Linda Falkenstein
A line of students wait for their avocado spring rolls at Natural Juice on Library Mall this spring.
The return of Madison’s food carts has been slow. But more are coming back to their sites on the Capitol Square and Library Mall.
Last year at this time, the traditional opening of the food cart season on April 15 didn’t take place. The fifteenth normally signals the day that cart operators can start using their new sites, obtained the previous fall through a city evaluation and ranking system.
In April 2020, both the downtown and university were largely deserted, with office workers and students conducting their business and studies for the most part remotely. Caracas Empanadas and its sibling arepa cart were the sole vendors out for a while, but over the summer and fall more vendors came back, especially to Library Mall, including Surco Peruvian, Hibachi Hut, Bulgogi Korean Tacos, Fresh Cool Drinks and Natural Juice.
While carts were in one sense poised for the pandemic, with an all-takeout model and no dining rooms to worry about, they also depend heavily on foot traffic on the Square and campus area, and that has been slow in returning.
Madison street vending coordinator Meghan Blake-Horst expects that more carts will be coming back this year. And the city is working to make that return as easy as possible.
As it did last year, the city is waiving the normal vending fees, and Blake-Horst has been calling all of the cart operators and checking in, finding out if specific carts are coming back and if so, when they plan to do so. She’s also making sure health licenses are up-to-date and confirming site assignments.
The city has created a temporary way for new carts whose owners want to be on Library Mall or the Capitol Concourse to do so without having participated in the cart review, which did not take place last fall. This basically amounts to city staff making sure no one with an existing vending license would want to be in any of the open spots in their stead.
There will very likely be some brand new carts launching this year, says Blake-Horst, but they are “in process, not quite to the place where they are ready to launch right now. Some are still working through health department stuff.”
Some carts launched in 2020 as well, like Sista’s Chicken and Fish and Happy Kitchen. Sista’s has been out this spring on Wingra Drive, near the post office.
Since getting the street vending coordinator job in 2017, Blake-Horst has been looking for ways “to grow opportunities for vendors outside of downtown,” and COVID-19 intensified that need. “Especially as it gets nicer out,” says Blake-Horst, she is looking for “those places that [potential customers] are now, and how I can work with food carts to educate them about those opportunities.”
A cart can vend in many other places besides on the Square or Library Mall, although from reading the city ordinance, it can be hard to parse exactly what constitutes a legal site.
Blake-Horst says she has “distilled the ordinance down to a chart for vendors to use, regardless of English language skills, and you can absorb the info a little faster — that has been helpful.” More vendors have been looking for spots outside of downtown: “Really the opportunities are extensive as to where you can be in the city; you could pop up in a residential neighborhood and vend — in a legal parking spot.”
Blake-Horst has also been working with vendors to find high-traffic sites on private property: “There are more opportunities there too, where there is a density of people, like a business park or office building.”
Carts out vending this spring so far include two Surco Peruvian carts, Common Pasta (under new ownership), Caracas Empanadas, Natural Juice, Fresh Cool Drinks, Toast, Hibachi Hut and Bulgogi Tacos.
Most cart operators are looking at May as a good time to start coming out, says Blake-Horst. “There will be more time to have gotten the vaccine or feel more comfortable with public health orders, and there might be more foot traffic too as we get into late spring and early summer.”
Still, she says, vendors are “wanting to be out, because they want to be consistent — and they want any sales they can get.”
