Japan Makes Food Trucks Work. Hong Kong can do it too very easily - here’s how!

Remember the food truck experiment here? Meant to unlock opportunity and spark entrepreneurship. Instead, operators cited high costs, limited use cases and lack of practical planning. The business case if evaluated clearly looked impractical from the start; no surprise it failed.

Look at Japan. Small food trucks are everywhere. On public or private land, they operate with minimal difficulty. They provide income for small operators, create jobs and inject vibrancy into dull or underused spaces.

Why not rethink food trucks in the HKSAR? Small-scale, Limited menus, Focused on access and affordability. The example in the video is exactly that: a compact, quietly run offering consistent with the idea of small enterprise. The government says it wants to support SMEs, this is about as “small” as it gets.

If people can launch a food truck at minimal cost, without excessive regulation, on idle public land that is doing nothing for the community, tourism or economy, overly restrictive frameworks are questionable.

A healthy mobile food scene and thoughtful outdoor dining options will benefit the economy and everyone. There are so many things we can easily do to support the SME spirit that helped build Hong Kong.

We know government wants outdoor activity, otherwise we wouldn’t have outside seating accommodation schemes. We know the government wanted food trucks, otherwise the pilot would never have launched. But these aren’t working well.

Three possible reasons for stumbling:

1. Lack of consultation and cooperation with the ultimate stakeholders. People who operate outdoor spaces and food trucks know exactly what is needed.

2. Failure to have initiatives designed, led and invested in by the same people who will actually use and run them.

3. Involvement of people with no hands-on operational or business knowledge or skills in the regulatory and planning process.

As we spend undisclosed sums on influencers, let’s spend a modest amount on making smart ideas work? Not keep abandoning ideas after flawed rollouts. Iterate, refine and relaunch so the visitors we are trying to attract have fun things to interact with.

Why not reopen the Business Services Promotion Unit? Commission a few practical studies, run some easy-in tests, seek out and then allow some low cost things that all the cities we compete with have in place that work.

These aren’t my ideas, they work elsewhere. A can-do mentality will make them work here and we could do it fast.

I’m happy to help!

If you need specific input regarding a strategic Hong Kong challenge or related legal matters in the HKSAR you can always DM me and check out my profile at https://www.ajhalkes.com

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