Food Vendor Watch

Dan Rossi, a disabled veteran, sells hotdogs on 5th Avenue.

From an enclosed metal cart advertising hotdogs for $2.00, Vietnam veteran Dan Rossi serves up the iconic New York City street food, sometimes laden with a colorful mix of chili, melted cheese, onions or relish, to visitors on their way up or down the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Food cart vending is how Rossi used to gross almost a million dollars a year as one of New York City’s thousands of small business owners.

At the peak of his business in the early 1990s, Rossi built and leased almost 500 hot dog, candy, fruit and coffee carts to fellow veterans, who fanned out to sell quick snacks across the city. But the City Council changed the laws in its Administrative Code when Rudolph Giuliani was in office, and Rossi lost his business overnight. He now owns only one cart, which he sets up on 5th Avenue, in front of the museum.

Street vendors must follow a set of municipal laws that determine how they are licensed, where they can operate and what they can sell. Some state laws trump city law to govern veteran street vendors. It is state law that allows Rossi to place his cart at least 100 feet from any city park entrance. He measured the distance from the museum steps to the paths leading into Central Park, on either side of the museum, and identified the spot where he can legally park his pushcart. That spot is directly in front of the Met’s door, much to the vexation of museum officials, who Rossi said made repeated calls to the police to have his cart removed. Once police exhausted every form of persuasion and found they had no law that could move Rossi, museum officials began parking a utility vehicle, about the size of a golf cart, in Rossi’s spot. But he has room to set up next to the empty cart each day.
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