Mayor Bloomberg’s grand vision to improve New Yorkers’ health by severely limiting sales of high-calorie beverages on city property is short-sighted and destructive, say blind vendors who operate stands in city-owned buildings.
The vendors were notified Monday that they can dedicate just two slots in their beverage machines for high-calorie beverages such as soda, iced tea and juice – and that the buttons must be “in the position of the lowest selling potential,” according to the new regulations.
Water gets pride of place – at least two slots “closest to eye level, generally near the top” – and other low-calorie beverages, less than 25 calories per eight ounces, can make up the rest, the regulations mandate.
What’s more, regular soda and juice can only be 12 ounces or less, while water and other “healthy” drinks must be 12 ounces or more.
“It’s going to destroy my business,” said Carmine Cataldo III, who runs a lobby shop inside the Brooklyn Supreme Court Building at 360 Adams Street. “[The higher-calorie drinks are] 60 percent of my sales.”
He would even need to replace his Pepsi vending machine because the new rules insist advertising space must “promote healthy beverages or healthy activities.”
A representative of the vendors said customers intent on getting sugary drinks will simply take the rest of their business elsewhere.
“If customers can’t get what they want, they’re going to walk out and get it somewhere else,” said Gary Grassman, a spokesman for the vendors. And “while they’re out there, they’ll buy their candy and newspapers out there, too.”
Patrick Piccirillo, who has been in the business for 10 years, already went through this upheaval as a vendor at 125 Worth St., the Health Department’s headquarters.
So after his sales fell precipitously, he managed to arrange a transfer to 120 Schermerhorn St. in Brooklyn — only to have the regulations get there before he has even gotten there.
“They only want water and seltzer in the machines. How much water and seltzer do people want? There are only three kinds of seltzer!” he said. “Even the VitaminWater doesn’t meet their standards because it’s 20 ounces and it’s more than 50 calories.”
Carl Jacobsen, president of the National Federation for the Blind of New York and a retired vendor himself, said the top-earning vendor in city courthouses makes less than $50,000 a year – and that the vendors’ income would plummet when the rules take effect in January.
“At a time when there’s a 70 percent unemployment rate among the blind, it seems unfair that Mayor Bloomberg is trying to achieve his health agenda on the backs of blind people.”
The city Health Department did not return a call for comment.
Cataldo sees the writing on the wall.
“I’m watching my business walk out the door,” he said.
Additional reporting by Sabrina Ford