State-Licensed Food Truck Banned by Town: Family-Owned Business Threatened With $500 Daily Fines

Two million tourists annually come to Wisconsin’s lovely Door County for breathtaking lakeside views, water sports, cherry picking and much more. Unfortunately, one town there—Gibraltar—has recently made Door County a little less lovely. In a fit of anti-competitive pique, Gibraltar has banned restaurants on wheels, to the detriment of the town’s entrepreneurs and their customers.

https://ij.org/case/fish-creek-wi-vending/

Lisa and Kevin Howard, along with Jessica and Chris Hadraba, learned this the hard way. The quartet owns a family business named White Cottage Red Door in Fish Creek, an unincorporated area in Gibraltar. After opening their store, they wanted to open a food truck on their property to feed hungry campers. To that end, they got state and county permits for their truck. But the truck’s first customer, Gibraltar’s constable, told them to stop vending. Gibraltar’s board demanded that Door County revoke the truck’s zoning permit. And when the county refused, the board passed a total ban on vending goods from mobile vehicles, including food trucks.

The ban makes no sense. White Cottage Red Door can sell cherry pie legally indoors at its brick-and-mortar store, but not at its truck parked a few feet away. The truck meets all of Wisconsin’s requirements for a safe restaurant. Indeed, the state even classifies it as a mobile restaurant. Nonetheless, Gibraltar will not let the truck’s owners use their own property to grow their business.

That is because members of the town board fear food truck competition. The board’s chairman owns a brick-and-mortar restaurant in Fish Creek. The board’s principal proponent of its ban works at another. And, after eating a food truck sandwich he called “out of this world,” a third board member cautioned that restaurants “should be up in arms.” But politicians should not be protecting restaurants’ profits from competitors’ sandwiches.

Fortunately, the Wisconsin Constitution acts as a check against towns trying to stack the deck in favor of industry insiders, and protects entrepreneurs’ right to earn an honest living. Gibraltar cannot ignore the state Constitution and stop White Cottage Red Door’s owners from supporting themselves on their own property.

Moreover, Wisconsin law preempts Gibraltar’s vending ban. Wisconsin courts have struck down far lesser attempts by cities to impose additional requirements on state-licensed businesses. So Gibraltar’s total ban on vending from licensed mobile vehicles definitely flunks state law.

Now, Lisa, Kevin, Jessica and Chris are fighting back. They have teamed up with the Institute for Justice to challenge Gibraltar’s vending ban and establish that vendors’ right to earn a living does not depend on whether their businesses have wheels or not.
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