I am guessing something not good happened at the outdoor food court on Friday, August 26th.

It appears somthing not good happened at the new food court last night.

Good for you, Steve. Hold them accountable.

It sounds fishy on both sides. If legitimate violations were found does the context of how, really override the violations, not in my opinion. IIRC the health dept may inspect any facility, at anytime, without any notice. I am sure they will comply on their own schedules, but I was not aware the law requied accountability compliance the next business day.

What is needed is the vendors to obey the law and thenform an association whereby they can convey their concerns to the powers that be in a coherent/intelligent manner.

BoBo’s Chicken on the eastside has set several standards of how food truck and vendors will be treated.

Please keep us posted, I would like to see this event to be a success. I do not buy that they just happened by on the way to the south side. Seemed everything short of a Fugitive Task Force showed up.

I’m very interested to see how the ABLE commision was involved. I know with COOP being present that would be their concern, I do not know if beers sales were done by trucks or not. Were there citations by ABLE? Or were they there as a “show of force”?

I was in Elemental this morning, and they said a state senator – I didn’t hear his name – called and wanted to know exactly what state agencies were there.

Progress doesn’t come without a struggle. Thanks for taking this up!

SIC ‘EM Steve. As Charlie said…this sounds quite fishy.
It had been published in the paper and social media was alive on the event. To shut it down AFTER it had been rolling for three or so hours was TOTALLY inappropriate.

Show up prior to the “opening” conduct the inspections, advise on necessary compliance and let the party begin.

Alcohol sales are highly regulated and COOP knows that for certain so they would want to be in accordance with local & state law.

The Health Department licenses the food trucks so their authority is valid; but what violations were found & could those be corrected instantly?

These folks stepped on their proverbial peckers and now they have the wrath of the Citizens.

Keep up the investigations Steve, you are our man in the trenches!

I’m glad to see someone with the ability to handle this situation intelligently taking action. Way to go Steve!
What I don’t understand, is why they felt it necessary to bust the balls of hard working people trying to host an event that benefits a community.

I was not involved with the planning of the event Friday night, I just attended. I was hoping for some coffee, beer, cupcakes and tacos. That set of treats usually costs me 4 separate stops; I was really excited I was going to get them all out of the way at one time! The timing, ferocity, and glee with which the inspection and closure seemed to be performed struck me as odd. I have helped to open restaurants, hotels, and casinos in Las Vegas and China for 15 years, but I have never seen anything get shut down in that manner due to permits. Yes, laws and codes must be enforced, but I am not sure that display of force was necessary. There had to have been a high level of coordination and planning between the enforcement agencies, but when we asked we were told it was just a random inspection, really? Maybe during the planning of their raid they could have made a 10 minute phone call the day before to the event to the organizers, to ask if all permits would be in order. Did it need to be a surprise attack? I know the duty was upon the organizers to be prepared, but maybe that one phone call would have been a much more amicable and efficient enforcement procedure than dragging all the agents out on a Friday night. I am sure there will be many “throw the book at ‘em, we all gotta follow the law!” replies here; life in the center of Fox News land. Just don’t taze me bro, especially over a cupcake..

Thanks for tackling this Steve. This city would be in a world of hurt without you.

These business are trailblazing in Oklahoma City and are trying very hard to help create a better quality of life for our citizens. They are not fly by night operations and I would bet they looked into the necessary steps that needed to be taken for an event like this to occur. A progressive idea such as this causes many shades of gray in terms of regulations. I would bet the governing agencies don’t have the ordinances in black/white. Even if they did, they clearly knew about this market and could have addressed them before. That would have allowed the coordinators time to comply.

Makes me want to test my theory. Perhaps I call in Mon. to all the agencies and asked them what I “need” to conduct a “night market”

It was handled poorly. I hope the market continues on in full force.

I drove around a bit Friday night to see if there was indeed a citywide sweep going on. I saw absolutely zero evidence of that. Either they decided to do a citywide taco truck sweep that didn’t involve Capitol Hill (unlikely), they have a very strange definition of “citywide”, or someone is lying. I have some opinions on this matter, but I’ll keep them to myself for now and let this unfold.

Thanks for making the fourth estate look good, Steve.

Kick their asses, Steve!

It’s not like Big Truck is new, they’ve been around like what,3 years now? If the inspectors were so concerned, why wait 3 years to do a “random” inspection?

Thanks, Mike N. At least someone here has not been watching too much “Conspiracy Theory”. I work at a mobile and I can tell you that the Health department was out that night to least 11 pm when they stopped at my relative’s mobile. I think that maybe 8 inspectors and city people stopped but only two came over to my mobile and the rest went to others mobiles in the area (we were parked close). They were very nice but closed us down. We did not have the proper electrical hookup. I would be very upset if I thought that they were only doing the south side and that the yuppies could get away with doing what ever they wanted. We serve mexican food just like big truck taco so should they get a pass because their clients are upscale, at a fancy but illegal event?

The inspectors at Ok county health have gone out of their way to be helpful and have educated many of us (Hispanics) on how to comply with the law and serve a safe meal. Myself and others in the community are going to look at this very closely to see if here in Oklahoma yuppy food vendors who charge many times what we do can get away with not having and license, poor electrical, etc.

BTW, hee is my comments from the other blogs on this issue.

I hope this is selling you a bunch of papers. Does anyone notice that you don’t see any of the vendors talking. They know that the Oklahoma City County Health Inspectors are in general the nicest and most helpful bunch you could find. Not at all like Tulsa and Cleveland county. My relatives were shut down on the South side of OKC that night but they knew what they were doing was wrong and the inspectors explained very nicely what they needed. The inspectors give seminars frequently to mobile vendors on the south side at the Chamber of Commerce to keep everyone informed. I know that they also were out late at night at least twice last year because I sometimes help out in the mobile. I think that some yuppies got their feelings hurt and now you (Steve) are kind of embarrassed since you found out that the originators were lieing to you. What else are they lieing about? So you are planning to smear the OKC Health department in the name of sales?

You know that when you are caught speeding the police have the option of warning you, ticketing you, or taking you to jail on the spot. The city and the OKC Health could have given these vendors at the event a citation which would have cost them 1200 dollars and they would not have been wrong. When you do wrong knowingly or otherwise you expose yourself to penalties you may not have any control over. I know they can do this because they wrote some on the South side of town that night.

The organizers CHOOSE to break the law–end of story and should of been the end of your story. You and the other yuppies need to get over it and let these good people do their jobs.

Ashley G: please tell us why we haven’t seen ANY media reports about this supposedly city wide & specifically south side crackdown? Officials say it was planned & have implied it occurred, but have given no details (names of vendors, location etc). Where is the proof? if you could, what is the name of the mobile were you work? 29th is a long street. Do you actually work there and is this a relative’s business as you stated over in another post? Are they back open?