I have a theory that the largely unregulared street food culture survives due to how rare it is for people in cities (in particular) to cook for themselves. Fi

I have a theory that the largely unregulared street food culture survives due to how rare it is for people in cities (in particular) to cook for themselves. Firstly, you have a large population who are going to purchase food several times a day. That means a food vendor can potentially establish themselves in single location or a neighborhood and build a base of repeat customers, customers who may purchase from them several times a week, if not every day. Beyond that direct repeat business, regulars will order from their favorite vendor even when they have no queue of waiting customers. That initial group of regulars around a vendor waiting for their order sends a strong positive signal to other potential customers who may not usually buy food in this area. If you dont know the vendors, buying from a vendor with no customers is a risky move. Next, because buying meals is such a common part of everyone's life it becomes a common conversation. That provides an additional chance to reward quality vendors while punishing low quality vendors. That environment strongly punishes food vendors that make their customers sick in particular. Your regulars will abandon you and bad mouth you to all their friends and coworkers. Meanwhile, in the west mobile food vendors rarely have that kind of repeat clientele. Most customers will purchase food from them precisely once. And even if you complain to your friends, chances are that so much time will have passed before they encounter that vendor that they will have forgotten the conversation.