There’s an encouraging story from Chicago about the legal defense of entrepreneurial, hard-working street vendors’ offerings of good food at low prices. The vendors’ popular fare has been under attack from incumbent businesses looking to use government to limit competition and inhibit consumer choice. Day after day, Chicagoans choose these vendors over alternative offerings:
[Vendors’ association Vice President Virginia] Lugo said the street vendors begin selling at 5:00 a.m. in neighborhoods with a large Latino clientele looking for traditional products like tamales, chicharrones pork cracklings, pupusas thick Salvadoran tortillas, champurrados thick hot drinks made with ground corn and chocolate, corn on the cob and sliced fruit.
In-demand food trucks have found an ally in the Institute for Justice, and its Clinic on Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Law School.
It’s well-past time that vendors defended through litigation their rights (and by consequence those of consumers). Regulations run counter to American free enterprise, and disproportionately impact offerings from newly-arrived or mostly ethnic communities.
See, La Prensa.
See, also, IJ Clinic on Entrepreneurship and the My Streets, My Eats initiative.
Previously: Defending Street Vendors, Food Trucks, and Consumer Choice, and Institute for Justice Defends the Rights of Street Vendors.