Despite change in law, no food trucks rolling in Horry County

Each week, Mike Mathis hauls his silver hot dog cart to the parking lot of Bell and Bell’s dealership on S.C. 9.

His business, Buster Brown Hot Dogs, offers sausage and hot dogs, barbecue sandwiches, chips and drinks.

The setup is also basic: the cart, a picnic table with a red and yellow Nathan’s umbrella and Mathis waiting for customers in the cab of his green Ford Ranger.

“The simpler the better,” the 66-year-old said.

There was a time when Mathis mulled buying a full-service food truck. But the $50,000 price tag, the need for employees and the amount of business required to turn a profit discouraged him.

“This is all I want,” he said of his stand. “This is my little world out here.”

Right now, Mathis’ hot dog cart represents the only mobile food vending operation in the county that’s not an ice cream truck. Six months after county officials cleared the way for food trucks to operate, not a single one is rolling.

“We really don’t know [why],” said Mary Catherine Hyman, the county planner who helped craft the regulations. “We’ve been surprised.”

The debate over lunch wagons in the county began two years ago when a food truck owner named Karl Moser wanted to expand his business into unincorporated Horry. Moser learned that county policy allowed push carts but prohibited food trucks. He urged local officials to change the law.

Moser’s efforts led the county to form a special committee, which spent nearly a year surveying the public, developing guidelines and fee rates, and creating a blueprint for a one-year pilot program to gauge the area’s interest in food trucks.

County Council, however, overwhelmingly voted against the program last year, fearing the vehicles would siphon business from brick-and-mortar restaurants.

But in May the council changed course, approving an ordinance that allowed food trucks and called for planning staff and county leaders to evaluate the new policy after 180 days.

That discussion took place Nov. 19 at the council’s Infrastructure and Regulation Committee meeting. Councilman Paul Prince was shocked that no food trucks had received permits. He had worried about them hurting traditional restaurant business, though his peers assured him that wouldn’t happen.

“That’s what everybody was saying to you,” Councilman Jody Prince said to his colleague. “All that sand you raised for nothing.”

Although county staff didn’t expect the community to be overrun by food trucks, the fact that no permits have been issued perplexes them. They can’t figure out why they aren’t seeing more interest.

Moser, the entrepreneur who led the charge, began the permitting process but hasn’t finished it. He could not be reached for comment.

Some food truck operators looked outside Horry after county leaders’ resistance to the concept last year, said Joe Bonaparte, executive director of the International Culinary Institute of Myrtle Beach at Horry Georgetown Technical College. Even when the ordinance was approved in May, county officials wanted to revisit the policy after six months.

“People are kind of a little bit afraid that they’re going to invest in a food truck and get something going and then not be able to run it because of regulations,” Bonaparte said.

Bonaparte does see potential for food trucks on the Grand Strand, even though the craze hasn’t swept through the area the way it has in larger cities such as Charleston and Charlotte, N.C.

“When I moved to Charlotte in 2002, there wasn’t one [truck],” he said. “When I left, there’s hundreds. … You see it all over being successful.”

At one point, Bonaparte was developing a curriculum for a mobile food service certificate program at HGTC. The college was even considering purchasing a food truck. But he said school officials want to make sure the policies will be concrete before moving forward.

Despite concerns about food trucks pulling diners from conventional restaurants, Bonaparte said he’s lived in communities across the country and seen both mobile and stationary establishments thriving in the same areas.

“What most cities find is that food trucks don’t take away from restaurant business,” he said. “They just enhance the food scene, which brings everybody business.”

Since county leaders revised the policy for mobile food vending in May, they’ve awarded eight permits: seven for ice cream trucks and one for Buster Brown Hot Dogs.

They hope to make the process for obtaining a permit simpler.

During last week’s discussion, the committee agreed that the county should relax some regulations, including allowing mobile food vending in amusement areas such as fairgrounds. Under the current policy, those sites are off limits.

They also looked at removing the requirement that business owners provide information about their criminal and driving records.

“It’s difficult for us to track this,” Hyman said. “The person could come in and give us that [information] but that doesn’t that that’s who’s actually out there driving the truck.”

Planning Director Janet Carter said county staff also struggled with determining which convictions should prohibit a business owner from obtaining a permit. Some of those interested in carts or trucks had check fraud and other minor offenses in their records.

“We’re kind of over our heads here trying to analyze criminal records and who should be given a license and who shouldn’t,” she said.

The Infrastructure and Regulation Committee supported removing those restrictions.

Mathis, the hot dog cart owner, isn’t surprised the county hasn’t seen an influx of food trucks.

When the subject first came up, he said some of the people interested in rolling restaurants had never run one before.

The state Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) requires truck operators to have a commissary, a commercial kitchen where they can prepare and store food. Setting up such a facility, Mathis said, isn’t easy.

“The problem people run into is trying to get their DHEC approval,” he said. “They jump out and want to do something and they don’t look at what kind of restrictions are involved and what they have to do in order to get approval.”

Another challenge he sees is the lack of consistent foot traffic, which cities populated by food trucks clearly have year-round.

And despite the popularity of gourmet food trucks in urban areas, Mathis is not convinced the palates of locals and tourists crave such fare.

“Man, that ain’t going to work,” he said, shortly before slathering chili and cole slaw onto two hot dogs. “Not on the beach.”

This story was originally published November 29, 2015 at 10:21 PM with the headline "Despite change in law, no food trucks rolling in Horry County."