Street Food

[theKB]

Well the city is freezing licensing because too many people are profiteering off of their licenses by renting them out...

After being flooded with complaints from operators, the City of Vancouver plans to freeze food cart permits.

City staff are looking for a way to stop those who hold existing permits from renting out their spaces at exorbitant rates.

A co-owner of Big Dogs Street Hots said the company is struggling to survive because it rents its spots from other people who were originally awarded the permits.

Leaseholders can ask up to $10,000 per year, nearly 10 times the actual cost for a permit from the city.

City spokesperson Karyn Magnusson says that has to stop.

... continued

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/foodcart-permits-to-be-frozen-by-vancouver-1.2486648

The city makes it overly complicated for anyone to get a license in the first place, has no restrictions in place once a license is issued in terms of who can use it and now is experiencing people profiteering on said licenses.

Time to open it up and issue licenses to anyone that wants one and let the market decide. Maybe it would allow for some actual GOOD options to start showing up instead of bland overpriced crap that MOST trucks are offering now (8 bucks for a kids size bowl of mac and cheese that would have tasted better if it came from a box that said Kraft... two pieces of toasted bread with a piece of cheap cheese in between it with a 1/8th of a bag of no name chips for 7 bucks, yeah these are great options!)

Let the market decide, those who fail will undoubtedly fail badly and those that are amazing will succeed. The city needs to stop trying to social engineer everything. Many of the options at the richmond night market blow almost all the truck/stand options around vancouver out of the water!