Broadway street market vendors. Photograph: LondonPS / Alamy/Alamy
Street food's DIY, community ethic encourages vendors to share resources - but when their logos and branding are reappropriated, it's gone a step too far.
Street food was always about the spirit of sharing. Traders, parking up at the side of a road (or in the middle of a field) and happily lending out their socket sets and jump leads to fellow traders. But, as of late, the sharing has been getting out of hand. Traders are making off with each other's property - intellectual property - and passing off recipes, logos and ideas as their own. It's getting nasty.
The most vocal is The Ribman, purveyor of fine ribs and the creator of Holy Fuck hot sauce. Maybe it was just a coincidence when a burrito place in Glasgow came up with their own 'Holy Fuck' hot sauce. In a virtually identical bottle. Or maybe they knew that the name 'Holy Fuck' wasn't covered under trademark law because it was deemed too offensive. When The Ribman berated them on Twitter, the burrito place changed the name to 'Fuck a Duck'.
The appropriation of ideas doesn't stop there. Menus. Typefaces. Even street food vans. Simon Luard laughed when he noticed how similar Margo and Rita's H Van was to Mary, his beloved van at Luardos: "Apparently, the bloke just left the vehicle with some graffiti artists. And handed them a pic of Mary, saying 'I love this - but don't copy it'. Stupid really." Luard found it flattering. And funny. "But sad too," he says. "You have a rare chance to stamp your own personality on something. Sad to just go out and copy." Margo and Rita's is now under new ownership.
"It's always gone on," says Scott Collins, co-founder of MEATliquor. "I remember a place in London in the 1980s that was an exact copy of something in New York. But 95% of the London crowd had no idea. Nowadays, they would have heard about the original on social media." That's how Collins first heard about Meat & Liquor (with the ampersand in the logo hidden in the nose of a cow) in the north of England. "We started getting complaints from fans asking us if it was one of our branches. We got an email complaint from a local resident who had allegedly seen a door supervisor beating somebody up in the street. Clearly it was nothing to do with us."
After a protracted legal battle, MEATliquor forced Meat & Liquor into changing their name. It's now called Meat Factory. "We don't own 'meat'," says Collins. "Or 'liquor', and we didn't invent cocktails or burgers. However, we have put them all together in a certain way. We've spent £50k in the last two years trademarking everything that is unique to us and then challenging the attempted mimicry. It's not just a vanity stance. We have 250 people working for us. We need to protect their livelihood too."
Ownership of ideas is difficult to prove. Two hot dog sellers around Manchester are still rowing - venomously - over who first created the peanut butter with bacon jam hot dog topping. And Jonathan Downey, co-owner of Street Feast (and a lawyer) berated Leeds-based Fu-Schnikens after they won the 2014 Street Food Awards for branding that closely resembled London's Taiwanese restaurant, Bao. Downey is a powerful voice in street food, and Fu-Schnikens boss, Ben Davy, reacted to criticism straight away. "We created our brands after multiple trips to Portland and New York" he says. "When we realised what had happened with the logo for Fu-Schnikens, we immediately changed it. We are very proud to be part of the emerging street food scene of the north and we have worked very hard with multiple vendors in celebrating street food."
As more money floods into street food, is there a danger of the lawyers taking over? Will the punk, DIY aesthetic get lost? Downey doesn't care. "I will call out every copycat I come across and I'm sure the street food community will continue to close ranks around and support those whose ideas, creativity, originality and livelihood are being stolen by others who lack the imagination to do their own thing."
