Vendor: Oak Park "Harassing" the Mojo Express

How can a food truck operate when it's getting kicked out of its parking spot every thirty minutes?

That’s the question Renee Estese-Long is trying to answer.

Long operates the Mojo Express, a mobile coffee bar selling drinks and snacks. Twice this summer, she said, police officers have ordered her to move the renovated PACE bus from parking spots around town.

Earlier:

“I’m supposed to leave? I’m supposed to tell everybody in line that I have to go? That’s not right,” she said.

But those are the rules. The village code — Chapter 18-1-6 — says peddlers can't be parked on the same block for more than 30 minutes.

Earlier this summer, the Oak Park Village Board decided against after complaints surfaced that Long's truck and ice cream trucks had been hanging around too long outside festivals and brick-and-mortar businesses.

"Police are enforcing the ordinance we have," interim Oak Park Village Manager Cara Pavlicek said. "They’re not trying to pick on anyone. She needs to comply with the rules are in place."

Still, Long sees an injustice. And a paradox.

If she can’t park for more than thirty minutes — it takes people 15 to minutes to even know the Mojo Express is open, she said — how can she ever sustain her business?

"That was the whole purpose this," Long said, gesturing toward the interior of the 2004 Ford F-450, filled with coffee urns, a refrigerators and an ice box.

Village officials are exploring ways to update the 1982 peddling ordinance in the rule books. They're talking with business owners to begin drafting an update.

Pavlicek said the ordinance "isn't meant to be aggressive. If you're a mobile food vendor, it's meant to be mobile."

We want to know — is 30 minutes too short a time for a food truck to do its thing? Does anyone know how long the food trucks in Chicago are allowed to linger?