When Carmen Nava and her husband began selling tamales on the North Side nearly 24 years ago, they risked getting arrested and fined and their cart confiscated because Chicago prohibited the sale of most food from carts. But they did it anyway.
“We had to find a way to earn enough money to sustain ourselves,” said Nava, now 64.
After the city passed an ordinance to lift the food cart ban in 2015, Nava and her husband, Luis Melendez, 70, joined a group of street vendors who collectively rented a commercial kitchen in North Lawndale to prepare their food to meet the city requirements.
In 2019, she became the first tamalera to get a license approved thanks to that kitchen, according to the Street Vendors Association of Chicago.
And now, Nava and Mendez are part of the cooperative of street vendors who pooled their resources to purchase the commercial kitchen with the help of other neighborhood groups.
“Even though we stopped working completely during the pandemic and we had no idea what was going to happen, we did not stop,” said Melendez. “We had gotten so far, we couldn’t give up.”
The collective of street vendors — many of whom have advocated for decades for Chicago to establish a license to protect their fellow eloteros and tamaleros — say the purchase of the kitchen can help pave the way for other street vendors to get a license by allowing them to rent it at affordable prices.
One the requirements of a 2015 ordinance the vendors lobbied for was that those selling food on the street make and package it in a licensed kitchen.
In 2016, the Street Vendors Association, a not-for-profit organization advocating for street vendors’ rights, helped the vendors open the shared kitchen. It eventually became known as the Cocina Compartida de Trabajadores Cooperativistas, the Cooperative Workers Shared Kitchen, where vendors take turns to prepare their food and then sell it in the streets of Chicago.
Since the vendors began renting the kitchen at 3654 W. 16th St., they dreamed of buying the property, Melendez said.
“We didn’t take our eyes off of that possibility,” Melendez added.
After an Illinois law recognizing worker cooperatives as business entities went into effect in January 2020, the vendors registered the Cocina as a Limited Worker Cooperative Association with eight of the vendors as associates. In March 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, they began the process of purchasing the building.
The deal finally closed for $150,000 and Melendez, president of the cooperative, signed the closing documents.
Over the past five years, members have invested money and resources in renovating the building to ensure it would remain certified by the city and have paid rent religiously, said Melendez.
“The vendors have worked together for many years to clear a path so that they can operate safely and securely; now they have ownership over the kitchen and of their future,” said Beth Kregor, director of the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship, which guided the vendors through the building purchase.
Thanks to Kregor’s guidance, the vendors navigated the real estate transaction and secured a loan under the cooperative to buy the building without a down payment, Melendez said.
The co-op also received grants from other community organizations, such as the Little Village Chamber of Commerce and the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund, to further renovate and develop the building and kitchen.
Kregor and other pro bono lawyers at the IJ Clinic have worked closely with the street vendors association for years, first to legalize carts and then to navigate the regulations.
Still, only two of the 35 members have been able to get a license for their carts. Though many applied in 2017, most have not been able to satisfy what Kregor said are the city’s “inconsistent and bureaucratic requirements.”
Some of the requirements are “unrealistic” regarding the authentic preparation and selling of the Mexican snacks, such as tamales, tacos and fresh-cut fruit, Kregor said.
While advocates and vendors continue to negotiate with the city over the regulations, the cooperative allows the vendors to work collectively and grow their businesses, said Martin Unzueta, executive director and the founder of Chicago Community Worker’s Rights.
As a cooperative, the vendors can take catering clients or other orders on a larger scale, such as grocery stores or festivals, and share profits. For the last two months, some of the members have been cooking meals for groups that feed hundreds in communities most affected by the pandemic as part of the grant that helped to subsidize the purchase.
On a recent Thursday morning, Nava and her husband helped to make more than 250 tamales and then delivered them to Universidad Popular, a youth program, and Instituto del Progreso, a nonprofit that serves the Latino community, both in the Little Village neighborhood.
Along with the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship, Unzueta helped the vendors to organize and advocated for the ordinance that legalized street vending in Chicago in 2015.
“They are officially owners of a business,” Unzueta said. “For many, this is something that never crossed their mind.”
Most of those in the cooperative are Mexican immigrants and longtime street vendors, he said.
There were more than 2,000 street vendors in the city in 2015, according to a study by the Illinois Policy Institute. At that time, they made approximately $400 a week.
Unzueta believes that following the pandemic, more people have turned to selling food the streets after losing a job or leaving one because of fear of the coronavirus.
Nava and her husband Luis have sold tamales near the intersection of Lowell and Armitage avenues in the Hermosa neighborhood for more than two decades.
There was a time when the couple sold up to 500 tamales a day.
It was her husband’s idea, said Nava.
“Siempre le han gustado los negocios,” she said.
Street vendors, Melendez said, are entrepreneurs managing small businesses and should be recognized as such.
“We aren’t afraid anymore; we deserve respect,” he said. “Our food, our snacks, are essential to the culture of this city.”
Despite the lengthy process to get their cart legalized, Melendez said that he and his wife feel proud.
The couple has gone from getting arrested for selling their tamales to helping operate Chicago’s first-ever street vendor cooperative.
“My hope is that many more people learn to respect our business, but that many more street vendors step up and believe that they can do more,” he said.
The shared kitchen of street vendors is available for rent on an hourly basis every day of the week, 24 hours a day. Vendors can become a part of the association or even become associates of the cooperative.
“We want to make sure that everyone that wants and needs to use it, can afford it,” said Fernando Huerta, one of the managers at the kitchen.
larodriguez@chicagotribune.com
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Chicago street vendors first banded together to rent commercial kitchen space — then they bought the building - Chicago Tribune
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