After street vendor’s 2021 murder, Fresno pledged a commercial kitchen. Where’s the money?

After street vendor Lorenzo Perez was killed execution-style in southeast Fresno in 2021, city representatives promised to do more for street vendors. One of the pledges was $5 million for a downtown commercial kitchen where vendors could prepare food, comply with food regulations and grow their businesses.

A year later, Fresno City Council halved that amount and approved $2.5 million for a downtown kitchen. Now, two years since the murder of Perez, a 45-year-old father of four, the city still has not funded a commercial kitchen for street vendors in Fresno, and there’s no money currently allocated for it.

It isn’t immediately clear why the money wasn’t set aside this budget cycle. The council’s current budget committee members, Councilmembers Tyler Maxwell, Annalisa Perea and Mike Karbassi, didn’t respond to The Bee’s request for an explanation.

Street vendors and community groups want to know if the city will make good on its commitment.

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Earlier this month, dozens of street vendors from the Fresno Food Vendor Association – made up of over a hundred mobile food vendors throughout the county – wrote a formal letter to city leaders inquiring about the status of the commercial kitchen.

“We ask the councilmembers not to forget about the promise they made to us,” Miguel Lopez, the association’s president, told The Bee in Spanish. “We’re going to continue insisting on the kitchen until it happens.”

Cultiva La Salud, a Fresno health-focused nonprofit, is working with the city on a pilot project to improve street vendor safety with cameras and is also working with street vendors to provide technical assistance on the licensing and permitting process.

“I was really excited about the opportunity of working with the city to get some investment to support the establishment of a certified community kitchen,” said Genoveva Islas, the nonprofit’s executive director.

“Unfortunately,” Islas said, “there were other priorities that council members wanted to invest in and so we really didn’t get any support in the last go-around.”

Fresno Councilmembers Miguel Arias and Luis Chavez, who spearheaded the city’s street vendor efforts, told The Bee they’re still committed to supporting the project. They say the challenge is securing a viable site.

“There’s plenty of other sources that we can utilize to pursue a commercial kitchen,” Arias told The Bee, such as federal community development block grant funds or the city’s general fund.

“I believe,” Chavez said, “there will be consensus on making sure that we get this set up for our food vendors.”

Lopez said he hopes the kitchen will be ready while Chavez and Arias are still in office. Their current council terms end in 2026. The two are running for Fresno County Supervisor District 3 seat against incumbent Sal Quintero in the March 2024 elections.

Local Fresno, Clovis kitchens offer path forward

Fresno County has seen a 30% increase in mobile food vendor applications since 2020. The increase is driven by pandemic-related income loss, inflation and the growing popularity of street vendors and food trucks, city and county leaders say.

To support the region’s food entrepreneurs, a few commercial kitchens have opened in recent years.

The Clovis Culinary Center opened its licensed commercial kitchen in 2018. Shawn Miller, business development manager for the city of Clovis, said the center has helped over 130 food businesses get their start. These businesses have created approximately 325 jobs for low to middle income communities, he added.

Miller said the city dedicates staff time to the center and an annual $50,000 in federal grant funds to pay for free or reduced-cost memberships for low-income residents.

Another local kitchen that helps Fresno food vendors is the Hot Spot Kitchen on Belmont Avenue, owned by the team behind La Jacka vegan-friendly Mexican food truck and restaurant.

A handful of taco businesses and eloteros – as well as Fresno’s “most-underrated restaurant” My Guy Market – use the commercial kitchen, said Fernanda Cox, who helps run the space in addition to serving as manager and chef for La Jacka. Cox also provides free mentorship to primarily Latino and Asian entrepreneurs looking to start their own food businesses.

She said that if and when the city launches a kitchen, it should provide three to six months of free membership for entrepreneurs to test it out, especially given the sector’s start-up nature.

Fresno city leaders support street vendors

In March 2022, Chavez and Arias launched a pilot program to improve street vendor safety that paid to have cameras installed directly on mobile food vendor carts.

Around the same time, they pledged the $5 million funds for a commercial food kitchen.

Initially, the city had been looking at the former H Street commercial warehouse near Chukchansi Park in downtown Fresno, but it would have been too costly to renovate, Arias said.

Then, Cultiva La Salud looked to purchase the shuttered Joe’s Steakhouse in downtown Fresno with the city’s support, which closed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Arias made a motion during the June budget hearings to re-allocate $2.5 million of federal pandemic stimulus funds for the Mobile Food Vendor Commercial Kitchen. The nonprofit would have been able to use the money to purchase and renovate a facility, and operate a commercial kitchen for mobile food vendors in downtown Fresno.

But the steakhouse was sold in September to a southern California franchisee who plans to open a Country Kitchen restaurant.

“When the escrow fell through, the resources had to be reallocated,” Arias said. The kitchen funds didn’t make the final budget cut. City budget decisions are made behind closed doors with the budget committee and the mayor. The city of Fresno is currently being sued after a Fresnoland investigation found that Fresno is the only major California city that claims Brown Act exemption for its budget committee.

For now, Cultiva La Salud is looking for a viable kitchen space in downtown and southeast Fresno. Islas, the nonprofit’s director, is also exploring funds available from the county, state and federal government, as well as private, philanthropic funding. But she hopes the city will stay true to its original commitment.