It’s difficult these days to run a restaurant, pay the lease, and open for business every day. After all there are good days and slow days. But that rent must be paid each and every month, and perishables must be purchased to prepare the meals. That’s a lot of risk, book-a-cruise plus before you even know if anybody’s going to show up, you have to have your staff ready to serve them. All sorts of things can turn what would’ve been a good night for your business into a disaster, things like a big event in the news on TV, or particularly poor weather.

However, there is another storm cloud on the front, and it is rolling in fast. And that is the challenges of mobile restaurants. Consider if you will that these are eateries that are on wheels, they can go to the best location, or any event that’s going on in the city. They can’t even park down the street from your restaurant, perhaps along a major thoroughfare in an empty parking lot. It’s easy if they are borrowing someone else’s parking lot, cruise-ship-booking and people can pull in real quick get some food, get back in their car and drive away.

They have the brick-and-mortar or fixed site restaurants at a complete disadvantage. They have lower overhead costs, they are more convenient, and they can charge a lower price. They don’t have the staff the regular restaurant has, and often the owners run the business with only a couple of helpers, and they probably aren’t paying all the unemployment benefits, health care costs, influenciveinc even if they are following the rules for cleanliness – it’s almost impossible to compete.

In many areas more and more of these mobile restaurants are popping up or rather driving around, and there is even one company that is franchising several different venues, or types of food on different types of vehicles. And, they are selling these franchises in all the big cities. There has been a political firestorm over these things, with the Chamber of Commerce caught in the middle, as they want to support pro-business activity, and reduced regulations for all, however in doing so they also end up supporting the mobile competitors who have the advantage.

And no City Council member wants to put anyone out of work or tell a small business person who owns a mobile restaurant that they can’t operate in the city, they just don’t want to take the political heat, smart-trove because many of the customers enjoy the low prices, and the convenience of all these mobile restaurants everywhere. You can understand the problems, but also understand they are not going away. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.