Why has Chicago given special permission to nonprofit E.A.T. Chicago to sell tofu scramble wraps on sidewalks downtown, calling the idea an innovative “emerging business,” while long-standing traditional vendors are arrested for selling tamales in Little Village?

Chicago's vendors have been pleading for the city to legalize them for decades. Under current law,vendors cannot get a license to sell food from a pushcart, even if they have taken the city's food safety classes and are eligible to manage restaurant kitchens. Sidewalk vendors live in fear of the police, who occasionally ticket them, throw away their inventory or arrest them. Other entrepreneurs who dream of starting a small food business by selling iced coffee or bagels or salads from a cart or bicycle trailer are denied licenses at City Hall, and their dreams (and businesses) never get off the ground.

In contrast, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office announced in August that E.A.T. had received the first“emerging business license” from the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection. The emerging business license was created in 2012 so that the city could grant a temporary license to an innovative business that the City Council had not previously considered, giving the business time to get started and the City Council time to write new laws.

Read more at Crain's Chicago Business