Twenty-one new vendors are now eligible to sell food and wares in D.C.’s downtown business improvement district, ending a moratorium on new carts that has been in place since 1998.
The vendors were selected from among approximately 120 candidates by a lottery, D.C. Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs spokeswoman Karyn-Siobhan Robinson said. She could not release the names of the vendors due to privacy issues.
DCRA will hold another lottery in May to award licenses in areas beyond the prime downtown spots, though officials are still determining the exact locations and the number of licenses, she said. She expects many of this round’s losing applicants will re-enter in the next round.
About half of the new vendors selected will sell food, while the rest will market retail items, Robinson said.
“We’re going to be looking at some interesting merchandise; we’re not just talking about T-shirts and hot dogs,” Robinson said.
