Not sure if there's anything to be learned from LA's very limited fast food ban...

Other than "badly thought-out rules with lots of exceptions don't accomplish a lot," but for the benefit of those following the story, here's a relevant article from the LA Times.

Now, as evidence mounts that the Los Angeles City Council's ban on new fast-food restaurants is so far failing, leaders and thinkers are again scrutinizing the role restaurants of all kinds play or could play in this historically troubled cluster of largely low-income neighborhoods.

Seven years ago, the city pushed through the nation's first ordinance to focus on public health and fast food, at least in part because a community health nonprofit had lobbied tenaciously for the regulation as a way to fight obesity — a problem that is typically worse in poorer neighborhoods.

But despite passionate arguments that the law would encourage healthier, sit down-style restaurants to come to the area, a Los Angeles Times analysis shows the food landscape here remains unchanged.

Fast-food outlets have continued to spring up while the places with wait staff that city leaders had hoped to attract have been slow to arrive. To make matters worse, a recent Rand Corp. study shows that obesity rates have gone up since the ban was enacted.

The ordinance has fallen short of its goal in part because it only prohibits new stand-alone restaurants, and not those that are willing to operate in strip malls or shopping centers.

Another flaw, critics say, is that its definition of fast food doesn't address health head-on. Rather, the ordinance limits the location of "any establishment which dispenses food for consumption on or off the premises, and which has the following characteristics: a limited menu, items prepared in advance or prepared or heated quickly, no table orders and food served in disposable wrapping or containers."

About the time the ban was imposed, however, the line separating one type of restaurant from another grew fuzzy, and "fast casual" chains such as Chipotle, Tender Greens and Panera Bread — known for marketing to the health-conscious — remain prohibited from opening stand-alone establishments in South Los Angeles under the current ban.

The ban, supporters say, was meant to be a stop-gap measure to buy time as officials crafted initiatives to lure the sort of restaurants that area residents want. But when Gov. Jerry Brown dissolved redevelopment agencies in 2012, the city lost one of its best tools for enticing developers to invest in blighted communities. Without the leverage of tax incentives and other city support, attracting new restaurants is tough, city officials and business leaders say.