City Legalizes Street Food Sales

In what Pasadena officials say is an effort to ensure consumer’s health through strict regulation, the city is legalizing the many pushcart food vendors that populate its streets, while tightening the control of mobile kitchen wagons and ice cream trucks.

The City Council late Monday approved a law designed, among other things, to make the thriving underground economy of food pushcarts subject to city health laws, overturning a 1992 ordinance banning such vending.

The end to the blanket prohibition gained wide support from street vendors. Four years ago amid a steady stream of complaints from residents and restaurateurs about street food sellers, the city outlawed pushcart vendors. But city officials conceded Monday night that the ban has produced nothing but an unregulated market that threaten the health and safety of consumers.

“When you have got pushcart vending going on regardless of the law it simply becomes better to control the reality with rules designed to protect the community’s health,” said Councilman William Crowfoot.

A city official who helped craft the law said pushcart vendors will now be required to obtain permits from the health department, to prepare their food in commercial kitchens and be subject to random street inspection.

The council also revised the city law allowing mobile kitchens to sell food for up to five hours in one place and when ice cream trucks can operate.