What's at stake?
The City of Fresno could make good this week on a promise to help fund a commercial kitchen for its mobile food vendor community, nearly three years after officials first pledged an investment.
The City of Fresno could make good this week on a promise to help fund a commercial kitchen for its mobile food vendors, nearly three years after officials first pledged an investment.
Councilmembers Miguel Arias and Luis Chavez announced Monday a $700,000 grant to Fresno public health nonprofit Cultiva La Salud, which will go before the full council for approval Thursday. The allocation would support the commercial kitchen Cultiva plans to open on Fresno Street, just south of Highway 180.
City leaders said they envision the kitchen as a “one-stop shop” where the city’s growing population of mobile food vendors can prepare food to comply with health regulations, receive help obtaining permits and strategize healthier menu-planning.
“These are hard-working individuals who are trying to make ends meet,” said Veva Islas, executive director of Cultiva La Salud, “so that they can afford to send their children to college one day, so that they can pay their bills and keep their lights on and keep their homes.”
A commercial kitchen was one of multiple asks from the city’s mobile food vendors after one street vendor, Lorenzo Perez, was gunned down on the job in 2021.
But it was a struggle to find a viable site for the kitchen over the past three years, leaders from Cultiva and the city said Monday, forcing delays to the project and changes to how much municipal funding was expected.
“It’s called Budget 101, unfortunately,” Arias said
To date, the city has allocated about $1.1 million toward Cultiva’s kitchen and resources for the vendors it works with, between the recently announced $700,000 grant and $500,000 the city previously allocated toward security cameras and other technical assistance for mobile food vendors.
Arias said he hopes this is only the beginning of Fresno’s investments in an important industry to the city.
“What better way to invest in our local economy and our local residents by helping hundreds of them with such a small investment of $1.1 million so far,” he said, “an investment that I hope is still a down payment on the overall industry of mobile food vendors.”
A commercial kitchen at last
After multiple previous sites the city was eyeing for the commercial kitchen fell through, Cultiva La Salud decided earlier this year to instead take out a loan on the building that will become its commercial kitchen.
Even then, Islas said they had a ways to go in terms of seeking additional funding to see the project through to completion.
Monday’s announcement marks a follow-through on the city’s end of things.
Maria De León, owner of Tamales y Antojitos La Promesa and a member of Fresno’s Food Vendor Association, said Monday that she’s grateful to see another space for vendors opening up in the city.
Other kitchen rentals have cost an average of $50 an hour, De León told reporters in Spanish.
Cultiva has committed to keeping costs for vendors who use its kitchen as low as possible.
Islas said Monday that as a member of the Fresno-Merced Future of Food or F3 coalition, some F3 dollars could help subsidize some of the charges for vendors to use the kitchen.
“We don’t have an exact cost right now,” she said, “but we are planning to make it very affordable for them.”
Funding the commercial kitchen
Islas said opening the kitchen will cost approximately $3 million in total.
So far, they’ve come up with just over half that through a combination of Cultiva’s own savings, philanthropy and public funds.
The City of Fresno is contributing $1.1 million, or about a third of the cost, Arias said.
The $700,000 comes from the last of Fresno’s American Rescue Plan Act funding, he added.
As for a project timeline, Islas said there’s no definitive opening date yet.
The plan is to tentatively begin demolition of the existing building later this year or early next year, then begin construction.
They’re hoping to demolish most of the existing building, Islas said, to transform it into a two-story facility with a kitchen and training center on the first floor and offices for Cultiva La Salud on the second story.
Comments are closed.