“Go to Astoria,” Zizo said. “That’s where the brokers are.”

June 13, 2016 4:13 PM

"Working nine hours a day, food-cart vendors like Zamir take home as little as $400 to $500 for a six-day week. Many are new immigrants hoping to start new lives. During a brief lull in lunch service, Zamir, 22, told me he served as a translator for U.S. troops in Afghanistan before he was wounded and then awarded a visa to settle here. A generation ago, after a few years of hard work and saving, Zamir could have become his own boss. Sidewalk vending was long an option for immigrants eager to improve their lives. That’s no longer the case. Today’s mobile food vending business is one of day laborers and shift workers who, despite hustling all week long, may not earn minimum wage." - Inside the underground economy propping up New York City's food carts By Jeff Koyen
posted by The Whelk (15 comments total)

1998 in Toronto:

"More than three-quarters of Toronto's city-issued taxi licences - better known as cab plates - are held by people who don't operate cabs with them. Instead, they rent them out to working drivers, who pay an average of $1,000 a month."

Related:

How Uber Is Ending The Dirty Dealings Behind Toronto's Cab Business
posted by Sauce Trough at 4:28 PM on June 13, 2016

Uber for food carts, anyone? It's clear the license system is more about rent-seeking by "brick-and-mortar retailers", not to mention one mayor's own personal dislike, than about protecting people's health. After all, do anyone's parents or grandparents recall some epidemic of food poisoning from pushcart oysters? Besides, the licenses aren't even accomplishing their ostensible purpose, of creating a limited and well-known supply of food vendors who can be regulated for health and safety—all that happens is the real vendors, the ones renting carts and spending seven days a week doing actual work, have to accept less money and can't rely on the government to protect their rights because they're now breaking the law.
posted by Rangi at 4:45 PM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Uber for food carts, anyone?

You think Uberization is going to improve conditions for the laboring masses?
posted by praemunire at 5:53 PM on June 13, 2016 [18 favorites]

That is naive. Uber for anything isn't a solution. It's a money grab. Good governance is the only answer. In the end that probably means no more 6$ halal goodness, but that junx was underpriced anyway.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:54 PM on June 13, 2016 [7 favorites]

There's a house I occasionally walk by that appears to be owned by someone with a hot dog stand (the stand will be parked on the driveway at random hours). The house has to be worth at least $1.5 million so I don't know if hot dog stands are really lucrative or if its a front for something else.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:21 PM on June 13, 2016

Oh hi this is exactly the kind of thing my roommate is writing about now. (She may be poking in to follow this discussion and read up on the reactions.)

She knows about the black markets in licenses, but also points out that - there are only 3,000 permits in the city, but there are about 20,000 food cart vendors. The hot dogs/coffee carts/halal meat over rice/pretzel guys are only part of the story; there are Asian food carts doing brisk business up by Columbia, for one, because that's a neighborhood which has a lot of international students and a dearth of Chinese or Thai takeout places. You similarly have a lot of other random food carts in out-of-the-way neighborhoods which cater to the locals, but may not be exactly licensed but it's food people know so no one cares.

She also said that there is a 10-year waiting list for a license in this city, which is probably all the more reason for someone to want to go an alternate route.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:11 PM on June 13, 2016 [6 favorites]

I just watched the Al Jolson "Jazz Singer" tonight, and there are a number of shots of what I presume to be New York's Lower East Side, shot on location about 1926. The whole thing is just one giant outdoor market, and I have seen identical shots from other films of the era, as well as photographs.

It occurs to me that this sort of street business, with its low-overhead reselling, was essential to the development of immigrants communities. It was easily set up and, if you succeeded, was a path toward building toward a brick and mortar business.

I feel like we need to build this opportunity back into America. You should be able to get a leg up with just a table full of cheap merchandise and a busy street. I think it's important to the health of a city too -- it turns out streets into active thoroughfares, unlike the concrete wastelands most are now.

I like street food. I want more of it.
posted by maxsparber at 7:59 PM on June 13, 2016 [10 favorites]

I feel like we need to build this opportunity back into America. You should be able to get a leg up with just a table full of cheap merchandise and a busy street.

Then we need to do a much, much better job of protecting small, street level business people from better-resourced and predatory larger business interests because that's who always shows up to steal or swindle the little guy's success away if there's anything even remotely worth capitalizing on there. The way it often works now seems to be that anybody who manages enough success to attract attention draws too many sharks who won't let those small successes grow organically into larger enterprises. There must be exceptions, but it's a pattern you see cutting across all kinds of different markets.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:43 PM on June 13, 2016 [4 favorites]

Uber for food carts??! Sure, why not. How could introducing a powerful monopoly player NOT help? Do you even have a concrete thought for what "Uber" would offer in this scenario? Or do you perhaps just mean "let's have these guys work without licenses and magic happens"? How is that even relevant when we already know that a majority of them don't have licenses? What is this suggestion even intended to mean?
posted by the agents of KAOS at 9:09 PM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I don't wanna be all "well my roommate said" about the Uber issue, but yeah, she is like a literal expert on this subject and even she was asking "but...how would that work and why would you want to" when I told her about the Uber idea.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:24 PM on June 13, 2016

Uber doesn't even solve the owner/driver taxi issue either. Here in Cape Town most Uber cars are owned by a few large operators and the drivers are paid a crappy hourly wage.
posted by PenDevil at 1:36 AM on June 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

The house has to be worth at least $1.5 million so I don't know if hot dog stands are really lucrative or if its a front for something else.

Well, I hear there's always money in the banana stand.
posted by The Bellman at 8:56 AM on June 14, 2016 [5 favorites]

are really lucrative or if its a front for something else

Or they bought the property 20-30 years ago, when it was still affordable, and now that they are retired they are resorting to running a hotdog stand in order to be able to pay in massively increased property tax?

Also, street food in TO used to be 1/2 to 1/3rd the cost of street food in Van - is that still the case? A street dog (semi fancy kind) is ~$8-9 here.
posted by porpoise at 4:05 PM on June 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

There's a house I occasionally walk by that appears to be owned by someone with a hot dog stand (the stand will be parked on the driveway at random hours). The house has to be worth at least $1.5 million so I don't know if hot dog stands are really lucrative or if its a front for something else.

If I were at a certain level of rich, I would much rather have a hot dog stand on retainer than a bigger house.
posted by Etrigan at 4:18 PM on June 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

A street dog is somewhere between $3-5 depending on whether its a normal hot dog or a fancier sausage. $8 in Vancouver for a hotdog? Why would you even bother?
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:23 PM on June 15, 2016