With the news that the city of Warren is working on drafting a new ordinance for mobile food units, there is a question of how these operations will affect existing restaurants.

The average overhead of running a restaurant in the United States is about 35%. These costs include mortgage or rent, repairs and renovations, utilities, land taxes, landscaping and more.

Food trucks have less overhead than brick-and-mortar restaurants.

Gary Stoops has owned and operated the Warren Dairy Queen since 1976. Since then, he has remodeled, built, and maintained the putt-putt course. He also says he is constantly replacing and upgrading to keep up with industry standards.

Stoops said that he wanted to move his sizable outside cooler, but because the land sits on a “floodway,” the city is asking for a study that Stoops said would cost him $45,000.

Stoops is concerned that creating lax ordinances on the food trucks in Warren could make it an unfair fight for existing restaurants.

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, the average food truck owner pays $28,276 on regulatory requirements in their first year.

These licenses and permits may include food service licenses, food truck permits, “hawkers and peddlers” licenses, health permits, parking permits, seller’s permits, and employee health permits.

“I feel there should be some kind of regulation where they can operate so they aren’t hurting existing businesses,” Stoops said.

Even so, the general overhead of a mobile food truck is drastically lower than that of a standard restaurant. “Maybe not operating within a certain range of already existing businesses that serve similar food,” Stoops noted. “We are doing our best to compete.”