How to persuade liberal, regulation-crazed California to ease up? Market your libertarian pet project as the ultimate in political correctitude. Also, find some Democrats to sponsor the legislation you need to ditch those irksome regulations and get your project off the ground.
Case in point: AB-626, a bill introduced in the California legislature in February that would allow people to sell hot, home-prepared food directly to customers out of their own kitchens. Right now a tangle of complex California food-safety regulations require such home-based small businesses to undergo training and inspections and maintain elaborate restaurant-style kitchens (or rent them) that are out of the economic reach of most people of limited means who’d like to earn extra dollars selling homemade lasagna or pork-sandwiches around their own neighborhoods. De-regulating the food-selling industry so as to let these kinds of businesses flourish is a favorite libertarian cause.
So AB-626 has duly acquired a Democratic sponsor, state assemblyman Eduardo Garcia of Coachella—a necessity in a state whose legislature features a veto-proof Democratic majority. More significantly, though, it has acquired a thick patina of egalitarian rhetoric designed to persuade the Nanny State-iest of liberals to approve the sale of edibles that no government regulator has passed judgment on. So Garcia’s office loaded its press release accompanying the bill with references to “women, immigrants, and people of color” as the presumed chief beneficiaries of the bill’s largesse. Oh, and also “food deserts”—those supermarket-less inner-city neighborhoods that are the focus of much liberal hand-wringing. And also “vulnerable communities” whose members might face criminal charges for selling tamales off their stoves, as well as “access to healthy foods,” another object of liberal concern.
Actually, one of the main beneficiaries of the bill will be Josephine, a three-year-old Bay Area “food-sharing” startup that links home cooks and potential customers electronically for a 10 percent fee. Josephine was going great guns with some 75 cooks of varying ethnicities and surprising levels of food-prep experience whose kitchens met Josephine’s minimalist standards (cleanliness, sufficient refrigeration) preparing tasty treats for their customers to pick up—until April 2016, when the cooks started receiving cease-and-desist letter from local health officials and Josephine suspended operations. The company had earlier tried unsuccessfully to pass legislation completely exempting home commercial kitchens from food-safety rules. This time around, Josephine sought the cooperation of California’s health regulators and self-described “food justice” organizations to come up with a compromise bill that would require some training and sanitation standards for home-cooking businesses doing less than $50,000 a year in sales.
Like Garcia, Josephine’s youthful founders, Matt Jorgenson and Charley Wang revel in the rhetoric of minority empowerment and food justice—and they hate being called “Uber for Food,” since they’re trying to distance themselves from the ride-sharing outfit’s reputation for aggressive tangles with regulators and nickel-and-diming of its drivers. “We are humbled to be sponsoring this bill with such strong support from many amazing food and labor justice organizations and we remain committed to continuing our collaboration with state health regulators,” a statement from Jorgenson on Garcia’s press release piously declares.
Their politically correct approach to beating regulation is likely to pay off. In 2013 the California legislature passed a law allowing people to sell homemade breads, jams, and other food items that don’t require refrigeration directly to customers. That law also had a Democratic sponsor—then-assemblyman Mike Gatto of Glendale. And it was also shrouded in the right kind of progressive rhetoric: The items would now be available at the farmers’ markets that liberals love so much.
