We wanted to explain to all of our amazing customers about why we will not be back down to our Davie and Marinaside location in yaletown. When we started out, the only way to get going was by "renting" a location. There are a group of people in the program who have been there for years who have no interest in running a business but instead turn around and profit from renting. This had turned the program into a very ugly situation. The "landlord" of "our" location has decided to try to charge us a ridiculous amount of money (cash) to pay them to be down there. We are talking an outrageous amount of money! We feel like we are being blackmailed and the city will not help us and this is wrong. These people who abuse the program will not give receipts, sign contracts, or any other paperwork. Obviously not declaring this to the government either. To this date, we have never even met the location owner, just her son. We tried to pay for the location with a cheque, so we would therefore have a receipt, and now the son has disappeared. Interesting?! For 5 years we have tried to get rid of this problem and the city pretends it doesn't exist. We feel the program should be for entrepreneurs, not abused by greedy individuals who contribute nothing to vancouvers food scene or to this program in general. This is a widespread problem in the vending program. We have been the only vendors at the Marinaside location, we are the face of it and have tried to do a great job in the community. We've even hired local kids and given them their first jobs :). We need your support! We have been trying to get city hall to move us to the other side of the round about and give us the location (grandfather us into it) which we feel we deserve. We need the support of the Yaletown BIA and City Hall and especially YOU so we can get back to Marinaside where it all started :)! it's so frustrating to have no rights when it comes to this program. We have worked so hard to build our business, to just have it yanked away from us, leaving us with no options. The city allows these locations to be rented, but they don't give you rights when your taken advantage of. This makes no sense. Here are some important email addresses for people at city hall that can make a difference. We are in hopes that you will contact them and express the same frustration we have. You can contact "Heather Deal" - vancouver city council - clrdeal@vancouver.ca Or "Alan Rockett"- vancouver city hall/ street vending coordinator - alan.rockett@vancouver.ca We miss you all and hopefully we will see you soon. We will go to public media with the situation as we are not the only ones facing these issues. We are just trying to run a business and we face a lot of challenges and feel these people should be removed from the program. At this point, we are just up the road at Davie and Seymour at Emery Barnes park. Please visit us there and sign our petition if you can! We miss you guys tons and can't wait to get back there!!! Thanks for your continued support throughout the years... BigDogs :)