"I think if cities mark certain areas as "food trucks allowed" it really improves the quality of life for downtown office workers."
We have "food truck tuesday" about 5 minutes from where I work on a sleepy side road. Three problems:
1) No variety. "I saw the Korean BBQ truck did great on the food network show, lets open one". Times 5 entrepreneurs. Whoops. The brick and mortar restaurants have MUCH better selection. Suddenly you have 5 Korean BBQ trucks on the street sometimes 2 or 3 of them in a row. This also feeds into a narrowcasting disaster of focusing ever more tightly on a ever smaller fraction of the population trying to obtain a very small local maxima of profit.
2) Cost is insane, locally. The cost of a truck is basically fixed nationwide by the auto dealers etc. The cost of rent varies by a factor of 10 maybe 20 across the country. So whats "cheap" in NYC or SV, relatively, is extortionate, relatively... pretty much anywhere else. Entrepreneur sees the food network TV show and they charged $20 for a sandwich in NYC and had lines down the road. Hmm lets try the same $20 in Milwaukee. Whoops the local brick and mortar charge $5 not $25 for a sandwich so that's not going to work. There is the business model option of selling to drunk people who can't rationally evaluate prices but its hard to make all your money at 2am off of drunks.
3) I have to walk past numerous brick and mortar restaurants with wider selection and cheaper prices to get to the trucks that have a narrower selection and higher prices.
The initial idea of a truck was taking food out to some distant underserved industrial area and sell sandwiches at a premium to hungry coal miners or whatever. This doesn't work long term in a rich urban area with a wide selection and heavy competition, other than as a fad. Right up there with cupcake shops.
The "food truck street" is also highly unpopular with the trucks because of intense competition. OK 25% of all trucks will be Korean BBQ because it was on TV. Fine. Across a city that works. All of them lined up on one street means almost all of them go out of business.
A final problem is weather. There are parts of CA where the weather is perfect all the time and everyone is always outside. That is not the case where I live. If I cared, I would have moved a long time ago. The problem is centralizing a foot traffic oriented business in a town where the weather is not foot traffic compatible perhaps 75% of the time. Across the street in a downpour or 10 degrees or 110 degrees works for me. Not a long walk away past 10 other trucks.
So generally speaking, no, formally govt supported "food truck Tuesday" down the road from me, has not been much of a success. Its possible the restaurant establishment has permitted the politicians to support the concept only because they know its a fad and in the long run doomed, in this town, so they don't need the cops to beat them down like in NYC.