Another vendor, now retired, Marianne Moroney, operated a cart on University Avenue just in front of Mount Sinai Hospital. In 2007 she was chosen as the Executive Director of the Toronto Street Food Vendors Association after the other members suggested that a white local Torontonian would have her concerns and suggestions taken more seriously by the City Council. She was the first cart in the city to sell veggie dogs and whole wheat buns, and helped lead the charge in pressuring city hall to expand what foods could be served from carts. Vendors couldn\u2019t cook or prep at the cart itself, \u201cthe bylaw stated you could only serve \u2018pre-cooked meats in the shape of sausages\u2019,\u201d she explains, but with the association\u2019s efforts she was eventually permitted to serve baked potatoes, jerk chicken, and corned beef sandwiches with the help of Barberian\u2019s Steakhouse, which served as her prep kitchen.<\/p>\n
But when asking Mehran if he ever wished to serve anything else from his cart, like an Iranian dish, he shook his head. \u201c[Cooking hotdogs] is very easy for me to cook and I make enough. Why do I have to have a headache? I\u2019m sixty-eight years old and I\u2019m retired with my pension. I donated a lot of my money to family back home because they need money for medication.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Mehran came to Toronto, ownership was viewed as the first rung on the ladder to economic independence. Establishing a modest but solid foundation, a food cart, a small home \u2014 these were entry points to stability, assets that could grow. The \u201cstarter home\u201d wasn\u2019t a dream, it was a step towards building value in a housing market that promised near-infinite growth.<\/p>\n
But for Toronto\u2019s younger generation looking to begin their lives, these entry points to ownership are rapidly closing. Starting a small business has never been harder, and buying a home feels more like a fantasy than a plan. The bottom rungs of the ladder have in essence been cut. For 75 percent of young Ontarians<\/a> home ownership is seen as a priority, even though only 47 percent of them believe ownership is even attainable. The playbook for how young people are expected to \u201cget started\u201d much less \u201cget ahead\u201d is drastically different today than it was even twenty years ago.<\/p>\n Torontonians starting to enter the workforce are not ready for the coming impacts that the rental economy will have on their ability to build wealth, plan for the future, or even choose to live in this city long-term. Unless city policies evolve to reopen these foundational pathways, we\u2019re building a Toronto where ownership \u2014 of space, of business, of one’s future \u2014 becomes a luxury, not a possibility.<\/p>\n Using no more than the legislatively provided maximum space of 2.32 square metres, Toronto\u2019s vendors got to \u201cbe their own boss\u201d decades before that meant renting an electric bike in order to Uber someone\u2019s burrito across the city for less than minimum wage. But the city\u2019s current approach to issuing new street vending prevents more of these businesses from flourishing, while smothering current operators.<\/p>\n This is by design.<\/p>\n Since 2002, a moratorium on new vending licences<\/a> has remained in effect in three major downtown wards (at the time, wards 20, 27, and 28). While the legislation described itself as \u201ctemporary\u201d when first adopted, the conclusion states that \u201cno applications received after February 25, 2002 shall be processed until a new harmonized vending by-law<\/em> has been adopted by City Council.\u201d Unsurprisingly a \u201charmonized vending by-law\u201d never materialized and the legislation remains in effect twenty-three years later. This legislation was purportedly intended to stem the \u201cconcentration\u201d of vendors in the downtown core, and in this regard it was wildly successful. Many who take on this job do so for the rest of their lives, but because licences can\u2019t be sold, transferred, or inherited, food carts and the spots they occupy simply vanish as older vendors retire, close shop, or pass away. Moroney describes this as a strategy of \u201cattrition\u201d by a city comfortable with simply outlasting the remaining vendors.<\/p>\n Attempts have been made since 2002 to increase the diversity and prevalence of vendor opportunities, but no conversation about the state of street food vending in Toronto is complete without invoking the 2009 A La Cart<\/em> horror show. The road to hell may have been paved with good intentions, but that road was contracted by Toronto City Hall.<\/p>\n The program came with its own slew of red tape rules and issues, topped with a faulty 360-kilogram standardized cart and a $30,000 price tag. As vendor Kathy Bonivento lamented at the time,<\/a> \u201cYou\u2019ve told us we need to run a mobile business and you\u2019ve provided us with a cart that\u2019s immobile.\u201d<\/p>\n The city\u2019s biggest misstep with regulating street vending was trying to impose rigid standards on a space that thrives on cultural diversity and flexibility. As University of Toronto professor Irina Mihalache has noted<\/a>, street food thrives on \u201cadventure and authenticity.\u201d The magic of street food lies in its variation, and variation demands flexibility \u2014 of tools, layout, technique. The appliances needed to prepare a samosa, or a shawarma, or a corned-beef sandwich are simply not the same, and the design of the A La Carts failed to recognize this. Consider how absurd it would be to suggest that every permanent restaurant in the city, every sushi shop, Tim Hortons, and high-end steakhouse, be forced to use identical kitchen layouts furnished with the same appliances.<\/p>\n The lesson from A La Cart\u2019s failure isn\u2019t that Torontonians weren\u2019t interested in international street food. They were \u2014 and still are. What doomed the program was the City\u2019s insistence on rigid standardization. A concept rooted in diversity was flattened into uniformity, which drove the final nail into the A La Coffin.<\/p>\n The better solution? Step back. As TVO Columnist Matt Gurney has written before on the city\u2019s micromanaging relationship with street vendors<\/a>, \u201cAll Toronto needs to do is make sure we don\u2019t have 80 carts all jostling for space at the same two busy intersections and that the operations are clean enough to pass public-health muster. … That\u2019s it. That\u2019s all that was needed \u2014 licence, regulate, and perform routine health inspections, as Toronto routinely does with brick-and-mortar businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n In short, trust that the person opening a Banh Mi Cart knows what kind of utensils it takes to safely assemble the sandwich. Street food doesn\u2019t need reinvention \u2014 just room to breathe.<\/p>\n City Hall has committed to reviewing and amending street vending policies<\/a> in 2025. While hopes are high that some changes to legislative phrasing might incentivise a return of vendors, if Toronto hopes to attract diverse carts it has to make entering that space viable, accessible, and attractive.<\/p>\n Spearheaded by city councillor Dianne Saxe, the More Great Eats <\/em>pilot program was intended to go into effect April 1st, 2025. In her proposal Saxe wrote:<\/a> \u201cOnce widespread, downtown food carts are now rare. It is therefore difficult or impossible to either purchase food from a food cart or start a new food cart business in Ward 11.\u201d The pilot would allow additional non-motorized vendors to operate within the University-Rosedale ward through the end of the year \u2013 at which point its impact could be reviewed.<\/p>\n This proposal was spurred in part by\u00a0the story of Anastasiia Alieksieiehuk<\/a>, a Ukrainian refugee who came to Toronto after her country was attacked. After settling in the city Alieksieiehuk established a highly popular coffee and pastry cart\u00a0Wheels and Co. Beans<\/em>\u00a0in Etobicoke, only to be ticketed because, although she had a vending licence, her setup of a (non-motorized) trailer towed behind her (motorized) car didn\u2019t fit any of the existing licence options. After moving her operation<\/a> to the University of Toronto\u2019s St. George campus, she was ticketed again and shuttered her cart. It’s not that she had the ‘wrong’ licence, rather she was being punished for her setup falling between the cracks of regulation. As of May 1st Saxe’s More Great Eats\u00a0<\/em>pilot passed and\u00a0Alieksieiehuk has been able to re-open her cart<\/a>\u00a0on UofT campus.<\/p>\n As Saxe rightly notes: \u201cToronto thrives when small businesses do. Selling affordable street foods from a mobile vehicle is a low-barrier small business which reduces the cost of living for residents and adds vibrancy to our streets.\u201d<\/p>\n If the massively successful opening weekend of the St. Lawrence Market North building shows anything, it\u2019s Torontonians\u2019 willingness to support local vendors, especially at a time when \u201cbuying local\u201d has become treated as a patriotic duty. Now it\u2019s up to City Hall to tell them where they\u2019re permitted to operate.<\/p>\n This discussion of ownership is part of a larger reckoning that young Torontonians have been feeling in the post-Covid Trump-2.0 era. Young Torontonians are stuck facing an ever-expanding rental economy that wants to keep them on subscription treadmills while gradually cranking up the speed. They can run as fast as they\u2019d like, but they know they aren\u2019t actually getting anywhere.<\/p>\n This can be resisted. By finding ways to re-open starter opportunities in Toronto from business ventures to real-estate ownership, by changing stagnant restrictions that hurt those trying to navigate the labyrinth, we can build the Toronto that attracts aspiring entrepreneurs like Mehran and Anastasiia here to begin with.<\/p>\n There is a much-critiqued World Economic Forum prediction that in the future \u201cyou will own nothing and you’ll be happy.\u201d While conspiracists frame this as some harbinger of deep-state globalism, in reality, this pretty accurately describes the end-state of digital neoliberal urbanism. Speaking as someone about to live in that prophesied economy, I would suggest the counter-phrase: “We already own nothing, and it\u2019s not making us happy.\u201d<\/p>\nA meat grinder of vending regulations<\/h2>\n
![\"Map](\"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2025\/06\/Meerkamper-food-cart-restriction.png\")
<\/a>Hunger for change from City Hall<\/h2>\n
The stakes for young Torontonians<\/h2>\n