Todd Hubler
Changes could be in store for how Madison regulates its blossoming food cart scene.
Members of the city’s Vending Oversight Committee, including Ald. Mike Verveer and longtime Madison restaurateur Rena Gelman, acknowledge there are issues with the current process and are open to making modifications.
Verveer says he is in favor of taking a close look at the whole process for site selection for 2018. “The process has not been reformed, in any significant way, since I’ve been a member of the Vending Oversight Committee,” says Verveer, who has served on the panel since the mid-1990s.
Gelman, a new member of the committee and former owner of the Sunprint Cafe, says she is “enthusiastic about addressing some of the issues. I would like to be part of the change.” Gelman, who is a consultant with the UW-Madison School of Business, says that the review process “needs to be taken seriously” as livelihoods are at stake.
At the committee’s Oct. 26 meeting, several food carts owners voiced frustration with the current system. The owners of the El Grito food cart, Matthew Danky and Joshua Barraza, asked to appeal their ranking (49 out of 60). If its score stands, El Grito is almost guaranteed to be bumped from the Capitol Square next year.
Danky and Barraza have questioned the qualifications of the review panel that judges carts. They also alerted the committee to possible inaccuracies in how the final scores were tabulated.
The ranking process has become ever more crucial as the number of carts who want to operate downtown has grown. Sixty vendors participated in the annual food cart review this past September, vying for 40 lucrative locations. Carts scoring in the bottom third are put on a waitlist to operate downtown. These vendors will likely have to make other plans for the 2017 season.
Longtime street vending coordinator Warren Hansen, in charge of conducting the annual review, recognizes that “60 carts basically overwhelms the system.” He, too, is receptive to many of the suggestions made by vendors at the committee meeting, including having more food professionals on the review panel and increasing training for judges.
Carolyn Fath
Street vending coordinator Warren Hansen: “Our process is very hands-on.”
This all comes as Hansen readies for retirement after nearly two decades of facilitating mobile vending in Madison. When he started in 1998, there only a handful of food carts downtown.
“I think my retirement might be an opportunity. Whoever replaces me can come at it with fresh eyes,” says Hansen, who will stay on through the winter to train his successor before retiring in the spring. “It was not that long ago when [every vendor] who applied for a spot on the Capitol Square or Library Mall got one. The complaint we used to get from vendors was that they didn’t get the spot they wanted. Now, a number of applicants don’t get a spot at all. So it’s gotten a lot more competitive.”
How the city assigns prime locations for food carts is “a uniquely Madisonian endeavor,” says Hansen.
“I’ve been to a number of mobile food conferences and nobody does it like us. Our process is very hands-on. In most other cities, food cart licensing is much more bureaucratic. It’s like applying for a driver’s license.”
The vending committee on Oct. 26 voted to delay accepting the results of this year’s food cart review in order to ensure the scores are accurate. But “barring any errors that are discovered before our next meeting, I don’t see how we will be able to change the outcome for the upcoming licensing year,” says Verveer. Nonetheless, Barraza says he and Danky will appeal their score. He says public opinion is on their side, citing the several dozen people who came to the meeting.
To help out lower-scoring carts next year, Verveer suggests the committee investigate whether additional food carts can be added on the 800 block of State Street. That’s the block of Library Mall in between the Humanities building and the Wisconsin State Historical Society. Another dozen or so food carts could fit there, which would cut the vendors on the waitlist in half, but would also create more competition among the mall carts.
Adding food carts to the 800 block of State Street may create more controversy. The Wisconsin Historical Society objected to food carts being added there when the State Street Design Committee discussed the idea in 2013. The Historical Society did not return Isthmus’ request for comment.
