Toronto Street Food

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Fillion have his hands on this one I believe.

There should be *some* regulations around the design of food carts, and the current standards clearly aren't working given the mobile atrocities that are the chip vans. That doesn't equate to having something like the existing food cart program, which is seriously twisted.

AoD

 

[Torontovibe]

Why would the city forbid pictures of the food on the cart, especially when we are dealing with different kinds of ethnic foods that many people have never seen or even heard of. I like to try new things and I need to see a picture to spark my interest.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Torontovibe:

I agree, that is a silly rule - but at the same time there has to be some sort very general signage requirement. I think the city should err on the side of going easy on regs though, consideirng one should be encouraging these types of small businesses to develop. If anything, the program should be geared more towards providing microfinancing for those who have the talent but are otherwise capital poor. Just a thought.

AoD

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Yes, it was Filion, which is why the Mel Lastman Square area is a featured site for these carts. Which is really stupid...a strip of Yonge filled with almost nothing but inexpensive restaurants is possibly the worst place in the city to try out these carts.

 

[ladyscraper]

They should be doing anything they can to make these carts a success. Hopefully they will be more lenient and try harder to accommodate the people selling the food. Every tourist/friend that I have shown around Toronto has been blown away by the quality and variety of the ethnic restaurants in our city. This is something that should be celebrated and be in full view for everyone coming to the city. It would give a very good impression to new visitors.

 

[Eug]

Toronto’s food vendors ‘set up for failure’

Let them set their own menus and roam the city, New York vendor director urges

Toronto’s tightly regulated vendors of ethnic street food have been “set up for failure,” says a champion of New York’s huge and diverse street food scene.

Sean Basinski, director of the Manhattan-based Street Vendor Project, said food vendors should be licensed, inspected for health and safety and then set free to offer up good, diverse eats almost anywhere people will buy them.

“I don’t see how anyone could succeed with the system you have up there,” Basinski said after reading a story in Monday’s Star about the eight members of Toronto’s troubled three-year à la Cart pilot project.

Five of the vendors reached by the Star said they plan to return for a second summer. But several said they have no choice but to do so, because they are so in debt from buying a city-mandated $30,000 cart, paying rents of up to $15,000 and having disappointing sales.

Last fall, the city loosened the red tape, reduced most of the rents and shifted control from the health department to economic development. But vendors still can’t stray from mandated locations, must get menu changes approved by Toronto’s medical officer of health and face other restrictions — including not being allowed to attach signs to their carts.

 

[urbandreamer]

Montreal/Quebec has poutine--a natural street food even though Mtl doesn't allow street food vendors--so what should Toronto have? Torontonians, it's time you invented a uniquely Toronto street food!

 

[nfitz]

Toronto’s tightly regulated vendors of ethnic street food have been “set up for failure,” says a champion of New York’s huge and diverse street food scene.

Sean Basinski, director of the Manhattan-based Street Vendor Project, said food vendors should be licensed, inspected for health and safety and then set free to offer up good, diverse eats almost anywhere people will buy them.

This quote describes what should have happened in a nutshell. This is how we deal with restaurants; why should street vendors be any different?

Can you imagine what the restaurant scene in Toronto would be like if we had the same process as we had for street carts! (though we might all eat at home more often!!).

Toronto medical office of health approving menus?? Good grief!

 

[Eug]

This quote describes what should have happened in a nutshell.

The totally mindblowing part is that just about any smart high school student might have come up with the same approach to an initiative like this.

Yet we have this total bureaucratic embarassment. I don't think there's any possibility of bureaucratizing this any further. Toronto is #1!

P.S. Off topic but this reminds me of a woman in a previous job we used to call the professional administrative meeting attender. She was a low level bureaucrat that used to attend all of our administrative meetings. She would sit there and never, ever utter a word. Nobody would ever ask her a question, and as a consequence the solutions to any issues never, ever had her input, or even had her name on any of the reports. Furthermore, the scope of meetings she would attend was vast, everything from personnel, to purchasing, to budget, etc. Nobody ever felt she needed to be engaged in any of the meetings, but I wouldn't be surprised if she attended 10 hours of meetings a week. And no, she wasn't part of the executive, and she wasn't clerical staff. Basically, she was lower management that was completely irrelevant to the organization.

The ironic part is that I'd almost rather someone like her in my organization: Dead weight that just costs money... rather than active bureaucrats like at the City of Toronto that create make work projects that make everyone's lives 10X more complicated for no good reason.

 

[Jonny5]

I am still of the mind that this program actually was setup to fail to protect restaurant owners who essentially sell "street food" inside.
I would like to know where the BIAs stand on this program and if they have lobbied for or against it.
Anyone who has traveled to a place where diverse street food is available knows it tastes better and costs less than what is served at many Toronto fast food shops.
This program would put some under extreme competition.

 

[Disparishun]

Two random thoughts.

One, we need to get this working in time for the Pan Ams. Maybe that can be the artificial deadline City Hall needs to get its act together.

Two, and I'll admit this is a nutty thought, can any of the 905 munis get their act together to squeeze Toronto into doing something about this? As I'm sure everyone will point out there isn't much street life in the 905, any more than there is the suburban 416. But there are surely pockets in Mississauga, Vaughan, Markham, RH to which, having provided vendors the opportunity to be entrepreneurial, some might gravitate -- and which, crucially I guess, are the kind of public land on whcih they could have the right to install themselves (as opposed to mall- and plaza-owned land: this is, I recognize, an important spoiler). That, I would think, would kick-start Toronto. No?

 

[nfitz]

I am still of the mind that this program actually was setup to fail to protect restaurant owners who essentially sell "street food" inside.

That's the first explanation I've heard of the whole thing that makes any sense.

Perhaps we should start lobbying to make the city apply the same menu approval standards to sit-down restaurants, for health reasons.

 

[jaycola]

This is street food

Brazilian BBQ

Jamaican Jerk Pit

Mexican Taco cart

Crepes in Michigan

Now look at the Toronto Example. It's like the the difference between processed cheese slices individually wrapped in plastic and a hunk of stinky blue cheese lopped off and wrapped in brown paper.
If you want the safe choice, lack of flavour may be sacrificed. If you want an experience you will go for the deeply veined blue.

 

[jaycola]

Maybe it's time to licence restaurants without patios to set up a street station in front of the restaurant.
Allow them to grill raw meat and not force them to serve precooked reheated dreck!

I have to say this is the most embarassing example of an urban pilot project regulated into failure that I have ever seen.

 

[MisterF]

I am still of the mind that this program actually was setup to fail to protect restaurant owners who essentially sell "street food" inside.
I would like to know where the BIAs stand on this program and if they have lobbied for or against it.
Anyone who has traveled to a place where diverse street food is available knows it tastes better and costs less than what is served at many Toronto fast food shops.
This program would put some under extreme competition.

I don't know about Toronto but in smaller cities in Canada restrictions on street food stem partly from pressure by competing restaurants. That and a misguided belief by politicians that street food clutters the streetscape.