City officials announced that pop-up entrepreneurs have one month to obtain permits as, come the new year (January 2022), they will begin cracking down by coordinating sweeps. The issue is that such a permit does not exist. Furthermore, additional barriers exist such as:

• Lack of access to affordable commercial kitchen space for emerging businesses
• Opportunities to scale are not permitted
  • food trailers or other temporary structures aren't permitted
  • food truck permits are limited to 100 per year and have strict location guidelines. Therefore, investment a food truck is a costly gamble)
  • food cart permits are very limited 
  • group pop-up shops are costly to the organizer who then passes the cost to the vendor (not including the special event vendor's fee paid to the city directly)

Food pop-ups are an important tool for early-stage culinary entrepreneurs to test the market before growing their business into a formalized entity capable of creating jobs.

These small food businesses serve populations at times of day and in locations when customers cannot get food otherwise, such as when restaurants are closed, within a restaurant outside of its typical operating hours, or at a bar or business that does not serve its own food.

Currently, as detailed below, the permitting processes for food pop-ups in New Orleans present barriers that are prohibitively complex and expensive, and they require many individual permits.

Due to the prohibitive nature of the number, cost, and requirements of permitting, food pop-ups are forced to operate outside of oversight, resulting in loss of sales tax revenue for the City of New Orleans and unmanaged food safety risks. (SOURCE: NOLA FPAC)