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Location is everything — especially for street vendors who don’t pay a cent for rent and make a killing on the sidewalks outside prime Manhattan real estate.
Hot-dog vendor Peter Casimis pulls in an average of $250 a day — and up to $400 when business is hopping — at the cart he has run for years outside Macy’s 35th Street and Broadway entrance.
The street entrepreneur, 57, closely guards the lucrative corner next to the famed department store, which is in an area where retail rents average $600 per square foot a month.
“I came one time and found somebody else, and I said, ‘I’ve been here so many years,’ and he moved,” said Casimis, who pays $60 a year for his vendor’s license and $200 every two years for a tax identification number to earn his comfortable living.
Ice-cream vendor Cemil Sag, 31, said he makes a cool $700 on a good day working the sidewalk near Citibank at 37th Street and Fifth Avenue, where retail rents run upward of $500 per square foot.
And in downtown Manhattan, outside the city’s Marriage Bureau at 141 Worth St., Serbian-born photographer Goran Veljic rakes in the bucks taking pictures of brides and grooms. He has served as official witness for more than 4,000 weddings.
“It’s my little place,” said Veljic, standing next to his “NY1 Minute Weddings” sign on the steps of the bureau, where — at $20 a photo shoot — he makes $100 on a slow day and up to $1,000 if he follows up with couples around the city to take more pictures.
Rents in the area for brick-and-mortar businesses go for about $175 per square foot, said Faith Hope Consolo, a retail real-estate agent for Prudential Douglas Elliman.
“I start a business and brought new money to Worth Street,” said Veljic, who boasted that he has photographed the City Hall marriages of Kelsey Grammer and Alec Baldwin.
He also is certified to officially marry couples — for an extra fee, of course.
Veljic doesn’t need a permit but does pay taxes for his company, he said.
On 51st Street and Park Avenue, brothers Nick and Franky Karagiorgos won’t disclose what they bring in at Uncle Gussy’s, the blue Greek-fare food truck that took over the spot where an uncle had been selling hot dogs since 1971.
“It’s our spot,” said Nick, who daily turns out scores of $9 food platters to hungry hedge-funders with grub that the brothers promise is “as home as it gets.”
“It’s just second nature to be here.”
Bookseller Charlie Mursky has been dealing titles out of his parked car on Columbus and West 68th Street, where several restaurant neighbors pay $400 per square foot.
“If I wasn’t here, nothing would be here,” said Mursky, who wouldn’t put an amount on how much he makes a day.
“I bring a great deal of value to the community. I provide them with something they need, which is knowledge and information.”
Additional reporting by Lois Weiss and Brianna Farulla