Editorial: Food trucks better clean up their act

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Oh, man, get your hand off my burger.

Did you catch the photo on the front page of Friday’s Sun-Times? It showed an employee in a food truck using his bare right hand to prepare a cheeseburger. Goodness knows where that hand had been. The photo accompanied a report that most food trucks in Chicago are seldom inspected for health code violations, though by city code — and in the best interest of our stomachs — they sure should be.

The Chicago Department of Public Health had better step up the frequency of surprise inspections. If that means hiring more inspectors, which is likely, the cost should be borne by the food truck operators — and by brick-and-mortar restaurants, which also are under-inspected. Better a more expensive (and safer) cheeseburger than another tax hike.

Since food trucks first came on the Chicago scene in 2012, they have failed to play by the rules, ignoring limits on where and when they can do business, while City Hall has only half-heartedly tried to enforce those rules. Now, thanks to a joint investigation by Dan Mihalopoulos of the Sun-Times and ABC7 Chicago’s I-Team, we also know that food trucks don’t get inspected much.

City Hall might want to loosen up on the hours and locations for food trucks to give them a fighting chance at turning a buck without going rogue, and the city really must check out those trucks. And, to encourage a healthy competitive balance between food trucks and restaurants, the city could create incentives for food-truck operators to expand into neighborhoods where there is a shortage of restaurants.

As the rules stand now, food trucks can do business at one spot for no more than two hours, which is ridiculous. It can take a food truck operator half that time just to set up and shut down.

The Sun-Times and ABC7 found that many food trucks have never been subjected to a single unannounced city inspection. The city also fails to inspect restaurants as frequently as required by state code, but the failure is not nearly as great as for food trucks. “Canvass inspections,” in which inspectors show up without warning when food is being served, account for more than half of health department visits to restaurants but only 10 percent of visits to food trucks licensed to cook onboard.

A spokesperson for the Health Department said more inspections will be launched beginning next month. But this is the same Health Department that, citing the expense, knowingly failed to conduct sufficient inspections for the last four years. We’ll just have to see what they serve up next.

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