What's the problem?
Fresno nonprofit Cultiva La Salud has secured space for a new community kitchen to serve the city's mobile food vendors. The store will soon be one of several open in the Fresno area, but it lacked the funding from the city that officials promised after a street vendor was killed in 2021.
Calling it a “huge step forward,” local nonprofit Cultiva La Salud plans to open a new community kitchen near downtown, which it hopes will bring in more mobile food vendors. .
This property was originally used as a laundromat and is located at Belmont and First Streets. It could take more than a year for the building to be transformed into a functional kitchen for the city's mobile vendors to prepare food, said Veva Islas, executive director of Cultiva (Fresno Unified Trustee). said.
But after the shooting of street vendor Lorenzo Perez in 2021, Cultiva is eager to follow through on the promise it made to Fresno's large and growing mobile food vending community.
“We hope this building will be transformative not only for the mobile food vending community where we have a business location, but also for the neighborhood,” Islas said.
After Perez was killed more than three years ago, city leaders vowed to do more to help businesses. This includes establishing a food vendor association to improve communication with the city, investing in vendor safety, and a formal permitting process.
City Council members Miguel Arias and Luis Chavez also pledged $5 million to help build a commercial kitchen downtown where vendors can prepare food and ensure compliance with food safety regulations.
However, promises to help fund community kitchens remain unfulfilled. But in any case, people like Islas and others have managed to open several kitchens around the city in recent years.
“Right now, we are not receiving any support from the city,” Islas said.
“I’m hopeful that something will come to fruition,” she added. “But I just don’t have any expectations yet.”
Arias and Chavez said part of the reason for the delay is that some potential buildings they were eyeing for kitchens have fallen through the cracks. That included an old city-owned warehouse across from Chukchansi Park that would cost more than $5 million to build. Renovate.
The property, which has since been demolished, has been designated instead for high-density housing as Mayor Jerry Dyer's administration aims to revitalize downtown with (pending) aid from the state.
“We had a few false starts getting the right location,” Arias said. “We're hopeful that once we secure a location, whether it's Cultiva or someone else…then the city will be ready to support the project.”
Both he and Chavez said they plan to ask for funding at the next budget session. Those meetings, however, will be closed to the public, and whether the budgeting process violates state law will be determined by litigation stemming from the Fresno Land investigation.
“Many of us are doing our homework on what projects and priorities we will present. This is one of my priorities in the budget, which is expected to be finalized in June,” President Chávez said. It will be,” he said.
The Fresno vendor himself says Cultiva's kitchen is a long time coming, even though the renovation timeline could take another year.
“We've been here a long time and we've been fighting for our own kitchen,” Miguel Ruiz, vice president of the food sales association, said in an interview in Spanish. “And a year, well, I think a year goes by very quickly.”
The additional kitchens will benefit “hundreds” of mobile food vendors whose licenses and permits the Fresno Area Hispanic Foundation supports, said Dora Westerlund, president of the foundation.
“It’s necessary and much needed,” she said. “For mobile food vendors to be fully equipped and fully functional, they need space to prepare food.”
Cultiva La Salud's kitchen vision
Iras said the kitchen's “primary function” is to allow mobile food vendors and small business caterers to prepare larger quantities of food than in a home kitchen.
But she also envisions it as an “educational facility.”
Cultiva staff assists vendors with compliance with city licenses, permits, and health regulations.
“There are a lot of details that are not known to the public, and they end up being blamed and criminalized just because they were trying to make a living,” Islas said.
She hopes Cultiva can help vendors who use the kitchen with menu planning, marrying Cultiva's public health advocacy goals with its work supporting mobile food vendors.
This is a four-year project to strengthen and modernize the Fresno region's agricultural economy with $65 million in funding from the Biden Administration's Build Back Better Regional Challenge, the Fresno-Merced Future of Food (F3 Coalition) It is connected with the role of Cultiva La Salud in
As part of F3's goal of building a more just food system, Cultiva is spearheading efforts to partner with mobile food vendors to bring fresh food to food-insecure communities.
“The reality is that many mobile vendors (and) peddlers aren't necessarily selling the healthiest things that we want our communities to have more access to,” she said of fresh fruits and vegetables. Including, Islas said.
But, she added, “the advantage of being mobile is that we can deliver food to places where people already live or gather, such as after church services or after school.”
At the community kitchen, Islas hopes staff will consult vendors on recipes, connect with local farmers, and use that mobility to ensure healthy food is available to underprivileged communities. Masu.
More funding hurdles ahead for Cultiva's community kitchen
But more funding will be needed to realize Cultiva's vision for a community kitchen. Islas estimates the project will “easily cost him over $1 million” to complete.
So far, Cultiva has made a $50,000 down payment on the space at Belmont and First and has taken out a loan on the building.
Islas added that Cultiva's approximately $2 million contract with F3 secures funding for a community kitchen manager and equipment.
“This is a good resource that we hope will be helpful,” she said. “But it is not available if you need to purchase or improve a building.”
To fill the gap, Islas said they will look to philanthropy and fundraising from the public.
City funding for kitchens unclear
Chavez said the city has so far implemented “three of the four big requests” from the food retail community, with the exception of community kitchens.
In addition to creating a food vendor association, the city allocated $500,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds to install surveillance cameras on mobile food vendor carts.
Lewis, the association's vice president, said vendors are grateful for these small investments from the city so far.
“Thanks to them, we have the cameras we need to stay safe,” he said. “They supported us a little bit, and we’re going to fight so they can continue to support us.”
But Chavez added that he knows how important community kitchens, his fourth “please,” still are, and said more work is needed to carry out the next budget cycle. Ta.
But this time, it's unclear how much money the city will set aside for the kitchen, or where that money will come from.
Arias said this was another issue the city has faced in the past few years.
The $5 million that Chavez and Arias originally planned to use to renovate the warehouse across from Chukchansi Park was cut in half to $2.5 million in ARPA funding in the 2024 budget.
But Arias worries that ARPA grants are no longer a viable funding source for kitchens, given that the deadline for grant allocations from federal programs approaches at the end of the year.
“In our defense, the city had set aside federal funds that were readily available, but with significant conditions (with) that they had to be spent by a certain date,” he said. “We have not been able to secure any construction projects within that time frame.”
These ARPA funds were reallocated to infrastructure investments, Arias said.
“Therefore, we now have to switch to finding alternative funding sources for the kitchen, which happens often in cities,” he added.
Other community kitchens available
The community kitchen proposed by Cultiva La Salud is not the only kitchen in Fresno.
Among the recently opened restaurants is AJ's Commissary Kitchen in Chinatown, which received no funding from the city beyond permit support, Arias said.
Others include Hot Spot Kitchen on Belmont Avenue in the South Tower District and Clovis Culinary Center further east on Willow and Ashlan.
Westerlund, of the Fresno Area Hispanic Foundation, said she's glad the “ecosystem” of support for mobile food vendors is becoming stronger.
“That's the advantage they have,” she said, “we have more options and opportunities for them.”
Islas said she wishes the growing “collection” of community kitchens throughout the Fresno area success and doesn't see them as competition.
“Working in a community kitchen is not an easy job,” she said. “We need more resources to support small food businesses.”
