Hah, try that in Germany. You shouldn’t even be giving food a sideways glance without your permits at hand. And don’t you dare to even consider selling beer alongside your snacks.
Is it similar to the US in that in theory you need a ton of permits, but in reality everyone kinda turns a blind eye to it unless you get too big/at a big venue?
For example, in the past year I've seen a guy selling tamales from his car trunk, someone selling candy apples from a cooler on the side of the road, one person making crab boils from their house, and a ton of people doing small batch type things on FB marketplace. Most of these would violate our local cottage laws, but I've seen police officers buying the tamales for example!
I have no doubt if someone got sick they could probably win a civil case of sorts, but I don't think I've seen or heard of any kind of attempt to shut down any of this via law.
It’s one of those things that’s fine until it isn’t. Eventually some Karen or restaurateur will rat you out to the sales tax authorities.
The cop thing doesn’t really matter. They stay in their lane until they don’t. I had an uncle who was NYPD, they’d randomly (from their pov) get tasked with cracking down on random crap. Sometimes they’d give folks a heads up.
In NYC the landlords are rapacious, so it’s difficult to compete with Pedro’s Taco Truck.
It’s because the best tamales come out of the back trunk of a car, or a cooler behind the counter of your local Mexican bakery. It’d be a tragedy to lose those flavors.
Absolutely, they were fantastic. I was a purchaser of said tamales pretty often. It was an older guy who said his wife made a bunch each morning, so he went out to sell them each day.
Usually in the US, unless it’s a massive city, vendors selling things out of their yards/trunk are ignored. It’s when you have a permanent/semi permanent stall that things get serious. Also selling things out of your trunk opens you up to significant liability risks if someone gets sick and can find you.
Depends heavily on the city too. I think this kind of thing is more accepted in NYC and LA with big immigrant communities from countries with more informal economies, but in Seattle it gets shut down quickly.
For better or worse, Germany has a certification fetish. It ensures a baseline of trustworthiness that you _want_ to have in the food industry, but it kills wonderful things like Berlin’s “Thai park” where kiosks propped up and started selling good food.
Regulation is preferable. The Thai park was shut down because it trashed the place and competed with regulated, tax-paying food markets.
The only issue is how slow and inefficient German bureaucracy is. It wouldn’t be a problem to request compliance if it didn’t take months and waste everyone’s time as they’re trying to get off the ground.
Hah, try that in New York! I looked in to getting a coffee cart to use in peak hours because I had a passion for how I wanted the cart to look and saw the crazy lines outside Starbucks in the AM.
- 20 year wait for a cart permit.
_ Shady black market license resales from veterans (who have priority access to licenses - which is great in theory)
- If you use water you need a ‘food’ license
- Illegal to store your cart anywhere but a licensed depo that charges exhorbitant
- very high penalties for unlicensed distribution
