ON A RECENT Saturday afternoon, at an intersection just west of downtown Lake Worth Beach, four SUVs were parked on the side of the road, their rear tailgates open.
If the hatches were closed, the vehicles would look like any other cars parked up and down South E Street and First Avenue South. But the raised hatches, like silent dinner bells, signaled to passersby that food vendors were open for business.
The vehicles are part of an illicit fleet of mobile kitchens offering tamales, cochinitos and other Central American edibles to go.
The food is served on styrofoam plates from coolers, aluminum pots, and plastic containers crammed inside the backs of the vehicles. The customers, residents of Lake Worth Beach’s Hispanic community, arrive on foot, bike and car.
But the people selling it, mostly Mayan Guatemalans struggling to make ends meet, are doing so without the required government licenses and permits.
It’s been going on for years, but Mayor Betty Resch said it’s become more prevalent in recent months, bringing complaints from residents, including a city commissioner, and at least one store owner about traffic and unfair competition.
When commissioners addressed the issue in December and January, a debate ensued over whether the city should crack down on the illegal activity or turn a blind eye to needy residents trying to make a few dollars selling food to other income-limited residents.
Three of the five commissioners agreed: Rules are rules and the city can’t choose to enforce some but not others.
“If you have an unlicensed business, you are breaking the law in the city. I don't care if you are selling tamales or if you are selling baseballs out of the back trunk of a car. It's illegal and we have to enforce it,’’ said Commissioner Sarah Malega, whose district includes some of the most popular street vending areas.
The city has prohibited food trucks since 2021.
In January, a divided commission passed a law banning unlicensed vendors on city-owned property and encouraged the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office to continue cracking down on unlicensed vendors who set up on city streets.
The city’s actions came just weeks before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, which was followed a day later by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — ICE — stepping up its presence in Lake Worth Beach’s immigrant community, according to The Palm Beach Post, sending fresh waves and fear and chaos through the Guatemalan community.
But the city’s issue isn’t global, it’s intensely local. City commissioners said they needed to do something because the street vendors cause traffic backups onto Lake Avenue, creating “a safety hazard,’’ Malega said.
“You can't back up seven cars because you decide you just want to pop open your trunk and sell food right there,’’ she said in December.
From her seat at the dais on Jan. 7, Malega held up her cell phone and said she had called the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office non-emergency line 22 times since September about unlicensed street vending.
“And I will continue to call every single time I can't cross the street or every time there's a backup of traffic or every time there's five or six cars on one corner. It's a safety issue. It's a health safety issue,’’ she said.
Sheriff’s deputies have issued warnings and citations over the years. There were at least 29 calls about illegal Lake Worth Beach street vendors to PBSO in 2024, according to records.
But many vendors just drive down the block and resume operations.
“They take their warnings and chuck it,” Malega said. “They don't care about breaking the law in our city and to me that is infuriating.’’
Malega said one Royal Poinciana homeowner who complained to police about traffic in front of his house told her he woke up the next day to find four windows of his car shattered, which he called an act of retaliation.
“These are not the little old ladies trying to support their homes,’’ resident AnnaMarie Windisch-Hunt told commissioners Jan. 7. “They have a mafia. They are organized. This is not random.’’
One food vendor often parks just a few yards from the entrance to Tropical Food Market at Lake Avenue and South E Street. The store’s manager, Mohammed Mujib, who shot the video clip above, said the illicit food sales are cutting into his businesses.
He said it’s not fair that they can sell the same food he offers but without going through the same legal channels that he did.
It’s also not fair to people who want to operate food trucks but can’t because of the city ban.
At least one unlicensed vendor sold tamales from the parking lot of the Hatch, a city-owned cultural building at 1121 Lucerne Ave., two blocks east of E Street. That prompted city officials to draft a law banning unlicensed vendors from city-owned land.
“I know it happens all over, but we can at least prevent it on city property,’’ Commissioner Mimi May said in December, citing her concern about the city’s liability if someone got sick from eating street food sold on city-owned land.
On Jan. 7, Malega, May and Resch voted to pass the prohibition despite concerns by the two dissenting commissioners, Chris McVoy and Reinaldo Diaz, that the measure targets a desperate segment of the city’s population.
“I have bought tamales or chilis from a lady who sells them. I know some of those folks. That's their only income,’’ McVoy said at a December meeting.
“Yes, there may be concerns about it,’’ he said, “but I would ask that we as a commission remember that there's a big population in our town that lives very differently than any of us do.’’
“They're still breaking the law,” May responded.
“I understand that,’’ said McVoy, whose wife is from Venezuela and teaches at a school attended by immigrant children. “I’m asking all of us to have a degree of understanding and walk in the shoes of other parts of our community — and it's a significant part of our community — and ask: Is this really a big problem that needs attention? Is it really worth deciding that our police should enforce some lady who is trying to make an income or trying to get her kid through school and is cooking some tamales?’’
Nearly half of Lake Worth Beach’s 43,346 residents are Hispanic, including 9,160 Guatemalans, according to the U.S. Census. About 20 percent of the city’s population lives in poverty.
Of the roughly 16,000 families served each year by the Guatemalan-Maya Center, a nonprofit based in Lake Worth Beach, 60 percent are Guatemalan, said Assistant Executive Director Mariana Blanco.
The GMC was founded in 1992 in response to the Guatemalan genocide of the lates 1970s and early 1980s that sent thousands of Maya refugees to the United States. Many arrived in Palm Beach County undocumented, afraid of authorities and speaking languages other than Spanish.
Lake Worth Beach officials might show more compassion if they understood the hardships faced by members of marginalized cultural groups like the Maya, said Olga Perez, a GMC volunteer.
“The city doesn't understand why (unlicensed street vendors) are selling food,’’ she said. “I know my community. They need to sell food to get the money to pay bills. They don't steal. I don't know why (commissioners) don’t give them a chance.”
Street vendors approached by a reporter one January weekend were reluctant to comment. One vendor who gave a brief interview said through an interpreter that he sells tamales and pozol on weekends to supplement the income he makes painting houses four days a week.
He said his wife works in a landscape nursery and cooks the food that he sells on the street. The food sales — he charges a dollar a tamale — help them pay rent and raise their two children, he says.
As he drizzled hot sauce on a customer’s fresh tamale, he stole glances down the street, watching for sheriff’s deputies. He said he has been given warnings and citations.
“The police, there are some good ones and some bad ones,’’ he said. “The good ones will say go sell it from your home. The bad ones will impound your car.”
One vendor, Maria Andres Manuel of West Palm Beach, has been cited four times since 2017 for unlicensed vending at South E Street and First Avenue South, PBSO records show. That includes two citations a week apart in February 2024, the second resulting in her being arrested and briefly jailed. She pleaded guilty in all four cases, paying $168 fines and court costs in three cases, including the most recent one in September.
The fact that the food sales go on despite the risk of arrest and vehicle impoundment underscores how desperate many Guatemalan residents are to make ends meet, said the GMC’s Perez.
“What are our priorities for PBSO? How much do we want to distract them from going after drug dealers or violent crimes or guns in the community, things that are more serious and need attention?” McVoy asked at a commission meeting Jan. 7.
May, a frequent McVoy critic who donated $500 to his opponent in the March 11 election, quickly took aim at his comment.
“I can't believe we have leadership up here saying let's look the other way on this law. ‘These other laws? Those are OK but this one is not culturally appropriate so we’re going to ignore it.’ I can't do that. We cannot pick and choose the laws we like. That's not how this works,” she said.
McVoy offered a retort later in the meeting, when May suggested giving a reprieve to homeowners with property liens related to the use of artificial turf in their yards.
“We will go out of our way to remove liens but you have a problem with (an unlicensed vendor selling) $5 tamales. That sounds to me like a very uneven application of justice,” McVoy said.
Commissioner Diaz, who’s facing two opponents in the March 11 election, including one who received a $500 campaign contribution from May, also accused the commission majority of hypocrisy. In March 2024, members of an influential neighborhood association group put on a St. Patrick’s Day golf cart parade downtown without a required permit after the official parade was cancelled, he said.
At May’s urging, commissioners added the language for the new city law banning unlicensed vendors on city-owned property to the draft of a broader ordinance banning homeless people from sleeping in public areas. Diaz and McVoy argued, unsuccessfully, that the unlicensed vendor language be considered on its own.
“I'm not saying these are things that do not need to be addressed and we should look the other way. I'm saying there's a better way of doing it,’’ Diaz said.
“If people are trying to survive and sell tamales out of their trunk and we are singling them out, there's an issue there,’’ Diaz said.
One critic of the street vendors said they are being singled out just like anyone else who breaks the law.
“We live in this country, which is a country of laws. And if you don’t want to abide by the laws of this country, then you need to go to a country where there aren't laws and you can do whatever you want,’’ Peggy Fisher, a resident who has complained about an unlicensed vendor at The Hatch parking lot, told commissioners.
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About the author
Joe Capozzi is an award-winning reporter based in Lake Worth Beach. He spent more than 30 years writing for newspapers, mostly at The Palm Beach Post, where he wrote about the opioid scourge, invasive pythons, the birth of the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches and Palm Beach County government. For 15 years, he covered the Miami Marlins baseball team. Joe left The Post in December 2020. View all posts by Joe Capozzi.