For Some Vendors, Pushy Life Is a Good One

Nancy Mulligan is prospering.

Each day from her yellow-and-red hot dog pushcart on the busy corner of Front Street and Broadway in downtown San Diego, she sells an average of 160 hot dogs, 125 cans of soda and a big assortment of chips. She generates more than $8,500 in sales each month.

Among downtown San Diego street vendors, Mulligan is considered top dog, at least in sales volume.

But Mulligan is relatively lucky. Three years after the city adopted an ordinance allowing street vendors in the downtown area, pushcart operators have not yet reached the pinnacle of success they thought they would.

The vendors have faced strict city and health regulations, high initial investment costs, occasional poor weather and property owners reluctant to rent spots outside their buildings. And they’ve had to struggle to gain interest and respect for themselves and their products.

Despite the pitfalls, the business outlook for the street vendors gets better each year and shows signs of prospering, pushcart operators maintain.

The bright and colorful vendor carts now dot the downtown business district, peddling everything from hot dogs and flowers to sweets and pretzels.

And Chipwich, which at one time had 50 ice cream pushcarts in San Diego but eliminated all of them in early 1985, is thinking of re-entering the downtown vendor business.

Pushcart vendors were first allowed to operate in the city in the fall of 1982. Along with the approval, the City Council, because of worries about potential health and crowd problems, enacted a tough law that required carts to operate only on private property, a law that has since been changed. In addition, the county has imposed stringent sanitation regulations.

“There were many other carts here when we first started who wanted to form a coalition and fight City Hall and change the ordinance,” Mulligan said. She decided to steer clear of them and mind her own business. “Most of those people are gone and I’m still here,” she says now.

Officials receive few complaints about the vendors, according to Roger Lewis, duty sanitarian for the county Department of Health.

What complaints there are deal mostly with competition grievances rather than health problems. The health department inspects the carts both before they open and periodically while they operate, Lewis said.

But ordinances and health inspections are the least of the vendors’ worries; initial investment for the street vendors can be steep.

The stainless steel push carts used by food vendors cost as much as $8,000, and rent can be as high as $700 per month for prime, heavily traveled locations, according to Bill Pal, a street vendor for three years. There are additional costs for a business license, health permit and rented storage space for the carts in a downtown commissary, Mulligan added.

Although weather conditions in San Diego are generally favorable for vendors, business does come to a halt when it rains.

Pal, who owns and operates a hot dog pushcart at 7th Avenue and C Street, missed almost all of the first-half of last December because of rain and cold weather.

Echoing a consensus among vendors, Mark Hawkins, who owns and operates a hot dog cart on Broadway between 6th and 7th avenues, said he doesn’t operate during bad weather because “people don’t want to eat outdoors when it’s raining.”

Property owners often are reluctant to lease to vendors.

“My wife and I went all around this damn town and must have talked to 15 or 20 managers of buildings.” Pal recalled.

Finally, Great Western Savings bank agreed to lease him space. “Maybe (the managers and owners of buildings) think we’re freaks or something or maybe they think we’ll hurt their business. I (disagree); I think we help their business.”

Hawkins walked door-to-door for a month trying to find a place to set up his pushcart before he was able to locate in front of a discount clothing store downtown 18 months ago.

Building managements show signs of relenting, however.

For instance, Doug Eatough, who operates his flower pushcart on the same corner as Mulligan, in mid-November proposed his pushcart operation to management of the Wells Fargo Building and, within a couple of weeks, he was in business, generating as much as $200 a day.

Some vendors are even thinking of expanding.

Larry Richie, franchise proprietor for Blinchiki International, operates a pastry cart outside the Civic Theatre at 3rd Avenue and B Street, and he’s thinking of expanding his hours to serve music and arts patrons attending the theater.

Both Richie and Hawkins agreed that redevelopment has helped increase pushcart business downtown by bringing in what Hawkins called a “better class of people.”

About 90% of most vendors’ customers are business people, said Richie, adding that his business drops dramatically after 3 p.m. And, despite the increase in retail activity downtown, he doesn’t set up on the weekends.

Mulligan says she enjoys her job and meeting people. “It’s the social contact that keeps me here,” she said. But “some days are something else. I’ll have transients and drunks and people coming out of the bushes.”