Up Before Dawn

The job of selling food from a pushcart in New York City is not an easy one, but that doesn't stop Lorena Dareuch from loving it.



The job of street vending can involve a decade-long wait for a license, turf wars, a nearly nocturnal work week and hours on your feet. It seems a difficult career path to choose, but Lorena Dareuch doesn’t seem to mind.

A resident of Astoria, Queens, Lorena is a small-framed woman of medium height who talks and laughs often. Her uniform is a red apron and her big and brown eyes twinkle, making her look younger than her 50 years. As a vendor selling baked goods and coffee to commuters just outside the University gate on Fordham Road, Lorena gets up at 2:30 a.m. each morning to prepare for the day’s work.

She and her husband Hector, who also sells food in a pushcart on Fordham Road, visit four different bakeries each morning to stock up for the day. They go to one bakery for bagels, another for donuts, one for rolls and a different one for danishes. They pick up milk for the coffee and then head up to the Bronx with their pushcart hooked to the back of the car. Because there are two carts – hers and her husband’s – Hector drops her off at 3:30 a.m. and then takes the 20 minute drive back to Queens for his cart. Although they work across the street from one another, Lorena doesn’t see her husband until 11:30 a.m. when she closes up shop and goes to help him until 2p.m.

Their positions are strategic, and they seem to be working since Hector and Lorena have been there for over 10 years. Positioned next to a Metro North station and a main bus stop and across from Fordham University and the offices at Fordham Plaza, they get a lot of foot traffic.

To even have such a business in New York City, Lorena and Hector needed to get personal vending licenses issued in order to be eligible to apply for a Department of Health permit, of which there are only about 3,000 city-wide. The wait for this permit can be very long – Lorena waited six years for hers and her husband waited 10. Once you have these two things, maybe a decade later, you’re good to go. But of course you also need to have a cart (which costs thousands of dollars) and a garage where it is legal to park it (which rent for a couple hundred dollars).

However, the long wait seems to be paying off for the Dareuchs, who have been doing this for over 10 years now, each making about $300-$400 a day. Although her biggest complaint about the job is having to get up so early, she says the best part is the customers. She loves “to work with the people and talk with the people – to know many different people from everywhere.” Her enjoyment is evident and is also the reason most of her customers are regulars. She knows what they want and is already preparing it by the time they get close enough to order. On a recent morning, a smiling round man walked up to the window in the cart.

“You know my order?” he asked, but she was already on it. He usually patronizes her husband’s cart, but today he said he came to visit her. She has formed relationships with many of the customers and some of them give her gifts for the holidays. One woman, Norma, has been coming to Lorena for 13 years now, as long as she has been vending. When they met, Lorena was pregnant and had just started vending.

She had been working during much of her pregnancy despite the unfriendly working conditions – early hours, a small space with nowhere to sit, and no bathroom. Six months in, however, she had to go to the emergency room and stayed in the hospital for the next two weeks with painful fibroids.

“I almost lost the baby,” she said.

Since then, Norma has brought birthday gifts for Lorena’s son, Brendan. For the years of good customers, Lorena has only had a few bad ones. Once, a woman started verbally abusing her and threatened to throw hot tea in Lorena’s face. Most times, though, people are just plain rude, acting impatient and asking for refills as if she runs a diner.

“Some customers say they aren’t coming back and I say, ‘Oh, please,’” she said, putting her hands together under her chin as if to pray, pleading, “Do it.”
Despite this unfortunate reality in her business, there have been few bad customers over the years.

“I can count them on my hand,” she said.

Over the years, though, she had worse things to worry about than rude customers. Recently, the owner of a falafel cart decided to situate himself right next to Hector and started harassing him, bringing a group of men whom Lorena calls his “bodyguards” to the corner and verbally abusing her and her husband. Although they called the police, nothing has been done and the falafel cart has been there for a few months. Lorena complains about how dirty the falafel cart owner keeps his business and about the customers he takes away from Hector. Luckily, this is the first time something like this has happened, which is why Lorena is so cheery about the job. Despite the various hardships, she is sending her son to a Catholic high school next year.

“We worked hard to give him the best,” she said.