Green Carts

Radio: David Schwartz on Street Vendors Destroying Small Business

NYAGS’ David Schwartz speaks about the plight of small businesses facing unfair competition from street vendors. “We need reasonable regulations of street vendors where they can serve under-served markets…so brick and mortar businesses can exist…” … on 970 AM and streaming live here… UPDATE:  Here’s the segment with David Schwartz on how food and vegetable […]

Read the full article →

Peddling Nonsense: The Failure of the Green Cart Experiment

New York Green Carts

Over four years ago, the mayor and the city council launched the Green Cart experiment-a plan to put 1,500 veggie carts into so-called underserved areas in order to give poor folks access to healthier foods. This “field of dreams theory” was the brainchild of the brain-dead health commissioner at the time, Tom Frieden, who has […]

Read the full article →

Mayor’s Scientific Thin Skin

New York Green Carts

We have seen with green carts and menus labeling-two policy ideas promoted as health measures-that the scientific underpinnings were never present to justify the promotion of these programs-and the results bear this observation out. The mayor is quite willing, when it suits his purposes, to claim scientific authority when none exists-so he should remain silent when his critics weigh in on the validity of his nest great idea.

Read the full article →

Food Deserts: A Wasteland of Misconceptions

Junk Food

In an earlier post we talked about the failure of the city’s green cart experiment-a bad idea that was built on a false premise. The premise? That the areas targeted were underserved “food deserts,” and that siting veggie carts in those areas would lead to greater produce consumption (The field of dreams theory).

Read the full article →

The Green Cart Failure and What it Teaches Us

Green Carts New York City

When the Green Cart legislation was passed in 2008 there was a provision that mandated a review of the experiment’s ability to achieve the goals that the mayor and the council speaker laid-greater access to fresh fruit and vegetables, and financial success of the vendors. The underlying assumption was what we have called the, “field of dreams theory,” the belief that if carts were placed in “underserved areas” they would be successful because all that the folks were lacking was access to the veggies.

Read the full article →