After a threatened crackdown, Drexel’s food trucks might survive after all

City Council will consider new legislation that would allow Drexel University’s popular food trucks to park overnight, allowing them to operate as they have for years — but legally. The legislation is in response to the university’s recent effort to crack down on food truck vendor violations on campus.

Introduced on Thursday by West Philly Democrat Jamie Gauthier, the legislation would reclaim the 3100 block of Ludlow as city property — it is currently private property that belongs to Drexel — and allow mobile food vendors to remain there overnight, which they say is necessary to operate in the area. It’s not without precedent: Food trucks in Penn’s special services district can remain parked overnight, Gauthier’s office said.

Drexel announced in late March that it would begin enforcing a law requiring mobile vendors to vacate their spaces each night, among other regulations, and that the vendors had two weeks to comply. The school said that its “mobile food vendor safety initiative” was intended to increase pedestrian and vendor safety.

Food truck operators along North 33rd Street by Arch feared that the new initiative would force them off campus, and in some cases, out of business. If they left their spots overnight, vendors said, parked cars would take up the spaces and prevent them from returning the next day.

The initiative is not the school’s first attempt to restrict food trucks on campus. In 2015, at Drexel’s urging, City Council considered a bill that would have placed a number of limits on food trucks, but the bill was pulled after public outcry. Four years later, City Council passed a bill, again at the request of Drexel, that would have banned vendors from Market between 33rd and 34th Streets; it was vetoed by Mayor Jim Kenney.

Drexel’s announcement prompted anger and dismay from students, many of whom signed an online petition asking the school to reverse its decision; it has garnered nearly 5,000 total signatures. Administrators responded that they were only enforcing city laws and urged students to take their concerns to Gauthier and City Council, the student newspaper the Triangle reported.

That seems to have worked.

“I disagree with the notion that food trucks are some sort of nuisance and that they don’t belong,” Gauthier said after Council’s weekly session on Thursday.

Drexel’s enforcement may have been more bark than bite, at any rate.

Two food truck vendors told The Inquirer that they received $150 citations from Drexel police on April 4, the day Drexel said it would begin enforcement. But the trucks said they have not been ticketed since then, despite remaining in violation of the overnight parking rule, and that Drexel police told them this week that they no longer needed to move after all.

A spokesperson for Drexel said that the university’s police “will remain focused on issues surrounding pedestrian safety,” such as driving on sidewalks and failing to properly store and maintain propane tanks. They also said that the school looked forward to working with Gauthier.

Sandy Tang, the co-owner of Pete’s Little Lunchbox, had planned to close her truck permanently on Friday. She received a $150 citation that day but did not move her truck and has not received one since.

“The cops said, ‘Go back to the trucks, it’s fine.’ They don’t bother us anymore,” she said. Pete’s Little Lunchbox is now open for the foreseeable future, she said.

The co-owner of Happy Sunshine Breakfast and Lunch truck, Utdam Thach, said he had the same experience: a $150 citation, then spent several days dutifully moving the truck overnight. Now, he’s staying put.

“Everything is OK now,” he said.

Gauthier hopes that the legislation will offer a more permanent solution.

“If Drexel can’t operate the sidewalk or the area as if it is a vital public space, then the city will do it,” she said.

Staff writer Sean Collins Walsh contributed to this article.