Every weekday, 30-year-old Ecuadorian asylum seeker Isabel stands in SoHo among tourists and licensed food vendors, selling a $10 packaged lunch to construction workers. Her meals, consisting of Ecuadorian staples such as roast chicken with rice, beans, and chaulafan (fried rice with plantains), are bought in bulk from an Ecuadorian-run kitchen in Queens, then trucked to every section of Manhattan with construction sites.
Isabel is one of over 30 lunch vendors selling the sandwiches as prepared in improvised commercial kitchens – a burgeoning, yet informal business. This kind of operation, conducted without food permits or vending licenses, does actually exemplify how new migrants are pouring fuel into the city’s economy in unnatural ways. Isabel and other vendors-mostly Latin American immigrant women-sell in a legal gray area on the streets, liable to police action and fines for vending without permits, with infractions starting at $200 for health code infractions and reaching as high as $1,000 for selling without a license.
As it grows, the lunch business is part of an expanding network of migrant-driven food operations in New York City. Overnight from kitchens in Queens, The Bronx, and Brooklyn, meals are being produced using scores of women living in shelters. Recruits often hear about the work through word of mouth, TikTok, or Facebook, then collect the meals in ice chests from around town to take to construction sites stretching from SoHo all the way up to Midtown.
In these circumstances, the business provides a lifeline for many women who lack work permits and face childcare challenges. For some, like Isabel, vending is the only option for earning money while school is in session. They earn more than minimum wage at $20 an hour, but after costs, they take home around $40 to $60 per shift—barely enough to cover rent or reduce their debts.
While Epifanía vents frustrations over pay and working conditions, there are far more grateful for the opportunity; such as Isabel. Isabel is a victim of gang violence in Ecuador, who found employment through a family connection, allowing her to be able to feed her son. However, as with the majority, she remains locked into poverty and uncertainty.
This informal lunch economy, powered by migrant women, is therefore a dual force of exploitation and solidarity: risk-sharing – legal risks of operational targeting and financial precarity in food procurement- is contrasted by increasing demand for these affordable, home-style meals that change the nature of the foodscapes of a city.
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