Vibrant Street Food Culture Plays A Role In Healthy Communities

The National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN), an organization that aims to create strong childhood obesity policy interventions that will reverse the epidemic by 2015, has recently released a collection of food system policy tools, including mobile vending policies.

Mobile vending is loosely defined as selling food out of any portable vehicle, including trucks, carts, trailers, roadside kiosks, and stands. In underserved neighborhoods (aka food deserts), mobile vending is seen as a way to increase access to healthy foods and create opportunities for economic development.

Here in Seattle, some would say it’s easier to site a grocery store than a mobile food cart. For the past seven years the city has banned downtown food vendors. In 2003, because of what it called overcrowded streets, the city council passed legislation cracking down on mobile vendors, banning food carts in the University District and from Westlake to the stadiums in Sodo.

Also banned: vendors selling food near parks and schools. According to the city, hordes of largely unregulated street vendors had popped up along the monorail line downtown and near Seattle’s ballparks in the 1980s, skirting health codes and jamming city streets. In addition to the bans, the city’s tough street-permitting process—which requires consent of neighboring businesses—and additional county restrictions on types of servable foods made opening a cart more trouble than it was worth.

Seattle has recently formed a plan to reintroduce taco, kebab, and pizza carts to the streets. As part of the city’s efforts to increase street life in Seattle, make the city more walkable and improve access to healthy, affordable food, city staff and county health officials are working together to roll back the city’s strict regulations on street food by this summer. The city hopes to expand the list of allowable street foods, bring food carts to downtown Seattle, and allow food trucks to congregate in parking lots around Seattle, creating miniature urban food courts.

As the city’s new street food policies are being developed, it may be worthwhile to refer to NPLAN’s fact sheet on how mobile vending regulations can promote healthy eating in communities that need it the most.

To learn more, download NPLAN’s comparison of Mobile Vending Laws in the 10 Most Populous U.S. Cities. In addition, NPLAN’s fact sheet, Creating a Permit Program for Produce Cart Vendors, provides an overview of NPLAN’s Model Produce Cart Ordinance and describes the many benefits of produce cart vending.

Related posts:

1. Food Trucks in Seattle: Not So Fast Says Pioneer Square Neighbors
2. Urban Agriculture Plays Key Role in Denver’s New Living Block Project
3. Webinar Series Explores How to Create Healthy Communities

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