Neighboring businesses and the City of Salinas weigh in on food truck controversy

SALINAS, Calif. (KION) - Food truck troubles in Salinas are stirring in an East Salinas neighborhood.
The food truck El Chaparrito has been stationed on Del Monte and Towt streets since July and has drawn the ire of local businesses in the area.

Surrounding businesses have brought up concerns since the mobile business arrived to the spot.

"And they park the parking in the opposite parking lot and they eat in their cars and they dump their trash right there. They don't do any cleaning up when they leave nor they when they park the food truck," said Victor Martinez, manager at La Michoacana.

Read more: Local businesses want to push a food truck out of East Salinas neighborhood

Victor has been helping his family run La Michoacana for about 40 years. He says he is disappointed that the city never informed them that a food truck would be stationed in front of businesses that have been established in East Salinas for many years.

"The city comes and parks the truck there without notifying anybody. I mean, we could have talked about this," said Martinez.

We reached out to the City of Salinas to see why they never notified surrounding businesses.

"They most certainly should be notified. We should be either knocking on their door and letting them know or we should be sending them a flier," said Orlando Osornio.

He says this isn't the only food truck that has been moved.

"It's definitely a problem when you have somebody start a business somewhere and they start getting traction, they start getting clientele, they start building their business, and then the City of Salinas comes in and then moves them, or they don't tell the surrounding business owners," said Osornio.
El Chaparrito is just hoping to avoid being re-located.

"He is just feeding people from the field, from the agriculture. He has got a lot of signs from his customers that he wouldn't want him to leave," said Maria Mendoza the daughter of the owner of el Chaparrito Mexican food truck.

Orlando tells KION they have increased permitted food spot locations since last year from about 40 to 53. He also mentions the number of spots is less than the number of food trucks that operate in the city.