- 314 Pie: Not terribly complex.
When you walk around South Lake Union’s many blocks of food trucks, do you see a diverse paradise of densely packed food options, or a libertarian’s dream come true? In a recent interview with Business Insider founder and CEO Henry Blodget, Jeff Bezos praised Amazon’s South Lake Union campus for inspiring “an unbelievable food truck scene.” But food trucks are good news and bad news, like most of the ideas that Bezos praises. On the one hand, they bring multiple food options to a still-developing neighborhood that cannot yet support a panoply of restaurants. (South Lake Union does have some excellent dine-in lunch joints, though, including the Berliner Döner Kebab.) On the other hand, you could argue that the fleet of food trucks descending on Amazon headquarters has an unfair business advantage over South Lake Union’s restaurants, which have to invest in property taxes and comply with other regulations that don’t apply to food trucks.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve eaten some amazing meals at food trucks—Now Make Me a Sandwich’s The Bad Lieutenant, anything at Maximus/Minimus…