When the boba hits the road

In Los Angeles, if you're thirsty and adventurous, you might want to look up The Mighty Boba, a food truck that offers different flavored teas with tapioca pearls. Or if you're hungry, maybe No Tomatoes, named after one customer's habits when he ordered the truck's Indian Cuisine. In Portland, you can try Minizo, a truck that serves a variety of intriguing Japanese dishes, including what looks like a killer shrimp burger. In Austin, how about some Flip Happy Crepes?

In each of those cities, along with other cities across the country, hundreds of food trucks offer consumers wonderfully inventive food, while giving entrepreneurs a way to start a business with a minimum of overhead.

In Charlotte, there's only a sprinkling of choices, thanks in part to a restrictive 2008 food truck ordinance that put dozens of trucks out of business and discouraged others from putting wheels to pavement here.

That ordinance primarily punished taco trucks, which parked near residential neighborhoods in Charlotte. Residents complained about noise, trash, crime and loitering, but instead of working to find a solution that could keep the trucks rolling, the City Council tightened the rules, requiring the trucks to be parked 400 feet away from residential property, and restricting the hours the trucks could work. Other truck owners have complained about restrictive permitting rules.

Now, at the urging of Action NC, the council is reconsidering the ordinance. Action NC, which is hosting a forum tonight on the issue, is proposing an extension of the hours a truck can operate, so that vendors can reach morning workers before 8 and later at night. The group also would like the council to ease restrictions on operating near residential neighborhoods.

The council should be open to tinkering with the ordinance, while respecting that residents don't want to hear a food truck clanking around their neighborhood early in the morning or late at night. One place to start: change the allowed hours of operation, which would permit food trucks to operate more freely in commercial areas such as uptown and nab consumers on their way to work - or the bar crowd at night.

"We should always find room to make sure we don't run people out of business - especially in this economy," said council member Patrick Cannon, who likes the idea of being more welcoming to food trucks that could bring more color and flavor uptown, just as they do in other cities.

So do we. After all, who isn't up for a little boba?

Peter St. Onge, on behalf of the editorial board