Tamer Hassan is ready to get out of the street food game.
He manages four food carts — smoothies, hot dogs, chicken and rice — on 49th Street, just off Times Square. At 45, he's been doing it for a decade.
He loves the work, but is determined to leave the industry in the next five years, which means selling his business or convincing his son (an 18-year-old engineering student) to take over. The hours on his feet in all kinds of weather feel impossible to keep up with as he ages. Not to mentionthe meager returns.
"Two years ago, we could sell $3 hot dogs at an 80-cent profit," Hassan told me. "Now, if we sell them at $5, we still make 80 cents. That price is not about us, it's not about me, it's about the supply." If his business earns $3,000 a day, he said he pockets about $200 after paying for food, drinks, utensils, propane, cart maintenance, insurance, staff wages, and other expenses.
Mayor Zohran Mamdanitook office with a vow to make the city more affordable, including proposals to lower the price of housing, childcare, and groceries. One of his earliest campaign slogans to gain social media traction was "make halal $8 again." The promise to reduce operating costs and increase permit availability aims to lower the roughly $10 price of a beloved New York street food: a platter of meat or falafel, rice, and signature sauces.
On an April Thursday, I asked more thana dozen street vendorsabout the biggest challenges they face — and how the city can meaningfully address what the mayor dubbed as "halalflation." Many of their troubles are largely outside the government's reach. Overhead costs have become crushing. Declining tourism and work-from-home culture are eating into vendors' earnings, making monthly income more unpredictable. New "congestion pricing" tolls to enter central Manhattan also sting, as most of the vendors live and store their carts in outer boroughs. Witheyewatering rentsand families to support, vendors said the squeeze isn't just making carts less profitable, but harder to build a life around.
It's not just about lowering the cost of hot dogs, it's about getting more people to buy them.
Abdelhafeez Aly, 60, woke to his usual 1:45 a.m. alarm and picked up his cart near Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. By dawn, he had arranged frosting-covered doughnuts in the window and poured a fresh bag of ice into his orange juice cooler. Stocking the pastries and supplies costs at least $400 a day.
"The price of everything is coming up: American cheese, meat, everything," said Aly, who has run his Financial District cart since 1991. "If a restaurant around here has a sandwich, I have to make it for less. I want to raise prices, but there's too much competition." On a good day, he said he nets $10 an hour.
Food costs in US citieshave jumped by about 22% in the last five years, and the Iran war is sending gas prices over $4 a gallon. General inflation is also a stressor — vendors mentioned the creeping cost of coffee, dairy, ice, even paper coffee cups. While congestion pricing is working to reduce traffic and raise revenue for transit improvements, many vendors said the $9 daily toll is an additional hit to their stretched-thin budgets.
Source: Drudge Report
