By Chris Brockel
FEED Kitchens

Food carts and mobile food vending have been around for ages. As long as people have been traveling, as long as there have been markets, there has been street food culture. While a relatively recent phenomena in Madison, street cart vending has added to the richness of our local food culture and has become extremely popular for lunches, dinners, street fairs, music festivals and community gatherings in our region. 

Part of the draw of food carts is that they offer a small taste of the world right here in our backyard. Without having to pay airfare, eaters can travel to Mexico, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Tibet, India, Pakistan, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Ethiopia, to name just a handful of local cart fare.

While enhancing the cultural offerings of our region, food carts also provide a means to an end for many families that have lacked traditional access to capital and resources. The food cart is the cheapest entry into the culinary world where initial start up can easily run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. They are a pathway to business ownership and self-sufficiency. They are a way to build a brand and a following in the hopes of graduating to a brick and mortar restaurant or a robust catering business.

FEED Kitchens traditionally hosts around 17 food carts each year during the April‒October food cart vending season and even a few brave ones during the winter months. When the Safer at Home order came down in mid-March, food carts were just returning for the season — cleaning out their carts, ordering ingredients, and signing up for street fairs and festivals. Then the bottom fell out. 

Many folks believed food carts would be well positioned to survive and thrive during the shutdown. After all, aren’t they the perfect curbside pick-up vehicle? The reality is a bit different, however. With workers working from home and the UW closed down, there weren’t people on the streets to buy their offerings. 

Even when vending opportunities could be found, many operators simply didn’t feel personally safe interfacing with the public. Being a single operator and having to ensure proper distancing and safety while cranking out meals is not a small ask. 

Finally, the vending opportunities that were available simply weren’t enough to make a go of it. The food cart season is only eight months long here in Madison, which means to make a decent living, food carts need to be doing a robust daily lunch business, robust evening event vending, and weekend street fairs and concerts. They work their tails off during this time, scrambling for each opportunity and wearing themselves out as the season carries on. An occasional single good day of vending is not going to make their season.

As we move through the winter and hopefully get ahead of the pandemic, we look forward to the return of carts in 2021. As you look forward to the delicious variety and cultural fare that these carts offer, you can be assured that the food cart scene in Madison will have changed. 

FEED Kitchens currently has only four carts hitting the streets, and they are having a tough go of it. Food cart operators are doing what they can to maintain their businesses — it may be small catering jobs, taking another job, or just shuttering and trying to ride it out until next year. These are not folks with deep pockets, and we can only expect that some of them will never return to vending. This is a travesty for them and a loss to our local culture.

If you want to support food cart operators at FEED that are still offering some services, please check out their websites or Facebook pages for information on their next vending or curbside pickup opportunity.

Café Costa Rica: weekly curbside pick up, facebook.com/mangomancooks

El Wiscorican: weekly curbside pick up, facebook.com/elwiscorican

El Grito: weekly curbside pick up, facebook.com/elgritotaqueria

Jolly Frog: street vending 2‒3 days per week, facebook.com/jollyfrogllc

Sista’s Chicken and Fish: vending on Wingra Drive Thursday‒Saturday, facebook.com/sistaschickenandfish

Mango Express: vending at 1100 W. Dayton Street (Dayton Street and Charter Street near the Computer Science Building), Monday‒Friday 11 am‒8 pm

Sabor Regio: vending daily in and around Sauk City, facebook.com/SaborRegio.FoodCart