Hey all,
We're planning for our first kid's 1st bday party and have a space reserved in one of the city parks. While procuring the spot and researching more, we learned that our city is pretty stringent about requiring any vendor or caterer we bring in to have a business license and insurance. We've been looking around at hiring a 'taco man' stand where a guy comes in with a cart and cooks and serves tacos on the spot. In calling around, it seems many of these taco dudes are small-time guys with no licenses or insurance. The business license part isn't a big deal because it's free but you have to apply through the city website and it takes some time. Insurance, on the other hand, is sort of a concern. I'm guessing both these things are more for liability, so if taco man's cart explodes and injures people or damages property, they would be held liable. But if they're not insured, the liability would be either on us or the city...? FWIW, I've not heard of a taco man's cart exploding lol...
We contacted one vendor who we stumbled across who happened to be catering at a party and called him today. His daughter told us that the last time he was in our city, which I guess was after we saw him at that one event, he had to shut down and was kicked out because he had no business license.
Is this a pretty common practice in most cities? I'm thinking maybe we should have just looked for a park in another city or at a park where perhaps this wouldn't be an issue.
Anyone have a similar experience, thoughts, or suggestions? Of course, there are vendors out there who have all their bases covered for these things but they're a lot more expensive. Guess it's a trade-off.
