Every night on my drive home to the City of Ventura, California, a sidewalk food vendor on Main Street is selling tacos in front of established restaurants. They have a giant cylinder of meat under a heat lamp completely exposed to the car exhaust of the roadway traffic, a variety of sides and sauces that is barely covered by the plastic sneeze guard, and jugs of juices perishable under the hot sun.
And they also have a long line of hungry customers waiting to be served.
Customers see a cheap option for dinner, but as a public health official in the County of Santa Barbara Health Department, I see something completely different. I see meat stored in unsafe temperatures, potential hazards caused by traffic and open flames, and a business with vulnerable workers that are operating with different rules than established brick-and-mortar restaurants.
With the recent increased cases of cyclosporiasis in 41 states throughout the country, exposure to gastrointestinal diseases leads to watery diarrhea, weight loss, and even hospitalization. While California has fortunately avoided the spike seen elsewhere, the national outbreak is a strong reminder of how vulnerable food systems are to gastrointestinal disease, making food safety oversight in restaurants, grocery stores, farms, or sidewalk vending more important than ever.
In the County of Santa Barbara Health Department alone, there was an increase in health violations totaling 223 health violations between 2023-2026 with food wrapped in garbage bags, improper food temperatures, transportation vehicles with insects, and the disposal of approximately 575 pounds of contaminated meat.
As street food consumption increases worldwide, one 2025 research study reports, “Foodborne diseases are estimated to be responsible for more than 600 million cases and 420,000 deaths annually worldwide. This shows that about one in 10 people become ill every year due to the consumption of unsafe foods.”
Sidewalk vending has been detrimental to public health, public safety, and economic opportunity. It has exploded in California and it’s only going to get worse because of the protection of California laws passed in the last eight years.
First in 2018, local jurisdictions lost meaningful enforcement authority, limited to only administrative fines.
Then in 2022, food preparation rules were expanded allowing an expansion of on-site food preparation like frying, heating, assembly, blending, baking and roasting.
In 2025, administrative fines were prohibited from collecting identification. Without identification, the fines can be issued to aliases, which makes the fines unenforceable.
In Los Angeles County alone there are approximately 50,000 street vendors, with about 10,000 selling food, but formal data from IBISWorld counts only 1,979 registered and established street vendor businesses in California.
Without enforcement, local government agencies responsible for protecting the public, like the Health Department and Law Enforcement, are undermined. Connecting foodborne illnesses to unpermitted street vendors become extremely difficult as these operations lack fixed locations, official paper trails, and standardized facilities.
But also limiting permitting systems increases environmental hazards with the risk of fire of open flames, illegal dumping of grease and waste in gutters and fields, and traffic with vendors blocking roads, private property, and freeways.
Like many jurisdictions throughout California, Santa Barbara County is forced to balance between regulating sidewalk vending entrepreneurship with protecting people’s health and limiting environmental hazards.
Rather than focus on futile citations, enforcement is focused on education, both to vendors about health and safety and ease of the permitting process, and to consumers about the healthy standards when patronizing sidewalk vendors. The good news is compliance is improving, vendors are responding, and customers are asking for healthier operations by requesting permits from street vendors.
Still, California needs to amend current sidewalk vending laws by giving local jurisdictions the ability to enforce the requirement of health and business permits. This small action can resolve practically all concerns of local jurisdictions.
Enforcement is not about preventing or even limiting the opportunities of low-income and immigrant communities. On the contrary, during stakeholder meetings, many immigrant business owners expressed their own frustration that they invested time and money to obtain permits while sidewalk competitors ignored the rules entirely.
Given today’s political climate, some vendors understandably worry that obtaining permits can expose them to immigration enforcement. However, California has strict privacy laws governing how state and local agencies collect and disclose personal information. Environmental Health inspectors do not inspect food vendors to determine immigration status, but to protect consumers and the public from preventable illness.
Public Health and entrepreneurship are not mutually exclusive. Along with restaurants, food trucks and farmers markets comply with health regulations and pass inspections regularly.
California doesn’t need more enforcement, it just needs enforcement that people can understand and trust.