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• Star article about Toronto food carts and bureaucracy

Part of Street food

Putting the cart before the food

September 17, 2010

David Rider

When city officials chose Bridgette Pinder to introduce healthy Caribbean street food to Torontonians, she felt honoured and thrilled. But after two summers selling jerk chicken and rotis in the three-year “Toronto à la Cart” pilot project, she is bitter and bankrupt.

“Anybody asks me about this program — I feel like I’m going to vomit,” Pinder declared one sunny day last week in front of several customers lined up at her silver cart at King and Bay Sts.

“The city — à la Cart — bankrupted me.”

The retired mental health worker is not alone. Just one of the eight vendors selected for the pilot program is certain of returning next summer for the final year. Others have given up or are demanding concessions from the city to return. Several haven’t paid their 2010 location fees.

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