Formalizing San Francisco’s Informal Street Food Vendors

In San Francisco, young economic developers help immigrant women turn their small, informal businesses into thriving corporations, while others try to take advantage of the boom in boutique food trucks. These entrepreneurs discuss how they package and market street foods for middle-class consumption. The chapter introduces basic urban geographic concepts, such as cultural capital, cosmopolitanism, symbolic capital, social distinction, and the geographic imagination. It argues that elevating immigrant foods for middle-class consumption creates complex issues that pertain to cultural appropriation, which can cause ethnic exclusion and spur gentrification.