A disenchanted participant of Toronto’s failed street food program called A La Cart is threatening to sue the city if it does not reimburse her some of the money she dropped on the venture.
Kathy Bonivento, who was serving up souvlaki first at City Hall and then at King and University, called the two-year-old program “a scam”.
She says her family poured $89,000 into A La Cart, not including operating losses, on a city mandated cart she says cost three times as much as no name brands, plus fees and necessary equipment to transport the heavy contraption.
“This has been so damaging to these eight families, so damaging and unfair, that we have to take legal action,” said Ms. Bonivento, who broke down and cried while relaying her experience to Mayor Rob Ford’s executive committee. Ms. Bonivento says she wants the city to cover half of her losses. She has already spoken to a lawyer.
“I feel like I’ve been defrauded, I feel like I’ve been cheated by the city… we didn’t plan on funding their experiment. Because that’s what it was. They said, put your money and we’ll see who is left standing, we’re going to put all of these rules and regulations and we’re going to watch you like lab rats. Lets see who is left standing at the end… You expect there is going to be problems, but you also expect the problems will be dealt with efficiently as you do in a normal business. But no.”
Staff are recommending that the city scrap A La Cart immediately after an independent review found that the program had failed to meet its objectives. They suggest striking a “working group” to with the goal of coming up with a new, less restrictive program to sell a wider menu. Staff are also recommending the city still allow vendors to sell their food, minus the A La Cart branding, and waive fees for three years.
But representatives for the city’s hot dog vending industry protested that move, saying it gives their competitors an unfair advantage, while they continue to fight city regulations.
“We foresaw that they were going to fail,” said Nick Dimitropolous, whose family has been vending hot dogs in front of Nathan Phillips Square since 1978. “Nobody listened to the existing food vending industry and now we have a situation where these poor people, and I sympathize with them, are out a lot of money, but they were sophisticated parties. They signed contracts. And if you review the contract, what it says is should this project fail, there will be no compensation provided by the city to these A La Cart vendors.”
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