Cheapeats, Inc. Blog

In light of the City of London Corporation’s immediate termination of KERB’s street food market at The Gherkin, we are launching a campaign to Make The City of London Taste Better.

The Gherkin remains hugely supportive of our weekly Midday-2pm slot on the plaza at 30 St Mary Axe. The City of London Corporation don’t feel the same, deeming the market unsightly and unbecoming of such an iconic building. Land usage forms the technical aspect of the closure, but the main argument calls for an aesthetic lock down on the City of London, and a harsh rebuke of the independent street food entrepreneurs who have seen their businesses flourish in its environs since November 2012.

We don’t undertake this campaign lightly, and recognise the enormous power imbalance between KERB and The City of London, but believe there is a ground swell of support within London and the Square Mile for the diversity, deliciousness and personality that street food brings.

We have had upwards of 1000 office workers eat outside the Gherkin every Thursday since our launch last November, and in light of the wider decline of independent food businesses throughout the country, with an estimated 30,000 closing over the last decade, we want you to join us in our stand against the encroaching corporate homogenisation of our cities.

We see this as a fight for the rights of independent, specialist businesses to co-exist with the high street chains, and for the aesthetic value that street food, in its varying styles, brings to the City of London. This is, as Paul Kingsnorth puts it, ‘a battle against the bland’, a rejection of the spoon-fed tedium served up in faceless outlets across the capital

We believe that Londoners deserve to be offered a more varied lunch life. Upwards of 1000 have voted with their mouths every Thursday at the base of the Gherkin – we now need you, and all of your colleagues, friends and families, to join us in KERB’s own battle against the bland.

London needs it!

SIGN THE PETITION

Happiness, £15 and under.