Truckin'

Chicago’s Lone Food Truck Battles Bureaucracy

Photo: Taking the man on one fried chicken at a time.

Chicago All Fired Up, the city’s only legal food truck, is battling city officials to stay on the street. The roving soul food operation is run by Troy Marcus Johnson, who scored a license for the truck almost by accident a year ago. Last week Fired Up was profiled in Time Out Chicago as the glaring exception to Chicago’s otherwise nonexistent food truck scene. But by Monday Johnson told TOC that city officials were questioning him.

In the post on the TOC Blog, writer Heather Shouse admits she worried that writing about the truck would led to this, but finally decided to do so under two conditions: “I made sure that he was (A) legal and (B) that the city wasn’t going to flip out when they read the article.” Chicago’s rules prevent trucks from selling food they make inside the truck, but Johnson had managed to obtain a mobile food vendor’s license for the truck, while his restaurant, Miss Minnie’s, was going through an inspection.

This, for Shouse, was Johnson’s extreme good luck: “Chicago’s mobile food vendors are supposed to be selling prepared, prepackaged food, not actually cooking on the truck. However, Johnson’s inspection from the [Chicago Department of Public Health] is a restaurant inspection, giving him the right to cook with the same equipment one would in a restaurant.”

But there is still a lot of confusion for city officials. Johnson was approached last Friday by an off-duty health inspector. The man refused to give his name, but let Johnson know that the city planned to revoke his license on Monday. The city denied any knowledge of the event.

On Monday, Johnson was approached by a Chicago policeman, who told him that he had to keep moving or he risked losing his peddling license. Johnson informed the cop that he didn’t have peddler’s license, and that he in fact had a mobile food vendors license. The cop had never encountered one before, and threatened to give him a citation.

While the city decides Johnson’s fate, you can still support his business. Dial 773-708-4561 to find out where the truck will be next.

Chicago’s Lone Food Truck Battles Bureaucracy