Red tape ‘choked’ cart biz
The city’s heavy-handed approach to offering biryani, roti, kebabs, and spring rolls alongside street meat sausages claimed its first victim.
Three months into the three-year Toronto A La Cart pilot project, one of the eight approved vendors closed up shop indefinitely.
Blair Bonivento’s Greek food cart offering souvlaki and breakfast sandwiches at Nathan Phillips Square is gone.
“They chose at this point not to open,” says Yvonne de Wit, associate director of Toronto Public Health heading up the A La Cart program.
“They’re looking at possibly doing some menu alterations, and things like that. I’m hoping they will be back in the fall.”
Earlier this summer, two other vendors changed locations because the ones the city chose for them were busts.
One at Queen’s Park was next to a cenotaph and another at Roundhouse Park at the base of the CN Tower was in a construction zone.
That very bureaucracy, which sent applicants jumping through hoops and shelling out between $25,000…
[snip]
bureaucracy *spit*