Immigrants Selling Homemade Food Often Turn to Construction Sites
Six years ago, David N. moved to New York City from his native Ecuador and started working in the construction sector. He quickly noticed many of his Latin American co-workers would go their whole day without eating lunch, either because they didn’t bring food with them or couldn’t find options they liked nearby. That gave him the idea for a new business: cooking Latin American food and selling it by construction sites at lunchtime.
Four years in, David employs 18 women — mostly Ecuadorian and Colombian — who sell his food in all boroughs except Staten Island. Starting his day at 2 a.m., he cooks enough for between 400 to 500 individual meals in his Brooklyn home. His changing menu includes seco de pollo — a traditional dish from his country made of chicken — meat stew and seafood, with a side of rice or pasta. Sold with water, soda, or juice, each meal costs $10.
David, 36, didn’t want to share his last name for fear of putting his business at risk. The women he employs sell his meals between 11:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m., earning from $60 to $80 a day. “Whether they sell or not, I have to pay them, it’s not a commission-based system,” David says in Spanish. “When it’s raining, like today, not everything may be sold, but I still have to pay them what we agreed.” If they help in the kitchen, starting at 5 a.m., they can earn between $130 and $140, David explained.
Colombian-born Magaly P. is one of those women, selling David’s food by a site in Central Harlem. She didn’t want to disclose her last name for fear of jeopardizing her asylum case. Twenty minutes after arriving at the location, she had only four meals left in her cooler. On average, she sells 25 meals a day. “On a good day I can sell up to 40 meals,” she said.
The number of street food vendors of all kinds has significantly increased in New York in the last few years, according to Mohamed Attia, managing director of the Street Vendor Project, the largest organization representing these businesses in the city. As people lost their jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic, many immigrants saw street vending as one of the few options available to help them stay afloat. “If you have a couple hundred bucks, you can simply buy a few products or food and start selling,” Attia said. The office of Queens State Sen. Jessica Ramos confirmed the recent rise of these businesses, many of them unlicensed and family-run.
Just a few feet from Magaly, Ecuadorian-born Nicole Calle is selling her own version of seco de pollo. Calle is her own boss. She cooks, packs and sells meals with five members of her family. “Where there is a construction site, there is a woman selling lunch next to it,” she said in Spanish.
Calle’s father and one of her uncles buy the ingredients — including chicken, meat, eggs, tomatoes, red peppers, onions, garlic, cilantro, aji, and rice — while her mother and two cousins help with the cooking, and she sanitizes the food containers for up to 75 meals.
As a family, each member is responsible for selling around 20 of the meals, at $10 each. From 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Calle tours two or three construction sites in Harlem. Once lunch breaks end at 2 p.m., the family gathers to split the money they made that day.
David and Calle agree that selling food to other immigrant workers has allowed them to provide for their families. For Calle, that means the ability to live in New York City and send $200 each month to her son in Ecuador. For David, it meant being able to bring his wife and daughters to the United States.