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1978 the Department of Health wrote the vending regulations that are
now in effect. These rules explain the strict licensing requirements
for selling food on the street. They also set out where carts can
set up and health regulations of what to sell. There are now 3,000
food vendors on the street and the demand for licenses is so strong
that even the waiting lists are closed. |
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Kalit Ahmed's breakfast cart on Broadway and 60th Street. PHOTO: Julia Apostle |
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s
long ago as the 1800s, street vendors with wooden push-carts
and baskets would travel from tenement to tenement on the Lower
East Side selling every kind of food imaginable, whether it
was a cart of produce, ice, a small basket of corn or even one
egg. Wanting to attract the attention of the people working
inside the buildings and the passers-by, they would shout what
they were selling. Since many of the immigrants at the time
worked from their apartments on piecework, they would come down
to the street when they heard the cries and buy their weekly
supply of groceries. 
ntil
the 1940s, street vendors used wooden carts.Then stainless-steel
food carts, as we now know them, came into vogue, and are
now required by law. Coffee carts are new however, and were
first seen in New York City 20 years ago. Modern variations
of the old-style carts can still be found in Chinatown.
hough
street vending goes on in most cities New York still has the first
claim to street vendors, especially hot dog carts. National suppliers
call their carts "New York hot dog carts" and tourists
from all over the world line up to buy a New York style hot dog
with all the fixings.
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