By Street Vendors, For Street Vendors: SB 972, Why it Matters, and What to Know

by Estefanía López Pérez and Chih-Wei Hsu

On any given weekend near the San Fernando Swap Meet, you’ll find Señora Fernanda, a street food vendor specializing in antojitos Mexicanos. Customers line up around her food cart for her to prepare her version of the iconic pambazo, a popular Mexican sandwich stuffed with chorizo, potatoes, and coated with guajillo sauce. 

Señora Fernanda is proud of her small business, handling every aspect of her food operation with special care. She is one of the thousands of street food entrepreneurs (known as street vendors to the public or “sidewalk food vendors” officially) throughout California that offer fresh and delicious foods in numerous communities. For food vendors like Señora Fernanda, however, the pathway to obtaining a food permit to operate her business is immensely expensive and fraught with a multitude of legal barriers.

Sidewalk vending was legalized in California in 2018 when Senate Bill 946 (authored by former Senator Ricardo Lara) established standards for local regulations of sidewalk vending.  Despite the passage of this landmark legislation, sidewalk vendors still face immense barriers. A 2020 study on the public health benefits of sidewalk food vending found that 85% of cities and 75% of counties remain out of compliance with SB 946 by continuing to restrict sidewalk vending. At the same time, sidewalk food vendors, in particular, face additional challenges in obtaining a public health permit. Currently, getting a permit is cost-prohibitive and logistically challenging. For example, permits cost over $1,500 in LA County and vendors are required to carry 250 lbs of water for handwashing and food preparation in their cart.

The California Retail Food Code (CRFC), the law that establishes health and sanitation standards for retail food facilities, was adopted when small-scale sidewalk vending was still banned across California. Food safety requirements that sidewalk food vendors are subjected to were designed with large-scale mobile facilities, like food trucks, in mind, not for small-scale sidewalk food vendors who sell a limited number of items like tacos, elotes, fresh fruit or other iconic street foods. Despite the major differences between these types of businesses, the CRFC classifies food trucks and sidewalk food vendors the same - as a “mobile food facility.”

This is where Senate Bill 972 comes into play.

SB 972 aims to make common-sense changes to the CRFC, like making permitting procedures, cart design and equipment standards, and commissary space more accessible for sidewalk food vendors like Señora Fernanda. Here are some examples of how SB 972 would benefit sidewalk food vendors and communities as a whole:

Accessible Public Health Permit Costs

Currently, the high cost of a public health permit (which includes a Mobile Food Facility permit fee and a  fee for checking the blueprints of the cart) is exorbitant for a sidewalk food vendor, the majority of whom make between 10,000 to 20,000 dollars annually. SB 972 would allow local agencies to reduce or waive the permit fee and allow carts to be preapproved to avoid the individual cart plan checks and associated fees. For vendors like Señora Fernanda in LA County, that would mean an initial savings of up to $1,518  (from waived LA City plan check fees and permits) and $772 annually (from waived LA County Health Permits) - the equivalent of three month's worth of income from vending on the weekend.

Accessible cart design and equipment standards

Since CRFC was designed with operations like food trucks in mind, compliance requirements are nearly impossible for sidewalk food vendors - the majority of which operate much smaller vending carts and menu options. Health department compliant carts can run up more than $15,000 in total costs. SB 972 creates a new subtype of mobile food facility that addresses sidewalk food vending - a compact mobile food facility. This new category would create specified requirements, tailored to sidewalk food vendors - making it easier for them to obtain code-compliant vending carts that end up being more affordable. The law would further clarify that local public health agencies can pre-approve vending carts based on standard blueprints of carts.

Accessible commissary space

Currently, the CRFC requires sidewalk food vendors to use a commissary space - commercial kitchens where sidewalk food vendors can prepare and store their food, and maintain their vending carts - or another approved food facility. Currently, there are only twenty-eight food service cart commissary spaces and shared-use kitchen facilities serving all sidewalk food vendors in LA county, which means each shared-use kitchen or cart storage space in LA City alone would have to serve 357 sidewalk food vendors. The limited number of facilities also means that they are mostly inaccessible to thousands of sidewalk food vendors throughout the County. For Señora Fernanda for example, the closest commissary space is 10 miles away -  turning what would be a 10-minute walking commute into a full hour drive between her home, the commissary, and her vending location. The current infrastructure is severely limited and unable to welcome all sidewalk food vendors in LA County into the food economy. SB 972 aims to give vendors access to kitchen infrastructure that complements and boosts existing County infrastructure, to support health-department-approved food preparation and storage. 

Commonsense changes for a just economy

SB 972 presents an opportunity for sidewalk food vendors to be formally recognized and supported as an integral part of the local economy. For Señora Fernanda, being able to obtain a public health permit would mean gaining the peace of mind to provide for her and her family without the fear of law enforcement agencies shutting down her small business. 

Sidewalk vendors and advocates have worked for over twelve years to create an equitable and just pathway for sidewalk vendors of all kinds to enter and operate in the formal economy. SB 972 is currently the most important piece of legislation in this decades-long puzzle and it is significant because it was crafted by sidewalk vendors themselves. SB 972 would remove the legal and infrastructural barriers that currently prevent sidewalk food vendors like Señora Fernanda and thousands of others from serving their iconic and delicious foods and earning a living in peace.