Vallejo restaurant owners seek crackdown on street food vendors

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VALLEJO — If you drive around Vallejo, Vacaville or Fairfield any weekday evening, you might encounter long lines in front of pop up restaurants. Street food vendors are popular, not only for the food they serve, but because their prices are often lower than a restaurant’s. One taco may cost $3 to $8 in a brick and mortar restaurant, while a street vendor might sell it for $1 or $2.

Customers are happy for the price break, but many restaurant owners and owners of permitted food trucks are fuming. A group of them united in January to present complaints in city council meetings across Solano County as well as to the Board of Supervisors. They allege that street vendors pose unfair competition and are damaging their businesses and requested that street vendors who don’t have permits be banned in Solano County. 

In a letter read during a Fairfield city council meeting, the group asserted that street vendors don’t pay taxes, permits or rent and they don’t undergo health inspections, “so they can offer a lower price, and as a result, we cannot keep our clientele, while we meet all the regulations that are imposed on us.”

If the government does nothing to stop street vendors, the letter continues, “it would be only fair that small businesses don’t pay either [taxes or permit fees], are not asked to follow regulations, and are allowed to work the same way as them.”

Vallejo Vice Mayor Mina Loera Diaz has had a long and positive connection to restaurant owners in the city and pushed to pass a $3,000 micro grant for security improvements. But she also supports the street vendors’ right to have a business. “I am pro-business,” she said in an interview. “I want the restaurant owners to win and the street vendors to win.”

Loera Diaz, who was 4 years old when her family immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico, said she is very sensitive to the struggles immigrants face. “I grew up being told by my parents that the same way somebody gave us a hand, we have to help others,” she said.

To achieve a solution that benefits both sides, Loera Diaz has proposed an ordinance that asks the street vendors in Solano County to follow the law, but allows them time to process their permits. The ordinance is scheduled to  be presented at the Vallejo City Council meeting on Tuesday. The ordinance, Loera Diaz said, “should have an education component. We should offer street vendors 120 days to learn how to get their license and their permit, how to get their businesses up to code, and guide them through the application process.”

Although the published ordinance does not mention an education program, it allows 120 days after its final passage to take effect and be in full force.

The vice mayor said that she drove a similar educational process 12 or 13 years ago for vendors selling mangos through her non profit Diaz & Loera Centro Latino. “Some complied and some did not and moved out of the city,” she said, “but they had to put glass around their little cart, and have water to wash their hands, and so on.” 

She would be willing to do the same again for street food vendors once her term ends at the end of this year, without receiving any compensation, she said.

The lack of running water and food that is not kept at the right temperature are some of the health hazards that customers of the food street vendors face, according to Cesar Hernandez, owner of the restaurant Burrito Palace in Vacaville. 

“I understand that life is hard for everybody and that everyone wants to make a dollar,” Hernandez said, “but if they sell food, they have to do it well and pass inspections from the health department, because they are not in the system and are not supervised.”

The divide between the two sides has at times gotten contentious. Hernandez said that last August he received a visit from the health department and when he told the inspector about a street vendor that was impacting his business, the inspector asked him to take photos of their cart, their car’s license plate, and their location. 

When he was taking the photos, the cart owners saw him. Hernandez drove away, and, he said, “two men jumped in a car and started following me. They placed their car by mine, and asked me, ‘Have you been taking photos of our cart?’ I said, ‘Yes, what is the problem?’” After exchanging a few more heated words, they peeled away. 

The next Saturday, one of the men came to his restaurant with an older man and demanded that Hernandez go out to the street with them “to talk.” Hernandez felt threatened and refused to follow them. Next Tuesday, “the same guy set his cart right in the parking lot of the building where I have my business,” Hernandez said. “I talked to the building’s owner, she called the police, and when they arrived, the street vendor left. From then on he kept his cart where he used to have it, although I have not seen him in the last month or so.” 

Several restaurant owners refused to be interviewed on the record for this article because they were afraid of retaliation. Street vendors also declined requests for interviews. 

In June, the Solano County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce organized a meeting where chamber parliamentarian Tina Fowler broached the possibility of creating a “snitch line,” a phone number where anyone could call to report the presence of a street vendor. The meeting was attended by a few business owners and several Vallejo city officials including City Attorney Veronica Nebb, City Manager Andrew Murray, Mayor Robert McConnell, Loera Diaz and staff from the Code Enforcement and Business Development departments.

Loera Diaz was appalled by the idea. “I don’t believe we are here to divide communities,” she said. “I think we are here to unify communities,” she said.

Fowler said she made a mistake calling it a “snitch line.”

“I just used bad terminology,” she said in an interview. “What I said was that during Covid there was a snitch line. You could call in and say if someone in the city was not wearing a mask or were not making their employees wear a mask. And I was asking why there was so much focus on health during Covid, but we don’t have anything like that when people are serving food out of the trunk of their car without any health permits.”

Fowler asserted that the chamber was never trying to shut anybody down. “​​No one is angry at the guy who sets up and maybe is under permitted,” she said. “The chamber wants to help get them educated.” At the same time, though, she added, “The chamber was trying to create a voice for some of our members who felt like the city and the county were not listening to them on an issue that was hurting them very badly.” 

After the meeting in June, the group of restaurant owners hired Fowler as an independent consultant to keep representing them. Fowler emphasized that the restaurant owners are not afraid of competition. They simply want to make the street vendors accountable to the same rules and regulations.

“The municipal code states that you need to have X amount of parking in a restaurant,” said Fowler. “One of my clients didn’t have enough parking and had to negotiate with surrounding areas so they could open. It delayed their opening for months. Yet, you've got five different food vendors set up in a location that is completely unsafe with zero parking spots for any of them.”

Likewise, she said, restaurant owners cannot cook al pastor tacos in a trompo, or vertical rotisserie, in an open space because it's against the health guidelines. “But the street vendors are literally setting a trompo outdoors, directly under a construction site, on the side of the road,” she said.

On Nov. 22, Loera Diaz met with the Suisun City Mayor Alma Hernandez, Fairfield Councilmember Doris Panduro, and Vacaville Councilmember Michael Silva with the intention of reaching consensus about the issue of street vendors across Solano County. “They were open to dialogue,” Loera Diaz said, “and that’s all I want, to have an open dialogue.”

Even if the Vallejo City Council decides next Tuesday to approve the street food vendor ordinance, enforcement could be tricky, Loera Diaz admitted. The Code Enforcement Department is understaffed, and street vendors who do not legalize their business are likely to keep operating after 5 p.m. or on weekends, when staff is not working. 

Fowler agrees that enforcement will be hard, but, she said, ”It's not our job to figure out enforcement. It's the city's job.” She added that in Vacaville, the restaurant owners have the support of the police department, the economic development department, the planning department, and the enforcement department. When a street vendor pops up, they go and, if they see that they don’t have the right permits or are not in a zone that allows pop up restaurants, they ask them to leave. 

“If the city handles it right, there's so much positive that could come out of it,” Fowler said, “but right now, by not doing any enforcement or any check, it's hurting those businesses that are following the rules and penalizing them for doing things the right way.”