Keep Food Legal Heads to Chicago to Speak at IJ Mobile Food Vending Symposium

We are excited to report that Keep Food Legal executive director Baylen Linnekin has accepted an invitation to speak at the University of Chicago School of Law next weekend as part of an Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship symposium on street food, mobile food vending, and food trucks. The IJ Clinic, a joint project of the Institute for Justice and The University of Chicago Law School, is hosting the one-day symposium as part of its campaign to ensure that regulations permit a vibrant street food scene in Chicago, where rules currently place needless burdens on mobile vendors at a time when demand for street food has exploded in the city.

Linnekin will sit on a regulatory-reform panel at the Saturday, Apr. 14 conference, My Streets, My Eats: Chicago Mobile Food Symposium & Meet Up. He will discuss mobile-food vending regulations and highlight his forthcoming law-journal article on mobile-food advocacy, which he co-authored with Jeff Dermer of Dermer Behrendt and Matt Geller of SoCalMFVA.

Nationally known IJ Clinic symposium panelists include Gregg Kettles, currently with the Los Angeles mayor's office, who wrote one of the earliest law-review articles on regulating street vending; food journalist Heather Shouse of Timeout Chicago, author of the book Food Trucks; and Sean Basinski, of New York City's excellent Street Vendor Project. To learn more and to register for the free symposium--which will feature food served by various Windy City trucks--go here.

In related news, Linnekin will teach an undergraduate-level course on food entrepreneurship and social media at American University in Washington, DC in fall 2012. Course registration for students in the Washington, DC area is now open.