By Matthew Pearson
There is more to a hotdog cart than meets the eye. Or, for that matter, the stomach.
Beyond appearance, location and cleanliness, vendors must wade through bylaws, apply for permits and pass regular health inspections.
There’s also the matter of finding quality products, building a loyal clientele and making a buck in a world gone mad for low-fat food.
Terry Scanlon knows what it takes to succeed in the hotdog business.
He’s been operating his hotdog cart, Hot Diggity Dog, at the corner of Bank and Laurier Streets for more than 24 years.
Rain, snow or shine, Scanlon stands at his cart as thousands of people pass him on their way to work in the morning.
And, six nights a week, he’s still there when people are heading home.
“You get as much as you put into it,” Scanlon says, as he drops thick slabs of onion onto the flaming grill.
The smell of fried onions always tempts hungry passers-by, he says, and this snowy morning should be no exception.
Although hotdog carts may not be top of mind for the average resident, the issue has whet the appetite of municipal and provincial politicians recently.
Ottawa city council passed a number of bylaw amendments affecting street vendors at its Nov. 28 meeting.
The new laws establish a lottery system to fill vacant vending spaces and allow vendors to set up shop earlier and transfer their vending permits to immediate family members.
An additional amendment allows vendors to increase the size of their carts by 10 per cent in order to offer new menu items made possible by recent changes to provincial regulations.
Scanlon says he is pleased with the amendments. Street vendors and city hall have entered a new era in the historically rocky relationship that prevailed prior to the city’s amalgamation in 2001, he adds.
“All of this made vendors feel a bit more confident and positive toward the city,” he says of the amended laws. “They have treated us as somebodies rather than nobodies.”
The city’s bylaw amendments come on the heels of changes to provincial regulations unveiled in August that allow street vendors to sell more than just hotdogs and sausages.
The new regulations were designed as a way to promote healthy eating and diversify menus to reflect the province’s multicultural palette, but they don’t appear to be catching on in Ottawa.
Gilles Cleroux, president of the Street Vendors Association, estimates the group has about 120 members.
To his knowledge, none has added new menu items.
Cleroux began operating the city’s first hotdog cart in June 1979 at the corner of Spark and Bank streets and has no plans to change his menu.
He and his wife, who also operates a hotdog cart downtown, sell hotdogs and three types of sausages.
He says he gets asked a couple times a month for veggie dogs, but the low demand doesn’t make it worthwhile to carry them.
“We’re not really into it ourselves, we specialize in selling sausages,” he says.
“We find it’s better this way.”
Cleroux adds that the introduction of new menu items creates greater chances of food contamination, especially with meats such as chicken.
“I don’t know why they’re allowing hotdog carts to do this,” he says, adding he worries that if a person gets sick from contaminated street food, all vendors could be implicated.
“We’re all painted with the same brush,” he says.
Andy Roche, a program manager at Ottawa Public Health, says the new regulations allowing for expanded menu options was “sprung quickly” by the provincial government and may have caught a lot of food vendors in Ottawa off-guard.
“There is a much greater drive for that in the Toronto area, but I think you’ll see a greater push for it across the province,” Roche says.
“I would anticipate that in the new year we’ll see some innovative proposals.”