NYC food vendor starts day early

For 8 hours, he prepares fare in cart on sidewalk

NEW YORK -- It's 6 a.m. on a Wednesday, and Kabir Ahmed has hit snooze on his alarm one too many times. He steps softly, barefoot, around his small, second-story apartment in Jamaica, Queens, creaking along the green-and-pink hallway.

He is late but careful not to wake his wife and their three children, or his mother, who will be up in an hour to say prayers and cook breakfast. He puts on his baseball hat, slides his feet into rubber clogs and hurries out without coffee.

Ahmed, 46, is in the business of chicken and rice. He emigrated from Bangladesh 23 years ago and is now one of two partners in a halal food cart that sets up on Greenwich Street close to the World Trade Center, all year long, rain or shine. He is also one of more than 10,000 people, most of them immigrants, who make their livings selling food on the city's sidewalks: pork tamales, hot dogs, rolled rice noodles, jerk chicken.

These vendors are a fixture of New York's streets and New Yorkers' routines, vital to the culture of the city. But day to day, they struggle to do business against a host of challenges: byzantine city codes and regulations on street vending, exorbitant fines for small violations and the occasional rage of brick-and-mortar businesses or residents. Not to mention the weather, the whims of transit and foot traffic, and the trials of standing for hours, often alone, with no real shelter or private space.

"What's hard about this job?" Ahmed says. "Everything is hard. If I get old, I can't do it anymore."

The work is demanding and routine. Ahmed commutes five or six days a week, clocking eight-hour shifts. His ride into lower Manhattan is just over an hour, so if he can find a seat on the E train, he sleeps, squashed between the bodies of strangers, or watches part of a movie on his phone. Recently it was Asoka, based on the life of an Iron Age Indian ruler, played by one of his all-time favorite actors, Shah Rukh Khan.

But today, Ahmed checks his email first, hoping for news from one of the preschools processing the application of his youngest child, Karen. Nothing yet.

By 7:15 a.m., he has reached his usual spot, which he found three years ago by word of mouth. It's a wide stretch of sidewalk in front of the BNY Mellon building that gets hectic around noon when those in the financial district crowd -- a mix of Wall Street bankers and construction workers, students and tourists -- are looking to spend $5 or $6 on a fast, hot lunch.

Though there are occasional turf wars among vendors, Ahmed has never had to fight for space. He buys breakfast -- a coffee and doughnut -- from a nearby vendor who gives him what Ahmed calls a "neighbor discount."

"Good morning, neighbor!" is his standard, sunny greeting for the half-dozen other carts on his block.

Like many cart owners, Ahmed hires someone to deliver the cart to him every morning and return it to a garage each night. (Other owners hitch the carts to their cars and drive them in to set up, then face the ordeal of finding a parking spot.)

The driver pulls up with Ahmed's cart at 7:52 a.m., and the two men work quickly to wheel it into place. Inside, the cart is cold, clean and packed with boxes of ingredients.

The food comes from a commissary kitchen attached to the garage in Long Island City, Queens; the city requires that food carts be serviced and supplied by a commissary, and there are many of them, of varying sizes, with different owners, all around New York.

At an extra cost, this one has provided everything Ahmed needs for the day: heads of lettuce, a few dozen tomatoes and potatoes, ready-sliced halal lamb, several bags of boneless chicken thighs, two 12-pound bags of basmati rice, four large plastic containers of potable water for cooking and washing, clamshell containers and napkins.

Although Ahmed had little cooking experience when he started, his wife, Sheren Akter, says his food is better than that at most other carts -- less greasy, more flavorful, well seasoned.

His menu consists of about 20 dishes, most of them cooked to order, but regulars know to ask for the chicken biryani, flecked with fried onion and cilantro, garnished with half a hard-boiled egg, all for $6, with a drink. He'd like to raise the price, but worries that he would lose customers.

Once the lunch rush starts around 11:30, Ahmed can't budge from the cart. These hours blur together. He is no longer alone; by noon, he is joined by two more men in the 10-foot-long space -- his partner and an assistant -- working efficiently around the grill, fryer and steam table, finding their rhythm in the surges of orders as clusters of people appear.

On a good day, after paying the driver and the garage, and splitting the cash proceeds with his colleagues, Ahmed earns about $125. For a cart owner, that sum is not unusual.

He could make more, working longer hours alone, but he won't. Ahmed likes to tell the cautionary tale of a pushcart vendor who made the best food -- so good he once netted $3,000 in one day. That vendor worked alone, and worked himself so hard, Ahmed says, that he got sick. Now he can't take care of anyone and has no one to take care of him.

Ahmed's son, Kowshik, who dreams of working for NASA, will be a high school senior in the fall, and Ahmed wants all of his children to go to college. "But now I cannot get sick," Ahmed says, "and I cannot stop working."

At 3:30 p.m., Ahmed's shift ends and he walks back to the subway; his partner will stay until the cart closes at 8 p.m.

On the train, he learns that a preschool has accepted his daughter.

By 5 p.m., he is home, where he makes a few phone calls and takes a shower. After work on Fridays, Ahmed goes to mosque, but not today. In just a few hours, it will be time to watch the news, turn in and start it all again.

SundayMonday Business on 04/23/2017

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