If Only The City Health Department Got Them To Start Selling Apples Then Maybe Yellow M&Ms Would Cease To Exist

Lingering questions are answered regarding the ubiquitous Yellow M&M vendors on the subway (sometimes they’re stolen, but not always, and no, they don’t get them from Costco, though they probably should), but not the most important one, which is whether New Yorkers are really that enamored with Peanut M&Ms:

Last week, Derrick Cruz, a 17-year-old with thick dreadlocks and a droopy backpack, walked into Delma’s Tobacco Company, a cramped candy-and-cigarette wholesaler on Burnside Avenue in the Tremont section of the Bronx. Across the front room, Francisco Ferrer looked up behind a bulletproof window.

“Yellow M&Ms,” Mr. Cruz said in Spanish, and Mr. Ferrer directed him to a stack of yellow boxes, each containing 48 packages of peanut M&Ms. “That’s the one lots of people want,” Mr. Cruz explained. “I don’t have the money to get a lot of different kinds.”

Few sights are more familiar to New York subway riders than those teenage boys who peddle candy on the train, materializing just as the car lurches into motion and delivering a spiel about a basketball team or an after-school program. But behind every such vendor is a wholesaler like Delma’s, one of a handful of stores around the city that provide the teenagers with their stock in trade. Mr. Cruz now sells his candy on the street, but he was a subway vendor when he started buying candy at Delma’s, which has been in the business for about 15 years. He still encounters former subway competitors at the store. “I see a lot of people here,” he said.

But for the store’s employees, this clientele is a mixed blessing. “Those kids come in pairs, and they’re a pain,” Mr. Ferrer said. “Many times, they come to steal. You’ve got to watch them. One’s talking to you, and the other’s putting it all into his pants.”

. . .

There are certain constants in the subway candy-vending business. One is that the peanut M&M is the staple of subway candy. “Yellow M&Ms are No. 1,” Mr. Ferrer said. “I sell 10 boxes of yellow M&Ms before I can sell one of brown.”

Another is the use of a spiel, which can vary from the shopworn (“I’m selling for my basketball team”) to the ostentatiously candid (“I’m not selling for any basketball team”).

During his subway days, which lasted about a year and ended just recently, Mr. Cruz preferred a third variant: “I’d say, ‘I’m selling candy so I can get some money in my pocket. I’m not selling drugs or robbing anyone.'”

Why did he stop selling in the subway? He paused. “It’s embarrassing, you know?”