Long Beach recently gave free food carts to two local businesswomen, the first recipients in a program designed to provide up to 40 carts to local sidewalk vendors.
Ashley Arnold, who sells on-the-go baked goods she makes out of her Bixby Knolls home, said the cart will be a huge boost for her business, Ladie Kakes.
Arnold said she “never imagined having a cart,” but she applied for one so she could legally sell on the streets instead of waiting for popup events or farmers markets where she could showcase her goods. Now she’s excited to see where her new strategy takes her.
The other business to receive a cart, Lucky Bees, serves up hot dogs and pastrami sandwiches around Long Beach. A third sidewalk vendor has been approved for an ice cream cart but was waiting for it to be built and delivered, according to the city.
The giveaways are part of a larger plan in Long Beach to help vendors comply with new health and safety rules the city crafted after California legalized street vending.
The cost of buying a cart that met the new requirements was seen as a major hurdle for vendors. Since the offer of free carts was announced in late August, the city has received 36 applications.
Of those, 14 applicants were in the second phase of the three-stage process and 12 were “nearing the final stages,” city spokesperson Jennifer Rice Epstein said via email.
For applicants to receive a free cart, they must tell the city where they plan to store the cart. The three available options are at home, at a shared commercial kitchen or at a restaurant.
If the applicant plans to serve hot food from the cart, they must agree to prepare the food, clean utensils and store equipment at a health-permitted facility, Rice Epstein said.
“We want businesses to thrive and for diners to have options while ensuring that people are protected from foodborne illness,” Health and Human Services Director Alison King said in a statement.
Coordinating storage of the free cart has caused approval timelines to vary widely for applicants, Rice Epstein said.
Arnold said she is able to store her cart at home because she has a health permit to bake out of her home kitchen.
But other vendors are still working out those details. De’Mon Tyndell, owner of The Quesadilla Calling, is one of the twelve closing in on a free cart, but he hasn’t yet finalized an agreement to store his cart at a barbecue restaurant in the Wrigley neighborhood. He wants to make sure he doesn’t get ahead of himself with the pop-up quesadilla business he has run for the past four years.
“The first couple years of business has been in the negative,” Tyndell said. “I’m finally starting to see some sustainability. And with that sustainability, I want to hold on to it as much as possible, because I feel like this is my little baby in the incubator, per se.”
Transporting the cart is another hurdle.
With part of the money she saved on the free cart, Arnold said she is getting a custom trailer built to attach to her Jeep and getting her cart wrapped with a name chosen by her Instagram followers.
Tyndell will have to get a tow hitch for his van to transport the 800-pound grill cart he applied for, which he said is “the size of a small Honda.”
Once he can transport the cart, Tyndell said he plans to serve at larger events in Long Beach and throughout Southern California.
He has been serving gourmet quesadillas since 2021 with a business license from the city of Los Angeles but was recently approved for a business license in Long Beach as well.
Through the city’s Sidewalk to Success Program, he’s getting the $1,000 business license fee waived for the first year of operation.
When the program was rolled out last year, Long Beach agreed to waive fees for business licenses, insurance up to $450 and health permit fees through February this year.
City staff were “currently looking into” extending that offer, which had been granted to 28 sidewalk vendors as of Jan. 24, Rice Epstein said.
Free cart applications remain open and the city plans to keep accepting applications until the $429,500 the city set aside for cart purchases “is exhausted,” Rice Epstein said.
In order to qualify for a free cart, applicants must live in Long Beach, have less than two full-time employees and operate only one cart. All applicants must get a Long Beach business license and a health permit to receive a free cart.