FULL STORY: "The Man" vs. Food

Today food vendors filed suit against the city, saying city leaders are preventing them from earning a living.

Yvonne Castaneda is proud to call 'Destiny's Ice Cream' her bread and butter.

"I am the head of household, my husband is not able to work because he is disabled," Castaneda said.

But ever since the city made changes to the food handling ordinance, she says her sales have gone down the drain.

"This year, it's been like 3 times lower than it was two years ago, and last year," Castaneda said.

Yvonne and other food vendors met outside the federal courthouse to announce a lawsuit against the city over rules they say are unnecessary, such as having to stay a thousand feet away from restaurants and not parking and waiting for customers.

"A thousand feet is particularly aggressive," said the attorney from Institute for Justice who is representing the food vendors, Matt Miller. "For instance the city of San Antonio has a 300-foot restriction, but most cities have no restrictions at all, at least for proximity."

Miller said the purpose of this ordinance was to protect brick-and-mortar restaurants. We asked the city for comment but they said they couldn't say anything about the pending litigation.

"They have to comply with traffic laws, they have to comply with food safety laws, nobody is challenging that," Miller said. "But this new wave of ordinances that we've seen, they really seem like an attempt to run vendors out of town."

"The regulations are good to have," Castaneda said. "You are going to get sick if we don't have it at the right temperature."

While Castaneda supports regulation of permits and health codes, she wants things to go back to the way they were before the ordinance changed, so she's not driven out of town.

"It's not even funny how much money I'm making," she said.

The city has twenty days to respond to the lawsuit. But attorneys for the food vendors say it could take as many as nine months before they see any progress. You can view the ordinance, enacted in August of 2009, by clicking on the link below.