Street and snack foods can be found in nearly every corner of the world and have been on sale for thousands of years. Such foods are inexpensive, provide a nutritional source based on traditional knowledge, mostly follow the seasonality of farm production and thus allow for variation in consumer diets, and are widely distributed and available in both urban and rural settings. They provide food distribution activities at the smallest scale, but with intensive coverage. Any location with ‘people traffic’, be it constant or intermittent, provides an excellent selling ground for vendors of street and snack foods. Many people who are poor and cannot afford food from retail stores depend on food that street vendors provide. Key words: informal sector, street food, consumers