Woodburn to join the food pod craze

Food pods are gaining popularity nearly everywhere, many offering a variety of tasty cuisines from around the world.

In Woodburn, the city council is setting the stage for the city to join in on the food pod craze.

“Our zoning code didn’t allow what most people think of as a food cart pod, a big collection of food carts that you have in one place with a central eating area,” Chris Kerr, city community development director, said. “We’ve allowed them in industrial areas, but we didn’t have any regulations. We would allow trucks to operate with bare minimum requirements.”

Kerr said individual food cart owners have been using, for the past three or four years, a provision in the code that allowed some to open for up to 60 days, whenever they want.

“They would, on and off, open their doors, shut down, open their doors, shut down, essentially the truck would be there for a year,” he said, noting, for example, that these trucks might be open every other Saturday.

“What we had wasn’t working well, a bit of an eyesore,” Kerr said. “It was really hard to regulate, in terms of code enforcement.”

The city council directed staff to draft provisions that would allow a food cart pod with utility connections, landscaping and a common seating area, as well as health and fire department requirements.

For a period of about four months, the city held several work sessions with its planning commission to discuss the concept.

“We had very little opposition from existing restaurants, which is where we really thought we would get the most negative feedback,” Kerr said.

The Woodburn City Council has approved two elements of the food cart regulations so far, according to Kerr.

“They created a new category in our code called a ‘food cart pod,’ which is a site plan that gets reviewed, and is allowed in every commercial and industrial zoning district in the city,” he said. “It’s not allowed in residential.”

Kerr said these food cart owners would need building permits and licensing to operate the businesses.

In addition to these regulations, which kicked in a couple of weeks ago, new provisions for single carts have been put in place, Kerr said.

“We created a separate provision in our code that will allow a single cart to operate as well,” Kerr said, noting a single cart would have to be an accessory, meaning, for instance, that it could be located next to a supermarket, but not a vacant lot. These single carts would still follow requirements pertaining to health, fire and safety.

“I was really happy to work on this,” Kerr said, noting that there is currently no location set for a food pod.

Those interested in joining a pod can reach Kerr at chris.kerr@ci.woodburn.or.us.