The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

Just curious if anyone has info on why Tulsa doesn't have more street-level vending like hotdog, coffee, pizza carts, etc...

foot traffic density (lack of)

I believe health code is related to. I think you basically have to have a real restaurant and just sell out of a cart as opposed to the cart being self-contained business.

 ::)
Thanks for the responses.
I did some research and the health department is pretty strict.  It appears that you can't even offer chili on a hotdog stand

Slightly off topic, but been trying to get items for my store from small businesses like some that have started with Kitchen 66.  The problem I have been running into is that, as far as I have been told, they need to have nutrition labels on their items, not just ingredients.  Then one of them recently got back to me after a trip to OKC to try to do just that, they were told that they couldn't "manually package" the items, they had to all be machine packaged before they could sell wholesale to other shops.  Well that has stopped me dead cold on getting a lot of the food products I was hoping to get in order to help support those small enterprises for thats a big expenditure for a lot of them. They can sell it themselves from carts and such, but not in other stores.  

Unless anyone knows of any exceptions that could help in this situation?


Oh and as for the topic... I will agree, very poor foot traffic in our downtown really hurts.

There used to be a hotdog cart show up periodically at Boston & 3rd during lunch, especially back when the farmer’s market was happening.  It did not seem to do a lot of business.  I haven’t seen it in several years.

I’m pretty sure the labeling requirements are FDA rules.  The mechanical bottling requirement seems odd because I thought one of the purposes behind Kitchen 66 was to provide commercial kitchen space that is usually hard to find to allow production for commercial sales.

Many years ago when I worked downtown there was a lot of foot traffic...

Then they took out the fountain at Bartlett square and made it a road.   (I guess that dates me a little.)

Still slightly confused about the difference between selling prepared food done on a sidewalk cart, and one prepared just a few feet over parked in an on street parking spot.

Might be the noise from the electric generator.
 
 ;D

I was in Tijuana years ago and needed something to offset tequila. I chose meat on a stick from a vendor with a restaurant made from recycled grocery cart and a Weber grill.

I asked what kind of meat, but he just smiled and said back to me, "meat, si`".

I think it was delicious.