On June 21st, Captain Cookie launched Cookie 2, their second truck!  They also look to be hiring additional staff for that 2nd truck.  NOTE: the second truck is yellow!

Thanks to DCFüd for the original tip that Maryland Public Television (MPT, Channel 22) is airing a documentary tonight (6/26) @ 9pm entitled Capital Food Fight.  “The new documentary explores how D.C.’s street food battle was fought and won.”   The teaser is located here.  Even though the teaser contains a lot of older footage, the maker of the documentary reassures us that there is plenty of recent footage in the full-length version.  The documentary contains many interviews of food truck icons, so it is sure to be interesting!

Update: Tim Carman, from the Washington Post, has a Q&A with the creator of the documentary.

DC’s Curbside Cookoff is back!  Organized by the DC Maryland Virginia Food Truck Association (DMVFTA), Curbside Cookoff is a monthly food truck festival held on Saturdays.  The first one of 2013 is on July 13 from noon-7pm @ Capitol Riverfront, 200 K Street SE (Navy Yard Metro).

The press release:

July 13 Curbside Cookoff to Benefit Miriam’s Kitchen

Traveling Food Truck Festival Kicks Off 2013 Season at Capitol Riverfront 

Hi DC food truck fans! Last night, I submitted version 3.1 of the FTF app to the iTunes store to fix a couple of bugs.  The first bug affected all iOS 5.x users that caused the app to crash upon launch – I won’t make that mistake again! 🙁  The second bug was very rarely encountered, but involved navigating back to the list view after your current location was found *and* the 10 minute auto-refresh timer had expired.

The version 3.1 app should hit the store sometime later this week and I’ll tweet when it does!  As always, thanks for continuing to support the app and I’ll get started on the next batch of features. 🙂

Download link for the DC food truck iPhone/iPad app.

Apparently, the Great Food Truck Race TV show is in Farragut today.  I’m not really clued into what’s going on as no PR people have gotten in touch, but they also had an event in Arlington last night and one in Silver Spring tomorrow (edit: whichever tweet I saw about this seems to have been deleted).  We are supposedly supposed to be rooting for the Aloha Plate Truck. 🙂

I’m happy to announce a new version of the Food Truck Fiesta iOS (iPhone & iPad) app!  It will look familiar to users of version 2.2, but will be massively faster and the screens are a bit more polished.  I also added a new favorites feature where you can mark specific trucks as your favorite and then filter the map and list by your favorites.  This should help cut down on the clutter if you only want to follow a dozen or so trucks. 🙂  Also, in the past couple of months, I improved the pages that display the menus and reviews, so most trucks will have that information.

The biggest feature of this app is speed.  During lunch time in downtown DC, the cell data networks are very slow.  Not only would the FTF app take a while to load, but even basic web surfing could be problematic.  With version 3.0 of the FTF iOS app, refreshing your data uses a minuscule amount of data and I’m hoping that fans will have a great app experience even on the slowest of cell networks!

Here are a few screenshots of the app, and as always, please keep the feedback and new feature requests coming (foodtruckfiesta@gmail.com)!  Thank you for your support!  Download the app here.

Urban Bumpkin BBQ is planning on opening in Arlington soon, pending inspections.  They will be serving BBQ fusion dishes!  More info + a full menu is available on their page.

DCist has a great recap of this morning’s hearing where DC food truck regulations were approved and sent to the Mayor’s desk for his signature.  Read the DCist article for more details, but my summary of the outcome (after watching the hearing online):

• Vending zones have been established in most of the popular DC food truck serving locations: if a truck does not win the monthly lottery to serve in one of those zones, they cannot serve within 200-feet of the zone (reduced from the propsed 500-feet).
• The 6-foot sidewalk rule: as with sidewalk cafes, 6 or more feet of unobstructed sidewalk space is required in front of a food truck (reduced from the proposed 10 feet).  Parking meters are excluded from qualifying as an obstruction, but it would appear that tree boxes are going to be the biggest issue for trucks.
• Councilmember Wells vowed to further define and clarify the vending zones in future legislation.  As it stands, there is no control in place saying how many parking spaces will be allocated to food trucks in vending zones.  It could be 3 spaces, or 20 spaces.

All in all, the regulations formalize the existence of food trucks in Washington, DC.  Though, there will undoubtedly be many mixed feelings as to what problems the regulations are meant to fix.

EDIT: A formal reaction from the food truck association is forthcoming. Formal response is copied below:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today the D.C. City Council unanimously passed revised food truck regulations that allow food trucks to continue to operate and to serve District residents and workers.

“D.C. City Council today moved a step closer to bringing to a close a process that has gone on for years and to update regulations that are nearly 40 years old,” said Doug Povich, Chairman of the Food Truck Association of Metropolitan Washington and co-owner of Red Hook Lobster Pound-DC.

The revised rules reduce the amount of unobstructed sidewalk required in order to vend to six feet and reduce the restriction on food trucks near lottery-assigned locations to 200 feet. The rules now move to Mayor Vincent Gray for his signature.

In addition to passing the revised regulations, D.C. Council passed two amendments introduced by Councilman Tommy Wells. Councilman Wells’ first amendment reduced a proposed $2,000 fine for parking at an expired meter to $50 – the same as what other vendors pay. Wells also introduced an amendment to specify that parking meters are not sidewalk obstructions.

“We are extremely grateful to Councilmember Wells for undertaking the hard work that the D.C. Council has undertaken to finally create vending rules that work for food trucks, small businesses and the District itself and that allow residents and consumers in the City to continue to have choices for where to spend their dining dollars,” Povich said.

“We’re glad that the D.C. City Council rejected the Mayor’s proposed regulations and succeeded in passing something better,” said Bert Gall, director of the Institute for Justice’s National Street Vending Initiative. “Today is a win for food-truck entrepreneurs, their employees, and everyone who works and lives in the District.

“We will now closely monitor the implementation of the regulations in order to remind city officials that their proper role is to protect health and safety, not stifle competition,” Gal added.

This morning (6/18), the DC Council Votes on New Food Truck Regulations! The food truck association requests your help in amending the current version of the regs (see message below).

The meeting begins at 11 am, and food truck regulations  — “Vending Regulation Second Emergency Declaration Resolution of 2013” — is approximately in the middle of the agenda.

Fairfax county, like many other local governments across the nation, is still grappling with regulations for the new wave of gourmet food trucks.  While the county and trucks continue the debate on which portions of streets are considered county-owned or privately-owned, the Fairfax County Park Authority has announced a June 21 application deadline to serve in 9 of Fairfax County’s parks.  The Reston Patch notes:

Food truck vendors have until June 21 to submit applications to vend at the nine parks chosen by the county for the pilot program. It’s not clear when the program would actually begin.  Food trucks will be allowed to operate at the following parks:

• Arrowbrook Park in Herndon
• Baron Cameron Park in Reston
• Lake Fairfax Park in Reston
• Mason District Park in Annandale
• Nottoway Park in Vienna
• Oak Marr Park in Oakton
• Pine Ridge Park in Herndon
• Rolling Valley West Park in Burke
• Wakefield Park in Annandale