not persuaded. It noted that the city never explained "how a catering truck is more of a traffic hazard within 100 feet of the entrance to a restaurant than it is within 100 feet of the entrance to a gas station," and never explained "why the presence of a catering truck would not provide the same life preserving sustenance within 100 feet of a restaurant during hours or on a day that the restaurant is closed."

The court's conclusion:

A rather naked restraint of trade. — People v. Ala Carte Catering Co. (1979) 98 Cal.App.3d Supp. 1

Forty seven years ago, a California court looked at the policy the mayor just endorsed and called it what it is. Not a safety rule. A rule that picks a winner between two businesses selling lunch.

State law has moved in one direction ever since, and it is not hers

California Vehicle Code section 22455 originally let cities ban mobile vending outright. The Legislature stripped that power in 1986 and narrowed local authority to time, place, and manner rules tied to public safety. Barajas v. City of Anaheim confirmed it in 1993.

SB 946 decriminalized sidewalk vending statewide in 2018 and limited local restrictions to objective health, safety, and welfare concerns. Protecting a restaurant from a competitor is not one of them. SB 972 followed in 2022 and reformed the retail food code so small mobile operations could actually get permitted instead of pushed underground.

Every level of California law has spent four decades moving toward regulating these vendors as a legitimate industry. The mayor of its largest city is arguing the other way.

These are not encampments. They are small businesses, and the comparison was beneath the office

Let me address the encampment line directly, because it was the worst part.

The people the mayor is describing hold health permits. They pass county inspections. They pay for their carts and their trucks out of pocket, they pay sales tax, and many of them employ family members and neighbors. They are overwhelmingly immigrant owned. For a large number of them, a cart is the only version of business ownership the American economy has ever offered, because a storefront means a lease, a build out, and capital that no bank was going to lend them.

Putting them in the same sentence as an unsolved humanitarian crisis is not a policy position. It is an insult, and it tells thousands of working Angelenos that the mayor sees them as clutter.

"Get a brick and mortar" is not advice. It is a door closing. If storefronts were available to these operators, they would already be in them.

Los Angeles did not tolerate food trucks. Los Angeles invented the modern ones.

This is the part that should embarrass anyone who runs this city.

Loncheras have been feeding Los Angeles for decades, serving construction crews and garment workers and every shift that does not line up with restaurant hours. Then, in November 2008, Kogi BBQ started posting its location on Twitter. The truck cleared roughly $2 million in its first full year. Within a few years, that model was in every major American city, and within a decade it was on four continents.

Los Angeles County went from a handful of gourmet trucks in late 2009 to about 150 by May 2011 and 300 by 2012, on top of thousands of existing permitted vehicles. Roy Choi made a Food and Wine Best New Chefs list. Jonathan Gold built a Pulitzer winning body of work partly by taking this food seriously when the institutions around him would not.

Los Angeles did not invent selling food outdoors. What Los Angeles invented is the idea that a truck can be a real kitchen that follows the crowd instead of waiting for it. That is one of the few genuinely original things this city has given the rest of the world in the last twenty years. The mayor just called it something to be relocated indoors.

The industry already fought this fight, and it won

Here is the record, since the mayor's comments suggest she is unfamiliar with it.

In April 2008, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance that would have jailed food truck operators for staying in one parking spot longer than half an hour. A judge threw it out that August.

In January 2010 I founded the Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association with 30 member trucks and dues of $50 a year, because vendors were getting cited out of business one city at a time and no individual operator could afford to fight back. It grew to about 170 trucks on a budget near $200,000.

We won operating rights through litigation against twelve Southern California municipalities and forced ordinance changes in roughly nineteen more without ever filing.

The clearest example was Monrovia. In 2010 that city banned gourmet trucks from its Old Town district and imposed thirty minute limits everywhere else, and council members told the press they were standing behind the Old Town merchants. That candor was legally fatal. We filed for declaratory judgment in Los Angeles Superior Court in March 2011. The city demurred twice on public safety grounds and was overruled both times. We won, and the court awarded roughly $75,000 in fees against the city.

Most cities did not need to be sued. Santa Monica rewrote its rules in 2011 after studying actual traffic conditions on actual blocks, and its own staff report stated that courts have consistently struck down mobile vending regulations that rely on protecting brick and mortar businesses from competition. Torrance repealed its bans and replaced them with a roadworthiness standard. Manhattan Beach repealed its thirty minute limit. Long Beach cut back its wholesale bans in December 2011.

In 2012, Assemblymember Bill Monning introduced AB 1678, which would have banned mobile vendors within 1,500 feet of a school during school hours while saying nothing about the fast food restaurants, gas stations, and convenience stores in the same radius. No data supported it. He lowered the number to 500 feet, then withdrew the bill.

By 2014 the same fights were happening in Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Denver, New York, and Detroit, so we founded the National Food Truck Association in April of that year to handle them nationally. The New York Times put it on the front page of the Dining section the following month.

All of that happened in and around Los Angeles. It is settled. It should not have to be relitigated by a sitting mayor at a debate.

What a serious answer would have sounded like

The moderator raised a real complaint. A vendor operating in a private restaurant's parking lot without permission is a trespass issue, and it is worth solving. Nobody in this industry defends that.

Here is the answer available to her. Bring vendors into the permitting system rather than out of the city. Regulate what actually creates risk: food safety, roadworthiness, trash, sidewalk obstruction, distance from intersections and driveways where documented conditions warrant it. Give operators legal places to work, which is what managed vending locations and truck lots do. Enforce trespass as trespass instead of banning an entire industry to solve it.

That is not a radical position. It is the position Santa Monica, Torrance, Manhattan Beach, and Long Beach all reached more than a decade ago, several of them after starting exactly where the mayor is now.

The bar for the mayor of Los Angeles

Every city in America wants what Los Angeles has. Food that is cheap, excellent, everywhere, and unlike anywhere else. Cities send delegations here to study it. They copy our ordinances, badly, and then call us asking how to fix them.

It came from immigrants with a permit and a vehicle and no other way in. It is still coming from them.

You do not get to run this city and be embarrassed by the best thing it made.

Frequently asked questions

Can Los Angeles ban food vendors from operating near restaurants?

No. Los Angeles enacted that exact rule in Municipal Code section 80.73(b), a 100 foot buffer from restaurant entrances, and a California court struck it down in People v. Ala Carte Catering Co. (1979) as arbitrary and irrational under the Equal Protection Clause, calling it a naked restraint of trade.

What did Mayor Karen Bass say about food vendors?

At a 2026 mayoral debate she said, "I do not believe that you should have a food vendor in front of a restaurant, period." She said she wants vendors off the streets and in brick and mortar locations, and compared their presence outside restaurants to homeless encampments.

Are street food vendors in Los Angeles legal?

Yes. SB 946 decriminalized sidewalk vending statewide in 2018 and limits local restrictions to objective health, safety, and welfare concerns. SB 972 reformed the retail food code in 2022 so compact mobile operations can be permitted. Vendors hold health permits and pass county inspections.

Can a California city ban food trucks entirely?

No. California Vehicle Code section 22455 was amended in 1986 to remove local authority to prohibit mobile vending, and Barajas v. City of Anaheim (1993) confirmed it. Cities may regulate time, place, and manner where tied to public safety.

Why do food truck proximity bans keep failing in court?

Because they are competition rules wearing a safety label. A buffer measured from a competitor's front door protects a business rather than the public. When a proposed distance is measured from a restaurant entrance instead of from a hydrant, a crosswalk, or a school property line, that is the tell.

How did food trucks win their rights in Los Angeles County?

The Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association, founded in January 2010 with 30 trucks, won operating rights through litigation against twelve municipalities and forced ordinance changes in about nineteen more through negotiation. Its 2011 suit against Monrovia produced a roughly $75,000 fee award against the city.

Sources

• People v. Ala Carte Catering Co. (1979) 98 Cal.App.3d Supp. 1, 159 Cal.Rptr. 479.
• Barajas v. City of Anaheim (1993) 15 Cal.App.4th 1808.
• California Vehicle Code section 22455.
• Senate Bill 946 (2018) and Senate Bill 972 (2022).
• SoCal Mobile Food Vendors Association v. City of Monrovia, Los Angeles Superior Court Case No. BC458142.
• Assembly Bill 1678, 2011 to 2012 Regular Session.
• Baylen J. Linnekin, Jeffrey Dermer, and Matthew Geller, The New Food Truck Advocacy: Social Media, Mobile Food Vending Associations, Truck Lots, and Litigation in California and Beyond, NEXUS, Chapman University School of Law, 2012.