An old joke holds that the way to make a small fortune in the restaurant business is to start out with a large fortune.

The business, indeed, is not for the faint of heart. It's labor intensive; competition often is fierce; it swings with economic conditions ranging from food costs to local unemployment rates. There are taxes and rent, high employee turnover and a host of other factors that make the enterprise daunting.

So it's understandable that some restaurateurs in downtown Scranton object to the presence of food trucks so near their restaurants. Those mobile kitchens don't face most of the costs of maintaining a location, particularly in terms of the web of taxes and fees that conventional restaurants pay to local governments.

But the situation is not intractable. The trucks, like the restaurants, have a following, and consumer demand is a big part of the equation.

The city government has a legitimate interest in helping to maintain the viability of resident businesses, but it also doesn't want to thwart the vitality that the food truck trend brings to city streets. That's particularly an issue because the downtown's growing new residential component makes it an issue for more than the lunch crowd. It's also why a proposed city ordinance, which would increase to 500 feet the distance that a food truck would have to remain from a restaurant, is backhanded. That requirement would preclude a truck from parking almost anywhere downtown, at least within walking distance of any offices or residences.

In many cities, restaurants cluster not so much to compete but to thrive from jointly created traffic. Increasing the number of options downtown could help to produce a similar effect.

Meanwhile, Leslie Collins of the civic activism group Scranton Tomorrow has begun working with both groups to find some common ground.

They should begin with producing as many customers as possible to help the entire downtown food-service sector grow.