Three years ago, Jeffrey Jimenez quit his job on Wall Street to open a cupcake truck.

No, seriously.

"Baking and pastries have always been my passion, so I knew I wanted to get into the food industry, but I wanted to start my own business," Jimenez explained to PhillyVoice.com. "And then came Cupcake Carnivale."

The appeal: It was, like many food trucks, low risk compared to a brick-and-mortar store. And, upon doing his homework in 2012, Jimenez discovered that food trucks were ballooning in popularity across the country, and that Philly was in "dire need" of gourmet trucks. Suddenly, that low risk came with potential for a pretty big gain.

"There are lots of professionals out there who want more than just your standard cheesesteak or hot dog, so that's why a lot of gourmet trucks -- sweets trucks, even -- have busted onto the scene," he said. "It just made sense for me to open this."

Nor is Jimenez's story atypical of a food truck owner -- he's one of many who've made career changes from demanding jobs in industries like law or finance to pursue the (theoretically) less stressful lifestyle of mobile food vending. 

But when he did, he discovered the business wasn't as lucrative or as glamorous as he'd hoped for when he called it quits on Wall Street. (In fact, he says, Wall Street was the easier gig.) It's a particular problem in Philadelphia, where, thanks to zoning restrictions, it's not as simple as putting the keys in the ignition and driving free-roam to your customers. Available vending locations -- let alone populous ones -- are few and far between.

"Over by Penn," for example, "you have to pay for spots, and there's a waiting list -- that's how much of a shortage we have now with where food trucks can vend," Jimenez says. "There's just not enough places. A food truck isn't going to vend on a side street where there's no foot traffic; you'd might as well take the day off, because you're just going to be sitting in your truck with no customers."

Case in point: On the day we meet, he's camped out in his cupcake truck at Broad and Spring Garden streets (where he circled the block for an hour looking for a parking spot, he says). He's anticipating a Valentine's Day crowd to emerge from the nearby Community College of Philadelphia. But business is slow -- steady, at its peak -- if not because of the location, then because of the freezing temperatures, which make Philadelphia a more seasonal city for food trucks. That problem's compounded by the fact that trucks are essentially banned anywhere south of Vine Street heading into Center City. 

As a result, Jimenez has realized the restrictions on vending outside city limits. (In Philadelphia, food trucks -- for zoning purposes -- are still legally defined as "peddlers," "hucksters" and "hawkers.") In search of steadier cash flow and because city space limitations don't allow him the breadth of customers he needs, he says he plans to travel through the suburbs in the upcoming season to vend at events.

Philly's food truck scene is outgrowing its britches. And, now that the seams have begun to tear, City Hall's finally forced to whip out the needle and thread.

'A Ball-Buster Way to Make a Living'

Despite all the in-your-face, fry-it-up glory presented in television shows like "The Great Food Truck Race," the industry is still a burgeoning one -- and, as such, is fragile. That's why Councilman Mark Squilla, after some serious advocacy efforts on the part of the Philly Mobile Food Association, introduced a bill in late January that would make a few changes to how the city currently operates with -- or talks about, at any rate -- food trucks. The bill's technical impact would be to redefine food trucks as mobile food vendors, which would no longer clump them together with the hot dog-and-cheesesteak food carts that dot Center City sidewalk corners. But what the bill doesn't address (or at least not in its since-amended form) are the specific prohibitions the city places on food trucks, such as the ability to make private contracts with landlords for vending purposes.

Philly food truck vendors are starving for change.

"It's a ball-buster way to make a living," Verna Swerdlow, who owns the long-running Vernalicious food truck, told PhillyVoice.com. "[The city] needs to allow food trucks to be someplace. They can't just keep pushing out licenses."

And that's a sentiment Swerdlow, Jimenez and others echo in conversation: The city is happy to take money for permits but slow to make necessary changes that allow food trucks sufficient space to vend.

According to the Philadelphia Department of Licenses & Inspections, between 340 and 370 motor vending licenses have been issued or renewed each year in recent years. But it's important to note that tracking the number of Philly food trucks that way can be misleading. Food trucks, according to the department, can easily come into the city to obtain a license and then leave; the licenses are also not necessarily attached to a person, but a truck. (If it sounds confusing, that's because it is.) That said, about 900-plus licenses are reported in the L&I database.

Squilla told PhillyVoice.com that City Hall is paying attention to the growth of food trucks in Philadelphia and is looking to other municipalities in the country for answers. But he's also upfront about what his bill does and does not do for Philly's existing food trucks -- which is to say that, tangibly, it doesn't do much of anything.

"We just wanted to get something out there to tell the food truck industry that we're interested in working with them and having something positive happen in Philadelphia," Squilla says. "We saw how [the food truck industry] was growing in the city and saw how it was being regulated in other municipalities, and it's a business opportunity for people moving here. ... We want food truck vendors to have a say."

The new proposed definition of food trucks, according to Bill No. 150057, is this:

"Mobile Food Vendor -- A self-contained food service operation, located in a readily movable motorized vehicle with wheels or in a vehicle with wheels capable of being towed by a motorized vehicle, designed for the preparation, display and service of food and beverages to patrons, but not including pushcarts."

Put simply, the bill does put food trucks in their own category and, on technicality, may allow for some private contracts to be made, albeit with a lot of gray area to navigate. But what's important is that it sets the foundation for a series of other bills that Squilla says he plans to introduce to City Council in April or May, ones that would better address the (predictably complicated) running list of prohibited street vending areas (namely, all of Center City), the prohibiting of vending past midnight and the inability of food trucks to make private dealings with landlords to bar/restaurant owners. (So, just imagine being able to hop on over to a food truck outside of, say, The Dolphin Tavern at 2 a.m.)

George Bieber, president of the Philly Mobile Food Association, told PhillyVoice.com the for-the-moment concession of the private contracts section of the bill was necessary for timeliness.

"We just wanted to get something out there to tell the food truck industry that we're interested in working with them and having something positive happen in Philadelphia," Councilman Mark Squilla says. "We saw how [the food truck industry] was growing in the city and saw how it was being regulated in other municipalities, and it's a business opportunity for people moving here. ... We want food truck vendors to have a say."

"The first part of the bill, with the definition, is the important part, so we didn't want to complicate things, and since we're on a roll with it, we thought it would be better to focus on the definition and not try to wrap in the other portion of the bill," Bieber says. "But to get the ball rolling, we want to get something started, especially before the season starts. This could happen by April 1, and if we're all out busy vending in May, this bill could get back-burnered."

The ultimate goal (and benefit for patrons), Bieber says, is to not only allow for private contracts and more access to spatially sensible parts of Center City, but to have more corners like 33rd and Arch streets, which is currently an informal hot spot for food trucks. Bieber says the ideal scenario would be to have formalized areas where six passes would be given out for a food truck rotation -- so, patrons would know where to regularly go for their food truck indulgences, even if the individual trucks are constantly changing out. It's in line with food truck operations that already exist in cities like Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, and not totally unlike how the year-round The Porch at 30th Street Station operates.

But that kind of change would be too late for folks like Tom McCusker. 

The Truck-and-Mortar

McCusker, owner of Honest Tom's Taco Shop, previously owned a taco food truck -- started in 2009 -- for three years before conceding that it was to his benefit to open a storefront; the food truck business, he says, just wasn't sustainable. He says he opened the food truck naively thinking he would work single four-hour shifts and instead found himself working 17-hour days and competing with other food trucks that would -- like with parking cones in South Philly and very much in line with a typical Philadelphian's vision of the entrepreneurial spirit -- park cheap vans as placeholders for parking spots at Temple University when they weren't vending there. 

The general mentality: "No one's moving until someone with a badge shows up," he says.

So, after years of business, Philly's food truck scene is still a bit like the Wild Wild West in its operation.

"I think the big misconception is that food trucks are little gold mines, because they see it on the news, or that dude in L.A. -- 'Ah, you started a lunch truck! You must be making millions!'" he says -- the eye-roll perceivable in his voice alone. "You can make a paycheck each week but not oodles of money. I probably lost money for three years straight, if you averaged it out day by day."

The core moneymaker for many Philadelphia food trucks, McCusker says -- especially in recent years -- are events like Night Market. Food Trust Night Market coordinator Meghan Walsh told PhillyVoice.com the event last year hosted as many as 80 street vendors. But even those sorts of festivals, McCusker says, are extraordinarily competitive and hard to get into.

"The festivals, the Health Department rides them so hard that you have to be able to serve 1,000 people, and you have to get inspected beforehand. Me, I could never figure out how to legally even hold that much food," he says. "It's illegal to have coolers on your truck, for example, but we didn't know how to hold the food without buying another fridge for refrigeration. And then I'd need to run another fridge on one small generator."

Which circles right back to the "ball-busting" description uttered by Swerdlow.

"For every good day I had," McCusker adds, "I had five bad ones."

Growing Pains

For all its recent growth, the food truck industry's also reaching a point of plateau.

A newly released market report issued in January by IBISWorld indicates that the industry's revenue growth outpaced the broader restaurant industry leading up to 2015, growing an average of 9.3 percent from 2010-15 and totaling revenue of $856.7 million. Yet, by 2020, that progress is anticipated to slow by two-thirds to growth of 3.1 percent, with revenues totaling $996.2 million. 

"I think the big misconception is that food trucks are little gold mines, because they see it on the news, or that dude in L.A. -- 'Ah, you started a lunch truck! You must be making millions!'" Tom McCusker says. "You can make a paycheck each week but not oodles of money. I probably lost money for three years straight, if you averaged it out day by day."

The dust is starting to settle, perhaps because the market is saturated or perhaps because municipalities -- like, you know, Philadelphia -- are failing to keep up with the growing industry's needs.

To add perspective, Austin's food truck business mentality is very ... well, Texan. The message from either side goes a little something like this: Stay out of our way, and we'll stay out of yours.

"For us, here in Austin, it's the total flipside of what Philadelphians do: Street vending is not legal here," Tony Yamanaka, founder and president of the Austin Food Trailer Alliance, told PhillyVoice.com. "You can't walk up to a public park and street and meter and sell food. We do what [Philly's] attempting to do, which is sign leases with vacant lots, temporary food parks and bars that last for around six months to two years -- that's how we operate. Everything's on private property."

"And, to be perfectly honest," he adds, "when push comes to shove, it's been the path of least resistance -- why push against the city and its bureaucracy when you can just have a deal with a private owner and not worry about anything other than having a permit to operate?"

Yamanaka says Austin's food scene peaked early there, in 2010, when "food trucks were opening on a weekly basis." Growth has since slowed, he says, but has yet to hit a decline. He also notes that scenarios at Temple and Penn, where food trucks can pay for semi-permanent spots, would never happen at an Austin university.

"They're protective of their cafeterias here," he says.

It's worth mention that the IBISWorld report particularly cites Austin, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, as the bastions of food truck growth, with new legislation created in the past five years that's listened to feedback from the community. The most dramatic opening-up of the market for food trucks, meanwhile, came in Portland, Maine, in 2012; not only are food trucks now legal there, but permit fees are now significantly lessened, the available vending zones are spelled out in less than a page (20, for Philly) and nighttime hours, between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., are now green-lit.

Yes, Philly, the fifth-most-populated city in the country and a nationally recognized breeding ground for chefs and restaurateurs, has fallen behind Portland -- Maine's Portland, no less -- in supporting its food trucks.

On the Move

The bright side of all of this, for food truck owners and folks who might want accessible food truck options during their lunch break, is that City Council is listening -- even if it's crawling to the finish line at a rate of centimeters, not inches. Because ignoring outdated rules for a growing industry that's here to stay isn't just an inconvenience for the city and its food truck owners; it's also just bad business.

"[Reform] has really been a long time coming, and there will be more to come -- I'm still in active meetings with L&I, the Health Department and the Food Truck Association to regulate the food truck explosion," Squilla reassures. "And, I think, once we iron out the kinks and concerns from the Health Department, along with concerns from the Food Truck Association -- we'll never get everyone to agree 100 percent, but I think at the end of the day, [changes] will go through."

Considering this is the first bill in recent years to address the changing food truck scene, it is, in many ways (and assuming it goes through), a symbolic recognizing of the scene's legitimacy. It's City Hall's way of acknowledging that food trucks are more than just a passing trend led by noncommittal millennials. 

"... We'll never get everyone to agree 100 percent, but I think at the end of the day, [changes] will go through," Councilman Mark Squilla says.

"I don't really think food trucks are a trend," Jon Deutsch, director of Drexel University's Center for Hospitality and Sports Management, told PhillyVoice.com. "There's been street food in Philly and in every major city since Ancient Rome. ... The idea of selling food mobilly, it's as old as Philadelphia itself." 

And with gourmet and locally sourced goods a staple of Philly's food truck culture (see: Cupcake Carnivale) and already a blossoming attraction for brick-and-mortar restaurants (by the way, the Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Association offered a "no comment" on the subject of the bill), it's a bit of a no-brainer that, given the choice, food trucks won't be packing up and leaving any time soon. That is, unless they can take their business elsewhere.

So, for now, people like Jimenez are left to tap their feet and wait for change. All the while, he says, he's optimistic about new legislation; he's hopeful that it will open up parts of Center City, "where all the disposable income is."

"I do hope this bill goes through soon, because then it gives food trucks a chance to make a real living," Jimenez says. "I don't have a side job -- I literally gave up a very well-paying job working on Wall Street, where I got a paycheck. Now, I really have to work to make a living. This is my livelihood."