Portland’s robust food cart culture is inspiring envy here in Clark County, and residents such as Sunrise O’Mahoney are hoping to see more of that on this side of the river. O’Mahoney, of Salmon Creek, is talking with the city, the county and local business owners about how to create a more welcoming environment for food cart vendors in Vancouver, and would like to organize a public forum on the topic this summer.
O’Mahoney, site coordinator at the 78th Street Heritage Farm community garden in Hazel Dell, sees food carts as crucial economically and socially.
“It offers a different type of eating out,” she said. “You have a lot of variety. If you have a block space with multiple food carts, you have all the different food choices. So when you go with families, you can all eat different things.
“It also is a different price range. It’s not the $21-per-person dinner. It’s a little more economically friendly price for food.”
However, food carts are about more than cheap eats, she added.
“The biggest reason for me is it gets people out of their houses and it gets them walking around. It becomes a social environment, and in that environment, you’re able to meet your neighbors and meet your community members,” she said.
Food cart choices in Vancouver already are starting to expand. Skip Ballweber has operated The Wiener Wagon since 1976. His green-and-white striped cart at the corner of 12th and Main streets in downtown Vancouver serves about 200 people a day Mondays through Fridays from about 10:15 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Ballweber, a Vancouver resident, recently got some competition when Dean Passmore opened a hot dog stand along the Waterfront Renaissance Trail. The Orchards resident launched Deano’s Dogs a few months ago. Passmore serves beef and polish sausage dogs, and will start offering snow cones in the warmer months. He’s only open when the weather is nice. As the elements allow, he’s open seven days a week from about 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The Clark County Health Department has 33 permitted mobile food retail units (compared with Multnomah County’s 463), but in terms of vendors you’ll find in the same place on any given day, options are more limited. The city of Vancouver’s licensing department knew only of The Wiener Wagon and Deano’s Dogs but said two more carts are in the works.
Juan Mejia, the Vancouver owner of the mobile ice cream business Los Primos, hopes to have an ice cream and taco stand on Fourth Plain Boulevard in the next month or two.
Vancouver restaurateur Debbie Belden, owner of the Felida eatery Farrar’s Bistro, has experimented with having a temporary stand outside Gateway Produce on Andresen selling pulled-pork sandwiches. She’d like to find a permanent spot for a stand by early July, with hopes of introducing those outside Felida to Farrar’s Bistro’s cuisine.
“We just want people to know where we’re at and the type of food we have to offer, so we thought what better way than taking our business on the road,” Belden said.
During the summer, there are food vendors in Esther Short Park for the city’s concert series. Food purveyors have the option of applying to vend on a daily basis, not just during events, and that’s something the city hopes more vendors do, said Cara Cantonwine, special events manager for the city of Vancouver. Shave ice, coffee, ice cream and sandwich cart operators have expressed interest in vending in the park daily this summer, Cantonwine said.
