Customers don’t just buy hot dogs from Edwin “Skip” Link. They buy an experience.
For
the downtown Nashville lunch crowd, he offers to do their jobs if
they’ll buy a $2 frank. At night, he lets drunks take pictures next to
the slogan on his cart, a pun about meat and buns. He feigns indignation
at anyone who raises an eyebrow: “I can’t help it if you have a dirty
mind!”
The hot dogs and the shtick pay better than Link’s former
six-figure job as a manufacturing supervisor – the one he lost when the
Peterbilt plant closed in Madison. But lately, he and other hot dog
vendors say their livelihood is being threatened by enforcement of the
city’s sidewalk laws.
“No vending” signs began springing up on one
corner after another just before Christmas, following the Skip’s Links
hot dog cart, its owner claims, and driving him from lucrative Broadway
locations to spots on Fourth Avenue or Church Street.
It’s arbitrary, Link says. Not at all, city officials respond.
“We
are not making this up, we are simply enforcing the code,” said Mark
Macy, Metro Public Works assistant director. “With more carts, there’s
more emphasis on treating everybody fairly. … There’s an awareness that
there is more regulation going on.”
He said his department is
willing to take suggestions while working on a map that shows spots they
can set up downtown and in outlying areas — where some vendors say
they’ve been forced to move to make a living.
Nashville’s vendor
code dates back to 1998 and is different from the regulations that apply
to food trucks — which also were in dispute two years ago when the
trucks began gaining popularity.
The vendor code requires carts to
be 8 feet from the nearest building and 15 feet from fire hydrants,
fire escapes, parking meters and other small structures.
That
means there simply aren’t legal spots on Broadway’s sidewalks, Metro
Police Sgt. John Borque said. There’s one trailer in a private parking
lot on Broadway that complies.
Borque said unhappy vendors should
contact their city council representatives if they want a different law.
Until then, his officers must enforce the one they have to keep
pedestrians moving on crowded sidewalks.
“It’s not as important as protecting people from violent crime, but we are charged with enforcing all the laws,” he said.
A hot dog summit
Link has some suggestions for the city — starting with a hot dog
summit to get everyone together and decide what’s fair placement for
carts. He’s accumulating stacks of email exchanges with Borque,
Councilwoman Erica Gilmore, public works permit office manager Rory
Rowan and mayor’s office community relations coordinator Scott Wallace.
Link,
who lives in Hendersonville, graduated from Belmont College in 1968
with a business degree and marketing minor. He spent much of his career
with GE and later with truck manufacturer Peterbilt. When the Madison
plant closed, he briefly went into manufacturing component sales.
“You
won’t talk to anyone in industry who’s not been the victim of a plant
shutdown,” Link said. “You get tired of the corporate rat race.”
He
decided on the hot dog business after he found himself visiting the
Lowe’s in Hendersonville — not for the home improvement goods sold
inside, but for the hot dogs sold outside. He won’t say exactly how much
he netted his first year as a vendor, but selling hot dogs paid more
than manufacturing, he said.
What’s more, he could earn more in
two nights outside the bars on Broadway than in five days outside
corporate offices on Church Street.
Thugs stole his tip jar twice,
and someone snatches a dollar bag of chips here and there, Link said,
but that’s the price of doing business.
Three years later, he’s a
downtown fixture, on a first-name basis with delivery men and homeless
people and hotel valets who count on Skip for a smile and a joke and –
if they’re flat busted – a free hot dog now and again.
"Everybody used to get along"
Regulations on food carts vary from city to city and can be
cumbersome, said Sean Tibbetts, executive director of the Lexington,
Ky.-based Mobile Food Vendors Association. Vendor operations have a 60
percent failure rate, he said, often because the owners can’t navigate
complicated codes or permits, required by a number of city agencies.
Durham,
N.C., received national news coverage in 2010 when two vendors started
fighting over the same corner — but only one of them had a permit.
Police arrested the other, who went on to argue that requiring a permit
was an infringement on his constitutional rights.
That argument didn’t fly, said Marc Meyer, general inspection supervisor for Durham County.
Durham’s
vendor codes are less restrictive than those in nearby Raleigh and
Chapel Hill, so it draws more hot dog carts, he said. The city recently
loosened them even more, removing the requirement vendors move their
carts 50 feet every 15 minutes.
Memphis, Tenn., only allows
vending on Main Street downtown, said Christine Taylor, office manager
for the Downtown Memphis Commission. Other than that, city officials
just ask vendors to use common sense, she said — don’t sit in front of
someone else’s business.
Many of the rules nationwide are aimed at protecting brick-and-mortar restaurants, Tibbetts said.
That’s
been a concern in Nashville, too. Traffic and Parking Commission
Chairman Gene Ward said he hasn’t heard many complaints about the hot
dog carts except from restaurant owners.
“They feel like it’s unfair competition to locate in front of their businesses,” he said.
Vendor
Greg York said he quit his UPS delivery job after he discovered he
could earn more with a hot dog cart. Pushed farther off Broadway, he
said, he’s had to take on private security jobs to supplement the carts
income, and his wife had to return to work.
He sets up his Blazen
Dogs cart on Division and Demonbreun streets now — although he’s been
run off from several spots in that area, too, he said — and near Five
Points in East Nashville.
“I’m not going to sit here and battle
eight or 10 carts over one spot,” York said. “This has turned hot dog
owners against themselves. Everybody used to get along.”
