Grocery Fight Pits Store Owners Against Street Vendors

PROSPECT-LEFFERTS GARDENS, BROOKLYN — Bruno Corona arrived in New York City with little money and less English in 1974. It took decades of bussing tables, working factory jobs and running a bodega for the father of four to realize his ambitions and open his own grocery store in 2007.

But Corona says his biggest challenge is one that small business owners across New York City fear is about to become a much larger threat. For Corona, it's a man with a folding table, a white tent, boxes of cheap fruits and vegetables and a food vendor's license.

"It's truly unfair," said Corona, with translating help from his son and partner David. "We're the ones being abused. He basically gets a free pass."

Corona, 65, is the owner of Pioneer Supermarket on Parkside and Ocean avenues, a corner he shares with a street food vendor he estimates siphons off $4,000 every week from his business by selling what he says is lower-quality produce at highly reduced prices.

Lowering their own prices isn't an option, the Coronas explained, because they need cash to pay their $19,000-a-month rent, 33 employees and local vendors who stock their store.

"We're struggling because everything keeps getting tougher," said David Corona, 35. "And he doesn't got to pay most of the stuff that we pay."

Even Fatih Atay, the man who works the fruit and vegetable stand outside Pioneer Supermarket, where mangos sell three for a dollar and oranges are two for a buck, said he understood the Coronas' dilemma.

"They don't like us and I can't blame them," said Atay, who told Patch he chose the corner because it's near the Parkside Avenue subway station. "They call the cops but usually we're fine. We have licenses."

The younger Corona confirmed he's tried calling the police, the Health Department and other city officials in hopes that the fruit cart will be moved away from the store.

The least helpful answer Corona got was from a city official who suggested he pay the vendor $2,000 to move down the block, he said.

"No," replied Corona. "We're here legit. It's a city problem."

The Coronas concerns about food vendor licenses is not theirs alone.

Small business owners across New York City have begun raising concerns about proposed legislation that would end the city's 3,000-license cap and bring 4,450 more into circulation between 2019 to 2029.

"We can't compete with somebody that's not paying rent,"Joo Han, the owner of Han's Fruit & Vegetable Market in Manhattan, told Patch in May. "It's getting harder and harder every year to turn a profit ... I do not want my kids to do this."

And at a Committee on Consumer Affairs and Business Licensing hearing in April, elected officials, restaurant owners and community organizers raised similar concerns about where a new fleet of food carts would set up shop if the bill did not further specify vendor-friendly areas.

"Rents are only getting higher, more store fronts are closing," testified Cladys Orduna, who helps out in the Mexican restaurant her parents have run for 28 years. "How can we compete with free-standing vending trucks?"

"This seems like a wonderful opportunity to put in some restrictions that could actually help and be meaningful for our local businesses," added City Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal. "And I think we’ve lost that opportunity so far."

Margaret Chin, the Manhattan Democrat sponsoring the bill to raise the license cap, argues it will support an industry that has created approximately 16,300 jobs and $78.5 million in wages, brings fresh food into the city's food deserts and shut down a black market for vendors' licenses.

Mohamed Mohamed, a vendor in downtown Manhattan, argued he did not take business away from nearby eateries.

"My customers can’t afford to buy food from fancy restaurants in downtown, that’s why they come to my cart," he said. "Some of my customers are Muslims and looking for Halal food, they can’t find it anywhere near me."

And several food vendors disputed the claim that overhead costs are only a problem for storefront businesses.

Mohamed Attia, co-director of the Street Vendor Project, testified vendors pay up to $25,000 every two years to use someone else's license, about $500 monthly for space to park their carts, $30 daily in cleaning expenses, $50 daily for drivers to tow the carts, as well as other daily expenses.

For Hakim El Nagar, a food vendor who immigrated from Egypt in 1996, those costs have meant mounting credit card debt and increasing difficulty taking care of his family.

"Last December I promised to buy a new heavy jacket for my son" said El Nagar. "I don’t have the money because business was very slow. And it was very, very cold."

The Coronas said they don't want to put entrepreneurs like El Nagar out of work, they just want a fair chance at serving the neighborhood.

"We give good prices to the neighborhood," the younger Corona said. "And we're always open. If it's Christmas, if it's New Year's, we're here."

The ideal solution, said Corona, would be for the food cart to move some place nearby without a grocery store, like in Prospect Park.

"We can't take our store and put it in the park," Corona said. "They can."