BEAVERTON, Ore. (KOIN) — Plans for a new food cart pod in Beaverton may be pushed aside because of the high start-up costs.
New rules for food cart pods went into affect in the fall.
Beaverton business owner Kent Drangsholt tells KOIN he recently met with city planners and found out that the upfront cost to put in four food carts in front of his store, the Garage Sale Warehouse, would be around $80,000.
“I was shocked. I was thinking I can’t recoup my money on this thing for five to ten years, so why would I want to do it? Why would anybody want to do it? It just seems like the City of Beaverton was saying we really don’t want carts, but we’re going to allow carts,” Drangsholt says.
Drangsholt tallied up cost estimates for the new pod. The application alone is $2,000 and each hookup costs $4,600. He also says the city asked him to dig up the parking lot in order to install permanent utility hook ups for water, sewer and electricity. That would cost another $30-50,000.
“For what ever reason, they think that’s the best way to go and I’m sure it would look nice, and that’d be great, but we can physically do it, so it looks nice above ground for a tenth of the cost,” he says.
Beaverton’s Community Development Director Cheryl Twete says this is the first food cart pod application they city has had. They are encouraging applications and will have a better idea of the exact costs later this week.
