Ventura County to crack down on unpermitted food stands

Unpermitted, open-air restaurants started popping up in Ventura County in significant numbers in 2021 and 2022. Since then, local governments have played whack-a-mole with the roadside food stands, shutting them down from time to time only to see them reappear in the same spot, sometimes on the same night.

But the city of Oxnard has had better luck this year with more consistent enforcement, city officials say, and now the County of Ventura is planning a crackdown in the county’s unincorporated areas. The city of Ventura could soon follow suit, if the City Council approves a new sidewalk vending ordinance that is likely to come before council members in August.

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors approved its own ordinance to regulate sidewalk vendors in March, but it was in late July that the board voted to approve an enforcement program.

Starting in the fall, county inspectors will hit the streets looking for food stands and other unlicensed vendors, focusing their efforts in the evenings on Thursdays through Sundays. The inspectors’ first priority will be responding to complaints about unlicensed vendors, and after that, they will target the largest vendors and the ones operating in the most hazardous areas, like busy roads with narrow shoulders, said Doug Leeper, the county's director of code enforcement.

The enforcement effort will cost about $1.7 million for a 20-month pilot period.

The budget covers a full-time county employee to oversee the program and nine other full-or part-time workers, including a few sheriff’s deputies and fire inspectors who would work overtime when they come along on an inspection. The county would also need to pay haulers to dispose of confiscated food and equipment and rent a storage yard for the impounded items.

“The plan you’ve put together is the best plan we can muster right now, given the challenges and the number of these illegal operators,” Supervisor Jeff Gorell told Leeper during the board meeting.

'It's big business'

The county recently surveyed more than 700 miles of roadway within its jurisdiction and found a total of 170 unpermitted sidewalk vendors, selling everything from flowers to fruit to tacos, Leeper told the board. Roughly 100 of the 170 of the vendors appeared to be operating consistently, week after week.

About 60 of those were food stands and 40 were what Leeper described as “major” food operations — essentially, outdoor restaurants, usually taquerias. They have similar menus and appearances with tables, shade structures, lights, propane or charcoal grills, food trays and almost always a trompo , the vertical grill used to prepare pork al pastor.

They set up in the same place every evening , or sometimes just on the weekends, and when the stand closes, everything goes back into a van and the site looks like nothing was ever there.

They don’t have running water, refrigeration or restrooms, which are all essential to stay on the right side of food safety laws. Owners of legal, permitted food trucks have complained for years about the food stands, because a taco truck often costs $100,000 or more, and legal operators pay taxes and have their facilities inspected on a regular basis.

In the unincorporated areas, most of the unpermitted food stands are in El Rio, just north of Oxnard; along Rice Avenue, on the eastern edge of Oxnard; and in the Ojai Valley, along Highway 33, according to Leeper’s presentation to the Board of Supervisors.

The cities of Oxnard and Ventura also have many similar operations while other cities have smaller numbers.

County officials aren’t sure who’s operating them, but Leeper said he’s heard from officials in nearby cities and counties that many of the owners are based in Los Angeles and control multiple locations with each one bringing in thousands of dollars a day. Their workers are often paid below the minimum wage, he said.

“We’re understanding that this is just more than a little roadside restaurant,” Leeper said. “It’s big business. There’s a lot of money being made.”

Some of the non-restaurant vendors, such as those selling fruit or ice cream, could get permits if they pay a $190 fee, fill out some paperwork, get a background check and stick to areas where vending is allowed. They also need to meet county food safety requirements.

Leeper said the county found 15 vendors like that, who could qualify for permits if their carts were in the right place, though none of them was actually operating in a legal vending spot. To be legal, a sidewalk vendor has to be on a sidewalk, not a roadway or an unpaved shoulder, and if they are in a residential area, their cart must be mobile, among other restrictions.

The vast majority of vendors — including any who cook and sell food — are not eligible for permits, because there is no legal way to operate an outdoor restaurant.

Inspectors will shut those operations down and confiscate their food. They can also cite the operators and impound their grills and other equipment. Anyone who has equipment seized will have 30 days to reclaim it, though Leeper said vendors almost never retrieve their equipment.

Road safety, not food safety, is the nexus of the county enforcement program. Though unpermitted food stands are always in violation of food safety regulations, it’s simpler to get code compliance inspectors on the scene to cite them for unpermitted vending and blocking roadways than it is to bring restaurant inspectors out to analyze their food safety practices.

Some vendors are “perilously close to lanes of traffic, right up into the paved shoulder or bike lane,” Leeper said. To demonstrate the danger, he showed the Board of Supervisors a video of a drunk driver plowing into a roadside taco stand in Oxnard.

Leeper said that in addition to shutting down the vendors, the county might decide to establish no parking zones near some of the most popular locations so that both vendors and customers could be ticketed for parking there.

Cities stepping up enforcement, too

Vianey Lopez, who represents the Oxnard area on the Board of Supervisors, said one of the keys to the program will be “coordinated enforcement.” Without that, shutting food stands down in the county area will just push them down the street into the city limits of Oxnard, Ventura or another city.

There are signs that’s what happened when the city of Oxnard beefed up its enforcement late last year.

Oxnard began citing and shutting down food stands in late 2023, and this year it has issued 53 citations, Andrew Dickson, code compliance manager, said in an email interview. Most citations come with a $100 fine for the first offense, $200 for the second and $500 for the third.

Before the enforcement effort, there were more than 30 “known locations” of unpermitted food stands in Oxnard, Dickson said. Now, he said, “that number has dwindled to approximately five on any given day.”

The decline in Oxnard coincided with a big increase in vendors in the unincorporated areas just outside of the city — in other words, it appears getting busted by the city just led them to move their stands across the street into county territory, where there hasn’t been much enforcement.

Once the county starts its enforcement program, the city will keep an eye out to make sure vendors don’t move back into the city, Dickson said.

The city of Ventura is preparing an enforcement effort of its own. The City Council plans to consider an ordinance with new rules for sidewalk vendors at some point in August, which will give it more ability to shut down and fine unlicensed operators.

Ventura did shut down some vendors last year, but it hasn’t done much enforcement recently. With the earlier enforcement actions, “every vendor that was shut down restarted operations later in the evening,” Deputy City Manager Brad “Brick” Conners said via email.

Citations were ineffective as well, because without a new vending ordinance, the city can only give “administrative citations,” and those can’t be taken to court if the person doesn’t pay. A new ordinance could allow the city to issue misdemeanor criminal citations.

In the past year, Ventura City Hall has received more than 100 complaints about the food stands, from the public and from licensed business owners, Conners said.

“I would characterize this as a significant issue that is growing and needs to be addressed,” he said.

Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tbiasotti@vcstar.com . This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation's Fund to Support Local Journalism.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Ventura County to crack down on unpermitted food stands