Nick Coleman: City stops the pop, pop, pop in blind man's candy shop

John Zitek is blind. But he is a popcorn man with a nose for business. So when the city of St. Paul told him to stop selling popcorn in the candy shop he operates in a state building, he believed someone was trying to get rid of him.

Maybe he's right. There seems to have been a food fight in the Human Services building at 444 Lafayette Road.

Zitek, 43, has been blind since birth. Each weekday, he leaves his Minneapolis home at 5:30 a.m. to take the bus to St. Paul. He works hard, gets home at about 6 p.m., and enjoys a modest living, earning about $40,000 a year from his shop, which is one of half a dozen shops leased by the state's Services for the Blind as part of an effort to give jobs to the blind.

But in January, the pop went out of Zitek's sales. Literally.

Someone allegedly complained about the popcorn smell wafting from his shop near the building entrance, prompting a visit from a city inspector in December. The inspection turned up no health hazards, but the city told the building manager that Zitek's popcorn and coffee sales were not permitted by his license.

That was strange.

A block away, at the Department of Natural Resources, a blind operator with the exact same city license still sells popcorn.

But Zitek was ordered to remove his popcorn popper, coffee pots and microwave.

He did so at the end of January. He says it is costing $2,000 or $3,000 in sales a month.

"I'm just a small guy trying to make a decent living, an honest living," he says. "I just want to sell popcorn and coffee. I don't want that much."

Here's where the popcorn battle gets tricky. Zitek believes the complaint about his popcorn making originated with the company that runs the building's cafeteria. But a spokesperson for the company, Taher Inc., says the firm has no problem with Zitek and that it works in harmony with the blind operator at the DNR building, who is still popping corn. But Zitek says he has had run-ins with building management over competition between him and the cafeteria.

The building manager, Fred Koehler of Meritex Enterprises, says the popcorn problem is mostly a city issue. But he acknowledges some tension between Zitek and the cafeteria:

"There's a question as to who gets to do what," he said.

We don't need a congressional investigation. But it stands to reason there could be some competitive tension. Zitek doesn't pay rent for his space, which is leased by the state. He does, however, pay a substantial part of his revenues to the state to help support the Business Enterprises Program of the Services to the Blind.

A new license? Not so fast

"The cafeteria would love to get me out of the building because I'm too much competition," says Zitek, who used to have vending machines in the cafeteria, too. All he wants now is to get back to popping corn. He thought it would be easy, until he paid a visit to city offices to get a new license.

That's when he ran into a bureaucratic nightmare. Every one of his questions required someone to do research before he could get a response. Every time the city had a question for him, it felt as if he was getting the third-degree.

Not so fast, Mister. You can't just sell popcorn in this town. First, we have to make your life miserable. And make you cough up a thousand bucks.

Zitek was told he would have to present a proposal to Zoning and Planning and bring in detailed blueprints and architectural drawings before the city could approve his scheme to put a popcorn popper back where it used to be.

"This is just ridiculous," Zitek says. "There's been a store here for 20 years, making popcorn. But I have to go through a planning process. I'm upset. My customers are upset. No wonder businesses have trouble in this city."

I don't know if Zitek is right about that. But I will say that the DNR building, where the smell of popcorn wafts through the lobby, seems a lot friendlier than the popcorn-free building next door.

St. Paul should get that popper popping again.

"We'll find the appropriate license for him, and I can guarantee it won't involve blueprints or architectural drawings," said a chagrined Mark Kaisersatt, community liaison for the city's Department of Safety and Inspections.

Kaisersatt said that plan reviews are "triggered" by applications for new food licenses and that the city "isn't going to let anyone be preparing food" without the proper license. Zitek may need a sink for washing coffee pots and popcorn utensils, Kaisersatt said (Zitek uses a sink across the hall) "but I doubt we're going to have him bring blueprints."

The appropriate license, it turns out, costs $75 a year.

Zitek has paid a lot more than that in frustration.

"Popcorn has been here forever," he says. "But someone got a bug up their back, and I got squashed."

Nick Coleman • ncoleman@startribune.com