For Johnny Sullivan, moving to Portland has been like stepping on a series of rakes.
Three months after taking over Northeast Alberta Street’s Vita Cafe at the end of 2019, the pandemic forced the former New York City chef to close. His pop-up pivot, Marble Queen, found success at the Portland Farmers Market, until someone complained about his grill. After losing his spot at the market, Sullivan poured what remained of his savings into a new venture, taking over the former MF Tasty food cart on Northeast Williams Avenue.
And then came last week’s email.
“Starting on January 1, 2023 mobile units will no longer be able to use large water storage tanks that are not integral to their mobiles,” read the email, sent by the county health department but describing a state-wide rule. “The food truck must be able to move with both (fresh and waste) water tanks in place on the unit.”
Sullivan had seen social media chatter about new regulations for pods — the clusters of carts that began cropping up around the city more than a decade ago — but figured as a stand-alone cart, he wouldn’t have a problem. After the email, he realized the new rules put him in a bind. Effective immediately, he would have to either increase his wastewater pickup schedule from every few weeks (at around $90 a pop) to near daily, or convince his landlord to connect his cart to the sewer system, another nonstarter. Last week, Sullivan announced his cart’s permanent closure.
Food trucks can be found from Grants Pass to Pendleton, but the new rules seem to be having the deepest impact on Portland. Even more than meticulous craft cocktail bars or rustic farm-to-table restaurants, food carts are the dynamic, diverse, distinctive face of Portland’s nationally celebrated food scene, drawing tourists to town while expanding options for locals.
But throughout the city, cart owners and their landlords are scrambling to figure out how to comply with the new rules at a time when rising inflation and slow sales are already making it difficult to stay open. Over the past two months, several prominent Portland carts have closed for good, each placing the blame on the new state rules.
According to the Oregon Health Authority, a rules advisory committee that included “mobile food unit operators, interested parties, industry association representatives and regulators” gathered in 2018 to update 30-year-old regulations for carts. The following year, the health authority sent emails to cart owners and held informational meetings in various cities. Though the rules were enacted in February of 2020, carts were given a three year grace period to comply.
One of the issues the new rules sought to address: Wastewater leakage at large pods, including frequent spills at downtown Portland’s former 10th and Alder pod, once home to around 60 carts (a Ritz-Carlton Hotel and Residences will open on the block this year). There, carts pumped their wastewater — water used for washing hands, dishes, pots and more, also called gray water — into shared 250- or 500-gallon plastic receptacles, or “cubes,” which were then pumped out regularly by a disposal company.
In addition to its foul odor, wastewater can attract rodents; larger spills can pour directly into storm drains, which in Portland lead directly to the Willamette River. And when cubes cracked or wastewater spilled in some other way, it wasn’t always easy to pinpoint which cart was to blame.
Technically, those cubes were never allowed in Oregon. According to state law, mobile units are defined as vehicles, and must be able to drive off at a moment’s notice with all their equipment firmly in place, including grills, propane tanks and wastewater containers. Most food carts have a gray water container attached to their truck, though they’re typically small enough that they have to be emptied every day or two.
Additionally, those permanent wastewater cubes, a novel solution for converted parking lots lacking dedicated sewer lines, have technically never been allowed by Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality (cubes are allowed on a temporary basis at farmers markets, festivals and construction sites).
“At the start of the work group, counties sent in photos of the challenges they were dealing with around mobiles in their areas,” said the Oregon Health Authority’s Erica Van Ess “And many of those were pictures of rats, or pigeons taking over carts when the owners went to the bathroom. Our goal is to maintain public health. And we were hoping these rules would lead to a better customer experience. Nobody wants to see rats while they’re eating.”
Under the state’s new rules, which were enacted in February 2020 but included a three-year grace period, county health inspectors were given new enforcement tools, with wastewater cubes now listed as a “priority foundation item,” similar in penalties to a cart owner not cooking food to temperature or washing their hands.
Still, state and local authorities say that no carts or pods should be shutting down purely because of these new rules. Counties are still working on compliance plans, and inspectors are being told to work with business owners. No new timeline or extended grace period has been announced.
“We emailed every mobile unit in the state, but still the message gets lost,” Van Ess said. “We don’t want anybody feeling like this is getting sprung on them. Our goal is to not make this more stressful for people. That’s why the county is willing to work with them to find solutions.”
“I don’t think that there’s anyone in Multnomah and Clackamas that has been closed down because of this,” said county health inspection supervisor Jeff Martin. “If you’re getting a bid (to connect to the sewer line), tell us about it and we’re not going to close you down.”
Leah Tucker, founder of the Oregon Mobile Food Association, hopes to see the state put a “giant pause” on enforcing the new rules, and for the Department of Environmental Quality to reconsider their rules regarding the use of cubes at cart pods.
“My preferred solution is to see cubes stay, but be regulated through the pumping companies, much like propane,” Tucker says. “There are very very few people who own a propane tank of their own. And those who supply propane are under regulations that they cannot fill a propane tank that is damaged or out of date or hasn’t been inspected. The same should apply here.”
It’s not clear how many carts the new rules will impact.
Many pods, including destinations such as Prost Marketplace, Hinterland and Cartlandia, were built or retrofitted to offer carts access to a sewer line complete with a grease trap for directly disposing wastewater. Others have been frantically searching for a solution, with smaller pods obtaining bids in the low five figures and up to install a sewer connection retroactively, a cost that will be passed down to carts via rent increases.
Sara Le Meitour manages Southwest Portland’s French Quarter on her parents’ behalf. The pod houses 11 carts, including a massage cart that won’t be impacted. After first hearing about the new rules around 2021, she obtained bids between $70,000 and $100,000 to connect each of the pod’s other carts to the sewer line.
“My parents bought this property in 2013, and it wasn’t initially planned to be a food cart pod, it’s just become that over time,” Le Meitour says. “We do everything we can to keep our tenants’ rent low, because if they stay in business, we can stay in business. But when we’re forced to build these things that are very expensive, it makes it very difficult not to raise the rent.”
Le Meitour recently received a bid of just under $24,000 for a scaled back plan that would give each French Quarter cart access to a shared spot for dumping wastewater. “But that’s still a lot of money for us,” she said.
“From what I understand, there were a lot of issues with certain pods with gray water, and now other pods are being punished for their lack of care,” Le Meitour says. “It just seems like there wasn’t a lot of input taken from the people that this will affect.”
Le Meitour says she wished more cart and pod owners had been consulted before the new rules went into effect.
“We pride ourselves on being a really clean food cart pod,” Le Meitour says. “We don’t have issues with rodents or gray water spills, or some of the grossness you see at other pods. And so it’s just frustrating that we’re having to pay for the sins of others, especially when it’s a very expensive payment.”
Sullivan, the Marble Queen owner, explored the possibility of adding additional wastewater capacity under his cart. But even then, the increase in pickup fees would cut deep into his profits, assuming he could even find a company to drop by that often. (Though Oregon is home to nearly 200 licensed wastewater removal companies, few are equipped to handle small clients such as food carts. Most Portland cart owners we spoke with utilized the same small company, Gray Water Disposal Services.)
Some carts might be able to utilize a commissary kitchen or adjacent bar for washing dishes, the state says, or haul away the water themselves. Under the new rules, cart owners are personally allowed to dispose of 20 gallons of wastewater each day.
That doesn’t work for crafty carts like Marble Queen, where Sullivan preps, butchers and cooks dishes to order, all inside the cart, activities that require lots of sanitation.
“I’ll have sizzle pans going in and out of the oven, and every time I cook something in my wok I have to wash it out,” Sullivan says. “I don’t just have a fryer and a flat top and a few cutting boards. I cook like I cook at a restaurant.”
Papi Sal’s and Meliora Pasta — named among Portland’s best new carts in 2021 and 2022, respectively — announced their own cart closures late last year, with each pointing to the new rules. Both have launched pop-ups inside existing restaurants. Anthony Brown, whose Nacheaux cart was a breakout star in 2020, eventually leading to a since-closed restaurant on Northeast Fremont Street, gave up his own plans to reopen his food cart after discovering the spot he was interested in would not be in compliance with the new code.
Brown, who says he’s known about the rule changes since the middle of 2022, decided to “get away from the bureaucracy, taking over the kitchen at Southeast Grand Avenue’s Swan Dive Bar instead.
“Food carts are the backbone of Portland,” Brown says. “They’re open late. They’re able to maneuver on different schedules to help serve their community in a way that restaurants can’t. So if you’re going to take out 10 percent of food carts, that’s going to be the difference between someone being able to go get their coffee or dinner or not.”
Cart owners worry the new regulations could create a game of musical chairs, with cast-aside carts forced suddenly to compete for spots at a dwindling number of compliant pods.
Oswaldo Bibiano, the former owner of the upscale Autentica and mini taco shop chain Uno Mas, says he might have to close Upside Down, his third act of a food cart in Southeast Portland’s Brooklyn neighborhood. Smart Donkey, his second cart, is more likely to survive, partly thanks to an understanding landlord and the fact that its location — a former car wash — should be easier to connect to the sewer.
“I really want to keep The Upside Down going, but if I don’t find the solution, there’s no way,” Bibiano said. “Paying $90 every other day? That’s what you’re making, that’s your profit. But I really like that neighborhood, and I just remodeled. Hopefully the health department makes it a little more easy for everyone, otherwise a lot of carts are going to have to close.”
Sullivan, who brought more than 20 years of experience to his Marble Queen pop-up, acknowledges he might not have done all his due diligence when buying the cart.
“I found out about (the new rules) through social media after I made the purchase, but I had no idea it was really coming down the pike,” Sullivan said. “I didn’t 100 percent know what I was walking into. I was just crossing my fingers and hoping everything would work out.”
He also wonders why, as a stand-alone cart with a colorful mural and umbrella-topped picnic tables tucked between a pair of taprooms, he’s subject to the same rules as a sprawling parking-lot pod with dozens of carts and zero amenities. When Multnomah County announced its own set of rules for previously unregulated pods, including a permitting and inspection process that began last year, the rules explicitly defined pods as lots with more than one cart in close proximity. (According to Van Ess, the health authority has the power to regulate carts, but not the pods they sit in.)
“Why is there this blanket rule that covers someone like myself that does this entire thing by themselves and works extremely hard to keep a very hygienic business going?” Sullivan asks. “I’m inspected on an individual level. If I’m spilling gray water, then fine me, sure, but give me a chance to make amends on some level.
“Going after the cart owners themselves is not doing the local food scene any favors. If it’s the pod owners it makes sense, but someone like myself, I’m just getting caught in the crossfire.”
— Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com
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