PI mulls regulation of street vendors
Sherry Sprague has been selling fiddleheads from her mini-van on Route 1 in Presque Isle since mid-May, setting up in the small parking lot of garden supply store Here We Grow.
“We’ve sold out every time,” Sprague said, as one woman drove up and purchased 10 pounds one afternoon.
For the past few years, Sprague has spent some of her spring selling fiddleheads roadside in Presque Isle, working with a friend who picks the Ostrich fern fronds. She’s among a few seasonal roadside food vendors who may be subject to a proposed ordinance that’s aimed in part at encouraging them to sell at Presque Isle’s two established public farmer’s market spaces.
Presque Isle City Council is set to consider a new “itinerant vendor” ordinance at its next meeting June 6, after several conversations about the issue over the last year. Until it lapsed under the last city council, Presque Isle used to have a similar ordinance for “hawkers, peddlers, itinerant vendors and transient sellers of consumer merchandise,” although it’s not clear if it applied to food sellers. Sprague, another fiddlehead seller and the owners of the Rib Truck, a mobile barbecue business, all said they never knew or were told they needed a permit in the past.
Ken Arndt, the city’s planning and development director, said the new, proposed ordinance is aimed at ensuring public safety as well as incentivizing mobile vendors like Sprague to sell at established farmers market spaces, particularly at the new public market shelter at Riverside Park in downtown Presque Isle.
“The city currently has no control of these itinerant vendors and there is no quality control over what they are vending to our citizens or locations where they have chosen to set up,” he said in an email. “We have two very nice marketplaces within the city with adequate parking, signage and sanitary services.”
The ordinance would require mobile vendors to get a permit from the city, paying $25 per day and up to $100 over a 150-day season and showing permission from the property owners.
Under the ordinance, dues-paying vendors of either of the farmer’s markets, at Riverside Park or at the Aroostook Centre Mall, could sell from those locations anytime, but if they want to sell roadside as mobile vendor, they would need to get permits and pay the fee, Arndt said.
While there’s been a farmers market at the Aroostook Centre Mall for 16 years, the Riverside Public Market is starting its third year in operation and its first under a newly renovated open-walled shelter. The project, expected to cost no more than $150,000, was offset in part by two grants the city received totalling around $80,000.
A block off Presque Isle’s Route 1 Main Street, the new space is within a short walk of the soon-to-open community recreation center, a park and path along the Presque Isle Stream, Wintergreen Arts Center and a small downtown retail corridor — which city staff and board members hope will get a boost from new interest in the public market space.
At the other end of Presque Isle’s Main Street, in the large parking lot in front of Marden’s and Shop ‘n Save, John and Mary Freeman can usually be found one or two days a week doing a bustling mobile food business selling barbecued pork, chicken and beans from the Rib Truck.
John Freeman said he is encouraged by the public interest in local farming, food and crafts and the two farmers markets. But he said that their space — among big box stores and along commuting routes — has worked well.
“We have an established location here, for 20 years, and traffic and visibility,” said John Freeman.
The Graves family, which owns the shopping lot, allows the Freemans to set up there for a small fee, he said. “They’ve been very generous with their space,” he said. “It’s kind of a win-win for everybody.”
Freeman said that complying with the proposed mobile vendor ordinance wouldn’t be a problem for them and noted that they already have a state food truck license.
The Freemans, who live in Woodland, have made their business work — there are usually lines for the fresh-grilled food — “by bouncing around” between Presque Isle, Fort Kent, Madawaska and elsewhere.
“The challenge [in Aroostook County] is we, people who start businesses, have great products and services and intentions, but we don’t have the population to support that,” Freeman said.
Sprague, the fiddlehead seller, sets up in-between Presque Isle’s downtown and its big-box store strip. In the summer, another mobile vendor, the Skonieczny family farm, often sets up nearby in a gas station parking lot to sell fresh produce.
Sprague had mixed reactions when she learned of the proposed ordinance and its fees. “I don’t know, it might affect those who are picking and wanting to sell,” she said. “People will go through Facebook and sell them from home.”
For the start of this season, though, Sprague and her business partner have not had too much competition from other fiddlehead sellers on Main Street, as a group of food entrepreneurs has been working with foragers to export the wild edible.
“Last year, there were six or seven of us up the road,” Sprague said. “This year, they’re all trying to ship them to Bangor, Portland and Boston.”
