It’s impossible to miss – food and merchandise vendors setting up along hi desert roads. Over the last six months, Twentynine Palms Highway and it’s service roads, Old Woman Springs Road, and highway-adjacent parking lots have become filled with tents, tables, carts and trucks selling a variety of goods and foods.
Street vendors have always been a part of the desert community, but a recent uptick in vending, particularly in Yucca Valley, has been noticeable. And one popular food truck’s video on social media, detailing recent encounters with Yucca Valley’s code enforcement, has brought the issue to the forefront over the last week.
The state of California enacted the Safe Sidewalk Vending Act, in 2018, designed to allow food vendors to legally sell their food or merchandise on the streets. Shortly after its passage, local governments, including the San Bernardino County, Yucca Valley and all passed additional regulations.
On a recent episode of Z107.7’s Up Close Show, County Supervisor Dawn Rowe discussed street vendors in the hi desert, saying,
“We have a new pilot program. Illegal food vending is becoming a problem. You can drive along Highway 62 at night and see them popping up right over by Pie for the People, down by Triangle Liquor. Not all of them are legal.
“I understand the appeal, but when you look at our small businesses that we’ve gone to great lengths to attract to the Basin.. the cost of opening up and maintaining a business, especially in the state of California, is pretty onerous, so they have a disadvantage against the food trucks. It’s an unfair disadvantage to those people who have put their life-savings into operating businesses and doing it the legal way.”
At a recent meeting, the Twentynine Palms Planning Commission took steps to create more opportunities for street vendors within city limits, by increasing the ease in which vendors could apply for permits. Though the commission approved additional restrictions, barring vendors from working on sidewalks on high speed roads Twentynine Palms Highway and Adobe Road.
When asked about regulations for vending in Yucca Valley, Town Manager Curtis Yakimow said that outside of special events, vendors are not allowed to operate within town limits.
He added, “Town residents have consistently voiced their desire for additional dining opportunities in Town, and the Town desires to support those businesses that have established a compliant business in Town. Similarly, the Town continues to take appropriate action against the pop-up food vendors as well. Sometimes this process takes some time to work through and may appear that the Town is not enforcing, however that is not the case.”
Yakimow declined to discuss specific instances of enforcement against specific vendors, and said that current policies can always be reevaluated and adjusted as the town develops.
One vendor has already put out the call for a community turnout on the issue at the first 2024 meeting of the Yucca Valley Town Council
On the subject of enforcement at the county level, Rowe said “the county is reactive and responds to complaints.”
