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This always jumps out at me with US public spaces: no vendors, except maybe very cheap pushcarts. Is it because we inherited a weird Anglo hangup about the corrupting nature of commercial uses, or because we simply have far too much parkland per capita to sustain it?

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Frank Smith

@frank_smith1111

Jul 11

Europe figured out concessions decades ago. Every park has a kiosk: espresso, pastry, maybe a spritz or a beer at 6pm. Small operator pays rent, city gets revenue, park gets foot traffic and eyes on the grass. Everyone wins. SF has 230+ parks and almost none of this. Dolores

1:20 PM · Jul 11, 2026

David Watson 🥑

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There are lots of concession places in most parks and public spaces I have visited in the USA. I find these “Europe does this” - as if everyone making these claims has visited every square inch of this country. Also - not EVERY corner of Europe has this.

No there's not.

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Every park in Europe does not do this Sofia has multiple huge parks that have no vendors. South Park (250 acres) is most popular yet only has Bianco Carrello on the west edge and bar and grill on the north edge, next to the boulevard because they need parking Parks in the city

east coast is better about concessions. west coast environmentalism and anti social landowner protectionism seems like the cause at least in CA. like people who live near parks don't want folks who travel far to feel comfortable there.

@solarpunkfutur3

What is there to sustain? It would be on the operator to bear the costs of running, would it not? And while we are at adding them to parks, let's add to residential districts as well. If a use does not create a nuisance, why prohibit?

where do you people live where every public space is not overrun with commerce? i just want a break from all this shit, being advertised to, and nagged to buy stuff

TuesdayNightCompany

@TuesdayNightCo

Street vendors used to be common in the past. Roasted chestnuts, peanuts, hot dogs, you name it. Not just New York City but also other major and mid-size cities. They usually congregated at public parks and high-foot traffic corners.

It's not an Anglo hangup anymore, as park vendors are the norm in the UK.

its because our endless liability and grift make it uneconomical except at large enclosed places where they can gouge on prices. A small operator with fair prices can't afford all the permitting and its not worth the liability for the host venue for a nominal fee.

@big_pedestrian

The US has managed to combine the ruthlessness and most egregious excesses of capitalism with a belief that kiosks in parks are a corrupting influence. Amazing.

This feels recent but Americans can no longer walk their own driveway without a sippy cup and a bag of snacks. Triple it if they have kids. So even old-fashioned water fountains are unnecessary, let alone a guy selling popsicles.

The regs (both food safety and handling rules, as well as the paper work) plus the gib mes on the application fees mean you’re either going to get Burger King or an illegal cart that pays no taxes and has no refrigeration

Probably because the only way to do it is to give it to a nonprofit that would charge $73 million plus profits for operating a small juice stand in a park in a town of 40k.

Omaha essentially did a version of this by creating designated food truck areas around the Riverfront park complex and putting a bunch of seating all over the place. It’s been a huge success. But it’s the only park in the city with anything like it.

rumpelstiltskinsskin

@ramitdyathroat

We’re just not as communal as euros. euros have a tendency to be all up in each other’s shit

Ethan Mingolelli

I run a food truck and the model is somewhat similar to this, the costs of permitting and other bureaucratic processes like others mentioned as well as our general economy make this difficult to succeed, many parks get very minimal use except for a peak window weekly, etc

regulatory capture by landowners. residents complain about traffic, noise, trash, etc. and commercial landowners have a clear interest in driving these small businesses out of public spaces and into private storefronts

have you been to union square - or any park in Manhattan?

Here’s a picture of the beverage menu at the Milwaukee County Park I was at last night. There’s pizza, big pretzels, and lots of other food too. This is typical.

We don't do the missing middle of kiosks well. In Mpls/StP we have some popular bigger places, like on Sea Salt in M'haha Falls Park. The park service stopped govt run hot dog stand and leased to private restaurant. It's hard biz this because seasonal. Also alcohol laws an issue.

I looked into doing something like this in “the free state of Florida” on the beach and the requirements were burdensome to the point of it not penciling out.

Surprisingly onerous regulations. Unbelievably difficult, tried in my city. Effectively illegal

@JB3138555862432

I live in a major American city and there are street vendors everywhere I go, especially at parks, where the fuck do you live? A parking lot in Dallas?

I find it infuriating that most US parks and playgrounds don’t have cafes like European ones.

It doesnt help when our first NYC Parks Commissioner was a man so useless with money that he subsidized capital flight from the city he actually worked for to the suburbs and depended on his wife to manage the household budget. Seeing how bad he was with money was eye opening.

Ñîçk Whëlåñ

It's assholes ruining it for everyone else. Austin put forth a Zilker Plan, which would have revitalized the park pavilion and likely allowed beer sales. Austin's two top pricks,

and Bill Bunch of

crusaded against low-level staff and for recalls.

The Urbane Planner

There were at least two similar park concession stands built in Charlotte in the last 20 years. One on the Sugar Creek Greenway and one in Uptown at Romare Bearden Park. The one on the greenway had a restaurant as the concessionaire for a couple of weeks when it first opened…

Greg Mihailides

One of these would thrive in the center of McKinley Park in Sac. Coffee, pastries, simple sandwiches, drinks in the cooler, ice cream bars, snacks.

No Americans are just obsessed with separating every zone, and doing that with big spaces. If you want park, you drive to park. If you want hotdog, you drive to hotdog. Things rarely -almost never- overlap, that's why it has terrible public space.

There is a nice park in downtown Raleigh that has a good kiosk that kinda looks like that one in your picture.

Brandon wants 1 million more neighbors

Cincinnati does a good job of this. I just had a beer in a park while my kid played.

Adrián Fernández Baumann

The nature of common law, and endless smallholders have produced a tremendous number of claims of small rights to any space. People thing these issues stem from left wing over regulation, but (as with CEQA) it’s over regulation stemming from right wing small holders.

To rephrase your first one: I think Americans have made a virtue out of zoning, and so a park is a park, it can't possibly also be commercial. That would "ruin" it. It's the same root reason we're stuck with bedroom communities in our traffic laden endless sprawl.