Let’s Eat Out, the food cart group that established cart nights in Madison neighborhoods and parks, has dissolved, according to coordinator Gregg Potter and founder Christine Ameigh.
Ameigh, owner of Slide, started neighborhood food cart nights almost by accident in the fall of 2012. She was parking her cart overnight near Atwood Avenue and neighbors started asking if she would vend there in the evening. The idea grew. The affiliation of carts gathered at selected neighborhood parks, usually Monday through Thursday, with two to four carts at a site. Ameigh gave up the organizing two years ago, citing the stress of coming up with the rotating schedule and then having carts not show up as promised: “When you commit to people and then have no-shows, that’s frustrating for everybody,” says Ameigh.
She also feels the market became saturated. People were less excited about carts than they used to be, she says. She handed the organizing over to Potter, whose Project Kinect specializes in promoting community through events. “I wanted to advocate for food carts, who are some of my favorite small businesses,” Potter says.
Potter agrees that fewer people were attending the cart nights, and it became difficult for Let’s Eat Out to be self-sustaining and for the carts to make a profit. It seemed the last remaining function of the group, to connect food carts to people wanting carts for benefits such as school fundraisers, could be taken care of through Madison street vending coordinator Meghan Blake-Horst. A form at the Let’s Eat Out website will continue to be available for anyone looking for a food cart for an event; the page also invites interested parties to contact Blake-Horst directly.
Blake-Horst says she can help event organizers navigate the sometimes tricky landscape of city permitting. “I’m providing a list of food carts and contact information, and who to contact if they want to hold the event in a park, who to contact if they want to hold it the street.” This isn’t always evident, says Blake-Horst. Some schools are considered city parks, and you can’t vend adjacent to them; others are not parks, and you can. Blake-Horst will make sure events comply with city rules. “It’s a continuation of what I’m doing anyway,” she says. But the city has no plans to organize summer cart nights in parks.
