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Dear New Yorkers,

Every weekday, Isabel, a 30-year-old asylum seeker from Ecuador, finds a spot among the tourists, shoppers and licensed food vendors in SoHo.

Without a permit, she sells $10 packaged lunches from coolers to construction workers, offering hot soups and a beverage with generous platters of Ecuadorian staples like roast chicken with rice and beans and chaulafan, a fried rice served with plantains.

It’s likely that her customers assume that Isabel makes the food at home, a common practice among vendors at construction sites. In fact, they are a product of a more sophisticated kind of business quietly emerging from restaurants and make-shift commercial kitchens, in what has become an early example of how new migrants — scrambling to find any kind of work — are helping to expand the city’s economy in unexpected ways.

The lunches Isabel sells are prepared in bulk in a Queens pizza shop, before it opens for normal business. Isabel is one of more than 30 vendors dispatched by the restaurant owner.

Interviews by THE CITY with more than a dozen vendors and lunch business entrepreneurs paint a picture of a spurt of apartments, backyards and restaurants where crews cook overnight for vending operations that have become a new part of the city’s food chain.

And as these lunches have become more visible, more New Yorkers are catching on to the meals, which are cheaper than a Big Mac combo.

But they also attract attention from local businesses, licensed food carts, and the police.

Read more here about the lunch businesses.

Weather scoop by New York Metro Weather Thursday's Weather Rating: 5/10. Mostly cloudy and still fairly humid with high temperatures in the mid-70s. A few showers or periods of drizzle are possible, but it won't be a washout. It's not great either, though. The vibes are … all right.

Our Other Top Stories

The MTA has rolled out a $68 billion five-year capital plan. The proposed 2025-2029 budget for investment projects is the agency’s most ambitious roadmap ever, with the bulk of spending marked for upkeep of the 120-year-old subway system — which officials concede has assets that are “in real danger of failure.” The president of MTA Construction & Development even admitted that “there are seven stations where the platforms are being held up by two-by-fours.” As you might have heard, there’s an election on Nov. 5. Aside from voting for the next president, New Yorkers will vote on races at the state and local levels, plus ballot measures. Here’s The CITY’s guide to everything you need to know about voting, from how to register to when early voting starts.

Things To Do

Here’s what’s going on around the city this week.

Thursday, Sept. 19: Trail Thursdays on the XC, a weekly community trail maintenance project. Free from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. in Van Cortlandt Park in The Bronx. Saturday, Sept. 21: Do yoga on the stoop outside of the Brooklyn Museum. Tickets are $20 and include museum admission. Class is 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 21: An outdoor sketching workshop led by an artist and illustrator. Free from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Riverside Park in Manhattan.

THE KICKER: Yesterday was the city’s first rat summit, reports Gothamist. The mayor was there.

Thanks, as always, for reading. Make it a great Thursday.

Love,

THE CITY

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