What's at stake?
Vendors say setting up in park will be safe and more profitable.
The Fresno City Council greenlit a new program allowing mobile food vendors to sell within city parks.
In a resolution drafted by Councilmember Miguel Arias and the Food Vendor Association, food vendors can apply for a permit to operate in Fresno parks. Vendors will receive a sticker to display on their carts and an identification card permit. The application is expected to open in 30 days.
“The idea came from the vendors themselves who requested it to member (Luis) Chavez and I in our last meeting we had around two months ago,” said Arias in an interview.
The resolution, approved by the Fresno City Council on Thursday, comes with a few restrictions on how mobile food vendors operate in parks. Primarily, there is no cooking on site.
That means that food must be prepared and cooked beforehand. Arias also said that both vendors and he agreed that they would not want grease to seep into the ground or onto sidewalks.
“Grease and kids don’t go well together,” Arias said.
To acquire a permit, vendors must have a city business license and a county health department permit to sell food. The application for a park permit is free and vendors need only show proof of both license and permit to get their sticker and identification card.
Operating on a first-come, first-serve basis, vendors can then pick what parks they want to sell food at. Only one vendor is allowed per two acres of parkland. No other vendors are allowed to sell in the same parks unless there is more acreage to satisfy this restriction. The city currently has 1,500 acres of parks.
Arias said the city might allow more than one vendor per two acres on special occasions, such as sports tournaments. However, it is not currently known how additional vendors would ask for permission or what events would qualify as a special event.
mobile food vendors are also prohibited from setting up seating areas around their carts. Arias explained that this was to mitigate the amount of green space that would be taken up within parks. Vendors cannot use city electrical outlets and can’t set up their business in the middle of open fields that are used for sports.
These stipulations were developed in meetings between Arias and the Food Vendor Association. The goal is to increase the business mobile food vendors receive and to make them safer by moving them away from sidewalks.
‘Nobody helped us before’
This resolution is another step of cooperation between the city and the Food Vendor Association. In the past two years, the city has taken measures to support and protect mobile food vendors by allocating funds for mobile security cameras, grants for food carts, and technical support when applying for permits.
“We have been advocating for mobile vendors for around two years now,” Miguel Angel Ruiz said in Spanish. Ruiz has been a vendor for over 20 years selling shaved ice and Mexican corn. The city, the county and the Fresno Area Hispanic Foundation are helping us. Before, nobody helped us.”
Ruiz also reiterated the need to move vendors away from the streets and into parks, saying that being near sidewalks was more dangerous and brought in fewer customers than setting up at a park.
For the future, Arias is looking to help neighboring communities ease their restrictions on laws affecting mobile food vendors. Specifically, he is communicating with representatives in Huron and Kerman. The vendor association has also asked for a commercial kitchen.
Fresnoland’s Omar Shaikh Rashad contributed to this story.
