Vendors sell food at the BART plaza outside the 24th Street and Mission station in 2024. San Francisco may soon implement a state law that makes it legal for small food businesses to operate kitchens out of their homes and sell them from licensed stands or carts.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
Two years ago, when Dina Nadler’s husband was laid off from Tesla, she needed to bring in extra money. With two children to care for and resources tight, it had to work for her schedule and not require a lot of up-front costs.
Nadler started Dina’s Delish Cooking, a restaurant specializing in the kosher foods that she grew up with in Brooklyn, straight out of her Milpitas home kitchen. Soon, neighbors and local businesses were ordering her pastrami sandwiches and stuffed cabbage. “It’s bringing in much-needed cash,” Nadler said. “I can work when I want to and when I need to.”
Dina’s Delish Cooking is one of 1,200 home-based restaurants that legally operate in California under a state law that passed in 2018. Soon, San Franciscans may be able to join them, including those who already have informal food businesses, which could be legitimized under the law.
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On Tuesday, Supervisor Jackie Fielder will introduce legislation allowing San Francisco to implement the California Homemade Food Act, AB626. Each county must opt in to take part; so far, six other Bay Area counties, as well as in Los Angeles, San Diego and nine other California counties, have done so. Marin County is voting on whether to implement the law later this month. In San Francisco, it will need to go through the budget and finance committee before being voted by the full Board of Supervisors.
“Affordability is the number one issue right now for San Franciscans,” said Sup. Fielder, whose district includes the Mission, where hundreds of food vendors could potentially benefit from being able to prepare food at home rather than having to rent a commissary kitchen. “This will expand the economic opportunity, especially for constituents in my district who are Latino immigrants and largely afraid of pursuing other opportunities given the crackdown on immigrants by the federal government.”
The law is designed for people looking to make extra money on the side, as well as entrepreneurs who plan to eventually scale up into larger businesses. Called Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operations, or MEHKOs, the businesses must follow safety standards including getting a food handler card, having their kitchens inspected by the county health department annually and serving the food the same day they make it. Fees typically add up to around $1,000 per year, depending on the county — much less than the $1,000 per month or more needed to rent a commissary kitchen. There are restrictions, however: Operators can sell no more than 30 meals per day, or 90 per week, with a maximum income of around $110,000 per year.
A vendor accepts payment for tamales at the BART plaza in 2024. In order to be permitted currently, street food vendors must prepare what they sell in a commissary kitchen, which can cost at least $1,000 per month.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
There are more than 1,200 MEHKOs across the state, according to the COOK Alliance, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the businesses and provides training and education. In the Bay Area, MEHKOs operate in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma counties, including a vegan Mexican-inspired outfit in Hayward, take-out Thai in Alameda and an “agriturismo” offering Italian lunches from a garden setting in Woodside. “This is a program that is changing lives,” said Roya Bagheri, executive director of the COOK Alliance, which maintains a map listing all the businesses.
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In addition to limits on quantity and scale, MEHKOs are restricted to specific types of services, including in-home dining, takeout and delivery, which operators must do themselves because they are not allowed to use delivery apps. They can also use their home kitchen as a commissary to prepare meals to serve at a permitted food cart or stand, which are known officially as compact mobile food operations under a state law decriminalizing sidewalk vending that took effect in 2023.
“It will create access pathways into the food economy for people who don’t have capital to open a traditional restaurant,” said Cari Rodriguez, policy and community development coordinator at Nuestra Causa, a Mission District nonprofit organization that has done work to organize the neighborhood’s 200 food vendors. “All these microentrepreneurs will be given a chance to be in compliance while also being able to make a living and while not being scared to do their jobs.”
MEHKOs may not use home kitchens to prepare meals and bring them to another location, such as for a pop-up restaurant or catering business, which require different permits and are usually at a larger scale. But there’s a demand for smaller, home-based businesses in San Francisco, said Naomi Maisel, the manager of strategic partnerships and impact at La Cocina, a Mission District nonprofit food incubator program for women- and immigrant-owned businesses that supports the MEHKO program. Around 50 people show up for orientations at La Cocina every other month, hoping to gain access to its commissary kitchen space and training, but the organization can only serve about 24 businesses a year.
“This is already a pathway that is existing informally. It has been probably since the dawn of time,” Maisel said. “It just ensures that an existing pathway has health and safety regulations (and) training.”
Bagheri believes San Francisco may have taken longer than other jurisdictions to adopt the law in part because there were questions about how it would work in denser neighborhoods, she said. “Now there is a lot of data out there that this program is safe,” she said. ”There’s demonstrated economic benefits.”
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COOK Alliance found that 97% of MEHKOs have never received a formal complaint of any kind, including about food safety, traffic, noise or parking, according to a report published this year with a researcher at the University of Washington. Out of nearly 900 MEHKOs that operated between 2019 and 2024, according to the report, just two received informal complaints about foodborne illness — which public health experts determined were not tied to the businesses. The report also found that 73% of the businesses said the program helped them financially and 61% were profitable.
When Nadler started her restaurant in Milpitas, she was pleased to discover she could use the equipment she already had in her kitchen. “It’s just an extra boost of cash without having to put out money,” she said. “You don’t need a bank loan. You don’t need a startup fund.”
Dining and Cooking