In 2021, as the COVID-19 pandemic was upending the mobile food economy, Los Angeles County officials won approval for an ambitious multimillion-dollar plan designed to help beleaguered street vendors across the region.
Initially, $5.81 million was allocated for the effort, with an additional $1 million last month.
Among the initiative's goals: making it easier for vendors of tamales and other Southland sidewalk staples to register and get county approval. Its complex licensing and permit rules have long hampered food vendors, who number in the thousands.
The centerpiece of the $6.81 million project: manufacturing and distributing 200 code-compliant food carts to vendors, free of charge.
But, nearly two years after the county Department of Economic Opportunity formally launched the program, none of the cars have been built.
So far, according to public records, the county has spent more than $700,000 on outreach, education and other efforts. The money, which came from nearly $2 billion in funding it received through the 2021 American Rescue Plan, the pandemic-era stimulus package, must be spent or contractually obligated by Dec. 31.
The Department of Economic Opportunity's lack of progress during a dire situation for providers, many of whom are Latino immigrants, has drawn fierce criticism from a prominent industry executive in private conversations with officials and at public meetings. Matt Geller, executive director of the National Food Truck Association, told the Times that “the wrongness of everything they are doing is a result of [having] There is no experience in space.”
A vendor cooks at her food stand in Fontana.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
“My enemy is time,” said Geller, 49, who is also co-founder of Revolution Carts, which in 2021 developed the first hot food cart approved by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. “Every day that a seller cannot sell legally… that is my enemy. He keeps me up at night.”
Kelly LoBianco, director of the Department of Economic Opportunity, admitted that she would like to see the process “move faster.”
“I know that we are a government; We are doing the best we can,” she said. “I think we are moving forward. “We are definitely carrying out a process with the participation of the community.”
LoBianco acknowledged Geller's criticism, but emphasized the importance of continued educational outreach, which has included obtaining permits for clinics. He also said a 2022 state law allowing for a new, simplified grill cart, as well as active dialogue with vendors, has pushed the county to reconsider its plans.
Customers wait in line on a rainy night to receive food from a street vendor in Santa Ana.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
For years, there has been something of a holy grail in the mobile food economy: an easily accessible cart that could be used to cook a popular street food: tacos. Under the old rules, to get a permit, a grill cart had to have multiple sinks, which would make them extremely large and heavy. But the passage of state Senate Bill 972 two years ago created a potentially revolutionary new category: the “auxiliary” grill cart. They are not required to have sinks for washing dishes, as long as they have approved access to one nearby, making it easier to equip carts that can cook the raw meat needed for tacos, burritos and other in-demand items.
The siren song of al pastor and roast beef sizzling on the grills proved irresistible. After an “evolution in strategy,” LoBianco said, the county scrapped its original plan for all free carts to be hot carts, which keep food hot but do not allow cooking. Instead, the county plans to pay for the manufacturing of 20 auxiliary grill carts and purchase about 180 more carts of various types. Types could include fruit carts, keeping warm carts, and grill carts with multiple sinks.
The various options are what providers want, said Doug Smith, senior director of policy and legal strategy at Inclusive Action for the City, a nonprofit the county selected to guide the cart project and other parts of the program under a contract worth approximately $3.1 million. .
“Our North Star … is meeting the needs and priorities of street vendors, who have consistently told us they need and want more options than just keeping their carts warm,” said Smith, whose organization helped pass the SB 972.
Plans for the auxiliary grill carts, designed by the Kounguey Design Initiative at the county's behest, will be made public so other manufacturers can use the design. The Department of Economic Opportunity said in a statement that it expects the free carts to be delivered in early 2025.
Although a target date for distribution of the carts was never announced, Geller said county staff had told him in mid-2023 that they would be delivered this summer. “This,” he said, “is moving the goalposts.”
“At no point am I going to back down from the fact that you guys don't seem to care that you can change lives today,” he said of the department. “And you keep kicking it down the road.”
The Revolution cart is a hot maintenance version. Called Tamalero, it costs $7,500. Geller acknowledged that her company could benefit from the Department of Economic Opportunity's shift in strategy toward direct purchasing, because it alone has received approval to build a “model” hot food cart that can be mass produced without each license holder permission follow the plan. -verify process.
Tamalero from Revolution Carts, a hot food cart that costs $7,500.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“If you need 200 cars, I'll get you 200 cars,” said Geller, an emphatic organizer with a law degree from UCLA.
Four years after California decriminalized street vending, the passage of SB 972 was a watershed moment for the mobile food economy.
It established a new category of street vendors: the “compact mobile food operation.” Items such as handcarts, pedal-powered carts, stands, or other “non-motorized means of transportation” are included in this classification. And a simplified regulatory framework offered an easier path for providers using carts to gain authorization.
Consider how the new rules have affected just one category, hot food carts: Before the changes, they could only be used to sell tamales and steamed hot dogs. Vendors can now sell any prepackaged food that can be kept warm safely and is approved by the Department of Public Health. Geller said breakfast burritos, pulled pork sandwiches and potato tacos work well.
The passage of a handful of local laws this year will also make street vending in the Los Angeles area easier, in part by easing penalties for non-compliance with Department of Public Health regulations.
However, today, merchants have extremely limited options for purchasing code-compliant carts. In the hot-hold category, there is only the Tamalero. As for grill carts, the Department of Public Health said only one company has gotten approval for a model, All Valley Food Truck & Cart Manufacturing.
Geller said Revolution has sold 84 Tamalero carts. Most of those sales went to Taco Bell, which bought 50 carts and gave many away to local vendors.
Beverly Estrada, a Tamalero owner since 2022, said getting a cart allowed completely changed her business, which she had run out of the trunk of her car starting in 2020. Once, she said, “the health department… just He came and took my food, told me I couldn't be there and gave me a summons. “It is an overwhelming feeling of failure.”
Now, however, Estrada sells tamales in a Home Depot parking lot in Downey as part of a pilot program that another of Geller's companies, the reservation service Best Food Trucks, organized with the big chain. He said the program would not have been successful without the permitted cars, and that its success shows the immense need for ones that the county can easily approve as soon as possible.
For Patrick Lennon, another co-founder of Revolución, it has been “heartbreaking” to watch what he called a “clumsy” public process slowly unfold.
Customers wait for tacos while the pastor cooks on a spinning top at a stand in Fontana.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“We have success stories of vendors making six figures a year,” he said. “It's more than giving them equipment: it's giving them a manual for a new world.”
Chelina Odbert, principal at Kounguey Design, said plans for the auxiliary grill cart designed by her company have not yet been submitted to the Department of Public Health for approval. She declined to say when that is expected to happen.
Still, LoBianco said his department would meet the Dec. 31 deadline.
Times staff writer Rebecca Ellis contributed to this report.
