How To Start and Run Sidewalk and Mall Vending  

By Kym Williams

How to Start and Run Sidewalk and Mall Vending: Carts and Kiosks presents the steps for how to set up a vending program in your city. This booklet discusses the fundamentals of vending and highlights several successful vending programs. It is for people interested in learning more about vending activity across the country, and is a useful tool for groups wishing to start their own programs. The information was compiled from interviews with managers, consultants, and participants of vending programs; from city vending ordinances; and materials from numerous vending programs. Nine excellent case studies. Where to get carts, merchandise, etc.

Vending is a growth business. Programs that help people to start and run these microbusinesses are expanding. So what's a kiosk? It's a small stand that does not move. A cart has wheels and can be pushed or towed. The most complicated part of small-scale selling is the regulatory framework. In the 1950's, many cities passed ordinances that restricted or even eliminated outdoor selling. Malls are private property so the prohibitions on "public selling" did not apply. In the 1970's and 1980's, shopping malls found that vending carts in their open areas enhanced the quality of the mall so they created large numbers of cart-based businesses. Urban planners learned from the malls and began encouraging sidewalk vending as an enhancement to the street life in a community. Airports and downtown renovators also now encourage cart-based businesses.

Carts are typically restricted to certain areas and to certain hours. Permits are usually required, but the fee is nominal. In some places a public agency manages the permit process, in others they turn it over to another organization (you?). This workbook includes nine terrific case studies: Boston, Boulder, Burlington, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, San Antonio, San Francisco and Seattle. You can select those features that would be good for your community, and then work with your planners and elected officials to create the desired policies. So there is a "public policy" and an "advocacy" role -- your agency can help shape the policy framework to enable microbusinesses to operate. But the city almost never provides technical assistance, carts, business training or other business support services to the vendors. You can.  Your agency can have a "program" of carts and kiosks in several different ways. Vendors are specialty retailers, selling a specific type of product like toys or hats or dried flowers. Some vendors make what they sell. A craft person may sell their entire annual production in a mall during December. Some vendors sell stuff that is made by another person. You might have one group of people making stuff and another group selling it. You could buy the goods wholesale, and they sell it -- year round, or seasonal. The vendors could be strictly on a commission or on a salary, but usually they are self-employed.  You could help recruit and manage the vendors as a partnership with a mall or business association Or, you could have a special section in a downtown store or in some public place. You get a fee or a percentage. Yet another approach is to assemble, rent, store, clean or paint the carts or kiosks, like MAAC.

So there are many options for your agency to make money and help people start these microbusinesses. This workbook reviews them. The workbook also comes with a 30-minute videotape on how to manage a cart in a mall, "Vending for Fun and Profit." And a one-year subscription to a snappy quarterly publication of how-to's and merchandise. (These are $45 of the price.)

Price: $95.  Click here to order.