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How we got the authority to food bike in Sacramento…

Written by: Koreen

Johan and I started working with the City of Sacramento to change the ordinances to allow food bikes to vend in a similar manner as food trucks in April 2017 and the City of Sacramento adopted that change on September 13, 2018. Here is a link to the full Council Meeting: full item.

Prior to that, we had talked with several city employees, attended one of the four open community meetings, and Johan testified on June 26th to the Sacramento City Law & Legislation meeting on adding bikes into the food vending ordinance – it was amended on the spot to include food bikes on June 26th. See also the full subcommittee meeting including Johan’s 2-minute talk. After the subcommittee, city staffers amended the ordinance and took it to the full City Council for a vote on September 13th, where it passed as referenced above.

In addition, we had also been working with Sacramento County to determine how to develop and modify our food bike (bakfiets from The Netherlands) to meet state laws. We finished it on Monday, November 12, 2018 and got the County Health Permit on Thursday, November 15, 2018 – Permit #1!

Once we got our health permit, we applied electronically the same day to vend within Sacramento City and got our fingerprinting done the next morning. As we were waiting for the background check and final inspection by the City of Sacramento, we were told we could bake, but not sell stroopwafels…so, we started roaming the streets of Sacramento on our bakfiets the Saturday before Thanksgiving, November 17th, to bake and give away free, fresh stroopwafels. Finally on Thursday, November 29, 2019, we got our final permit – we were so excited we were out that evening baking and selling warm, fresh stroopwafels on the Sacramento streets!

We had so much fun with this whole process and we are very excited to see where the future takes us next as the first food bike in Sacramento!