Inside New York's quest to beat halalflation

Tamer Hassan is ready to get out of the street food game.

He manages four food carts — smoothies, hot dogs, chicken and rice — on 49th Street, just off Times Square. At 45, he's been doing it for a decade.

He loves the work, but is determined to leave the industry in the next five years, which means selling his business or convincing his son (an 18-year-old engineering student) to take over. The hours on his feet in all kinds of weather feel impossible to keep up with as he ages. Not to mention the meager returns.

"Two years ago, we could sell $3 hot dogs at an 80-cent profit," Hassan told me. "Now, if we sell them at $5, we still make 80 cents. That price is not about us, it's not about me, it's about the supply." If his business earns $3,000 a day, he said he pockets about $200 after paying for food, drinks, utensils, propane, cart maintenance, insurance, staff wages, and other expenses.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office with a vow to make the city more affordable, including proposals to lower the price of housing, childcare, and groceries. One of his earliest campaign slogans to gain social media traction was "make halal $8 again." The promise to reduce operating costs and increase permit availability aims to lower the roughly $10 price of a beloved New York street food: a platter of meat or falafel, rice, and signature sauces.

On an April Thursday, I asked more than a dozen street vendors about the biggest challenges they face — and how the city can meaningfully address what the mayor dubbed as "halalflation." Many of their troubles are largely outside the government's reach. Overhead costs have become crushing. Declining tourism and work-from-home culture are eating into vendors' earnings, making monthly income more unpredictable. New "congestion pricing" tolls to enter central Manhattan also sting, as most of the vendors live and store their carts in outer boroughs. With eyewatering rents and families to support, vendors said the squeeze isn't just making carts less profitable, but harder to build a life around.

It's not just about lowering the cost of hot dogs, it's about getting more people to buy them.

Abdelhafeez Aly, 60, woke to his usual 1:45 a.m. alarm and picked up his cart near Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. By dawn, he had arranged frosting-covered doughnuts in the window and poured a fresh bag of ice into his orange juice cooler. Stocking the pastries and supplies costs at least $400 a day.

"The price of everything is coming up: American cheese, meat, everything," said Aly, who has run his Financial District cart since 1991. "If a restaurant around here has a sandwich, I have to make it for less. I want to raise prices, but there's too much competition." On a good day, he said he nets $10 an hour.

Food costs in US cities have jumped by about 22% in the last five years, and the Iran war is sending gas prices over $4 a gallon. General inflation is also a stressor — vendors mentioned the creeping cost of coffee, dairy, ice, even paper coffee cups. While congestion pricing is working to reduce traffic and raise revenue for transit improvements, many vendors said the $9 daily toll is an additional hit to their stretched-thin budgets.

Mamdani's "Street Vendor Reform Package" takes a swing at alleviating some food cart-specific expenses by creating a Division of Street Vendor Assistance within city government, and is supporting a bill that would allow vendors to place their carts two feet from the curb, limiting the number of tickets carts receive for being out of compliance. These could eventually alleviate vendors' financial burden and boost their support within City Hall. Still, progress is slow.

"It's very hard," Aly sighed. "But thank God I have a job."

Ahemed Hassan, 30, was sprinkling rock salt on a batch of soft pretzels in front of the Museum of Natural History. He won't sell them all — his once-reliable tourist crowd has been underwhelming lately.

"It's just a hard week, and usually there will be more people over the summer holiday," he said. "Maybe someday I'll make more money."

Vendors said business really started to slide in the early 2020s, when the pandemic sent most white-collar office workers home. Even as return-to-office policies bring employees back a few days a week, demand in previously reliable corporate hotspots isn't what it once was.

Meanwhile, the city saw a 3% tourism decline from international travelers between spring 2024 and 2026, and the exorbitant cost of living means many residents are pinching pennies. A handful of regular customers isn't enough to make up the difference.

"I cannot raise the price for the regulars, because they come every day and expect the food to be $9 or $10," one vendor told me. "If I raise it, they won't want to come back."

Asked about Mamdani's $8 promise, most vendors responded with skepticism. Chiefly because solving their demand drought — bringing tourists and office workers back to halal hubs with money to spend — is outside the mayor's purview. So are corporate RTO policies.

Mohamad Mohamad said that getting started as a vendor can easily cost six figures. He had a Mamdani portrait pinned to his Columbus Circle cart during election season, but he's doubtful the mayor can actually solve this problem.

"This city is very expensive," the 40-something said. When business is booming, he might earn $200 daily, rarely enough to cover his overhead. It's a tenuous investment — Mohamed said his custom cart cost $16,000, and others can be as high as $50,000.

Many vendors I spoke with said they pay a third party for their permits, while others rent them directly from the city. NYC typically charges $200 for a two-year sales permit, $50 for a two-year mobile food vending license, and an additional $50 for a mandatory food safety course.

The city's permit supply hasn't kept up with demand. There are roughly 20,000 food vendors in the city, according to one estimate from the advocacy group Street Vendor Project, most of them immigrants. Due to a cap set in 1979, there have long been just 6,880 licenses available for food vendors. It means sellers either have to strike gold on a newly available permit, team up with someone who already has one, or pay for a marked-up permit secondhand — which can cost tens of thousands. One vendor told me his two-year permit rental is $15,000. Another pays $20,000 a year.

Permit costs are a challenge that the government can directly address. A landmark City Council bill passed in December lifted the '70s-era permit cap. By 2031, NYC is required to make nearly 17,000 permits available for food vendors, as well as offer nearly 1,300 specifically for veterans and disabled vendors. This comes alongside a new law that repealed criminal penalties for vendors operating without a license. The Mamdani administration appointed former Street Vendor Project Co-director Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez to lead the effort in March.

Times Square vendor Hassan is watching City Hall closely. But, at least for now, he feels $12 is a fair price for a meal. He's counting down the days until he can clock out of his cart forever.

As I turned to leave, Hassan handed me a fresh cup of his favorite strawberry-mango smoothie.

"It's hot out here," he said, wiping sweat off his brow. "You should try this."

He refused my offer to pay.

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