Editorial — Curses, our nemesis beats us to food bikes idea

SATURDAY MORNING EDITORIAL — Is there no end to expanding culinary experimentation on the streets of our cities?

Kamloops is approaching the end of a aummer-long test project involving food trucks in the downtown core. For the most part, they seem to have passed the test — no disastrous consequences have occurred.

The city remains intact, in fact, none the worse for wear. Restaurants are surviving the competition quite nicely; downtown patrons seem to be enjoying the choice.

But, our nemesis to the south is already doing us one better. The continent’s first food bicycle was unveiled in Kelowna this week.

According to The Kelowna Capital News, the food bike is the brainchild of entrepreneur Donnie Ungaro, who dreamed it up as a fundraiser for charity. “We want people to know that they can change a life by what they have for lunch,” the Capital News quoted Ungaro as saying.

A second food bike will peddle into the picture next week. Now, these are not your average hotdog carts, though photos of Kelowna’s version of food bikes show a good-size cart being pulled by the bicycles. They offer a menu that sounds on a par with full-fledged food trucks.

Looking around the web for food bikes, we find they aren’t at all new in Europe. Those Europeans are always ahead of the game.

We’re guessing the idea will migrate to the Tournament Capital by next spring, at which point there will be some hair-pulling over the need for an extensive public consultation period, stringent permit requirements and a major study as to where the food bicycles are allowed to park.

After which, there will be a pilot project and people will find they enjoy the added choice of coffee-time and lunch-hour food, and we’ll wish we’d thought of it first.