A starring role for food trucks in Denver’s mayoral campaign has not prevented them from closing the show 30 miles up the road at Boulder.
In the campaign for mayor, the Denver Cup Cake truck has received more airtime than most of the candidates. The food truck owners are speaking out for state Sen. Chris Romer, the Denver Democrat airing the ad.
Romer, son of former Colorado Democratic Gov. Roy Romer, comes across as a bureaucracy-busting small business advocate in the TV ad. Romer is as much of a front-runner as there is in this race of the unknowns.
But while the Denver Cup Cake truck is flexing its political muscles, just up Highway 36 in Boulder, home of the University of Colorado, a popular food truck chef is throwing in the towel.
StrEat Chefs is shutting down its engines permanently, says Chef Hosea Rosenberg. The City of Boulder’s regulatory snarl has proven to be a bridge too far for StrEat Chefs.
StrEat Chefs was born out of a need to serve an international street fair in Boulder last year, but it could not survive long enough to wait out the city’s slow moving municipal bureaucracy.
New regulations will be up for votes this week with a real deal killer for food trucks being a 9 p.m. curfew. That cuts the trucks out of serving the bar-closing crowds.
Boulder currently prohibits food sales from a vehicle. It has been treating existing food trucks as “caterers” and limiting parking to private property.
The proposed new rules would prohibit parking within 100 feet of a brick and mortar restaurant, 150 feet of a residential area, and not within 200 feet of another food truck. Food trucks would have to move every four hours.
Rosenberg says the proposed new regulations are too restrictive and coming too late.
The winner of the fifth season of TV’s “Top Chef,” Rosenberg owns the StrEat Chefs brand and the Airstream trailer that carries it, but says they’ll remain off the road. He wants his own brick and mortar restaurant.
Back in Denver, the city’s May 3 mayoral election will likely narrow the field to a two-candidate runoff scheduled for June 7. Former Mayor John Hickenlooper held the office for eight years before becoming governor of Colorado in January.