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The busy Food Truck Drive Through in Noordhoek has been shut down for contravention of the Municipal Planning Bylaw of 2015. Organisers say they have applied for an events permit and are awaiting the response from the City.
NOORDHOEK
Vendors hold thumbs RACINE EDWARDES RACINE.EDWARDES@MEDIA24.COM @RAEEDWARDES
T
he vendors at the popular Food Truck Drive Through in Noordhoek are eager to get the wheels of their businesses turning again, but their fate now lies in the hands of the City of Cape Town. People’s Post reported on the possible closure of the market which gained popularity during level two of the lockdown, when many of the vendors were struggling to make ends meet as a result of the lockdown restrictions (“Food Truck market may stall”, 6 October). After receiving a letter to cease trading on Friday 23 September, Steve Meighan – one of the market’s organisers – was informed that he had just 30 days for him and the other
vendors to close up shop. According to the notice, the market was in contravention of the Municipal Planning Bylaw of 2015, which states that the property is zoned rural and can not host an event of that sort. Meighan told People’s Post at the time that he was battling to navigate complex City regulations to find the correct avenue to keep the market open. “It took so much time to go through all the correct channels to get a hold of the right people (at the City) to tell me what I need to do,” he says. “What it boils down to is that we had to apply for an events permit.” Meighan says he handed in the application about two or three weeks after he received the notice but, he notes, he only received confirmation of receipt on Monday 16 November – a little more than three weeks after the market shut down on Friday 23 October.
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everywhere at the moment. I am part of a franchise and the franchise fee has to be paid for, my stock has to be paid for and those things don’t come at a cheap price.” Meighan, who assisted Farmer in finding a new market where he can retail his goods, says: “We’re scrambling around to find places for them to be. (Our) market was for the vendors because they’ve got nothing else to fall back on.” Now many of them find themselves in a similar predicament, he explains. Meighan says he has been informed that it can take 15 to 21 business days for the events permit to be processed. Until then, the vendors wait optimistically for the return of the market, which, they say, enjoyed great community support. In the future, organisers are looking into the idea of opening two market locations to increase retail opportunities for vendors.
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Patrick Farmer, a vendor at the market, says the lack of income is having a severe impact on him. “We’ve now been unproductive for about three or four weeks. Financially, it’s hitting us very, very hard. This is my main source of income after I was retrenched a few years ago,” says Farmer. He bought into the Mobile Coffee Café franchise after being retrenched and began selling from his food truck around the Peninsula. “Pre-Covid-19 we were doing quite well and then Covid-19 happened and everything came to a standstill; that was the first time I was shut down. Now we’ve been shut down again, so I stand at Neighbourhood Farms at Fish Hoek and my turnover was definitely not pretty,” he says. On a bad day at the Noordhoek market, he says he would sell 60 or 70 cups of coffee and over 100 cups on a good day. But now, he says: “I’m grasping at straws
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