L.A.’s informal economy revolving around the city’s Taco Life is full of unwritten rules and mutual, street-level respect among both brick and mortar businesses, food trucks, and street vendors. Nonetheless, territorial conflicts do come up. A video posted on Pablito’s Tacos Instagram account over the weekend, showing Pablito’s World owner Danny Rodriguez confronting the workers of the Woody’s Grill taco truck, parked directly in front of Rodriguez’s new restaurant in Chinatown, has brought up the age-old question: How far from a brick and mortar restaurant should a mobile food business set up, in order to show respect?
In the particular case of Pablito’s Tacos and Woody’s Grill L.A., the situation is further complicated because Woody’s Grill offers similar tacos on its menu.
“As other small business owners may know, you sacrifice a lot when you open a new restaurant in L.A.,” Rodriguez tells L.A. TACO. “There are certain ethics that come in having a food truck and rule number one is: You never park in front of a restaurant that sells the same thing.”
Rodriguez is a taquero who worked his way up from a taco stand to a taco truck and now a taco brick and mortar business. He still operates his popular taco stand in the Valley.
In the nearly three-minute-long video, Rodriguez walks up to the taco truck and asks to meet the owner. He shares with his viewers that Woody’s Grill has set up regularly right outside his door for two weekends now and while he let it slide at first, he eventually met the owner and asked him to kindly leave.