Home Cooks Can Now Sell Their Food in California

In many parts of the world, it’s the most normal thing: selling food that you make at home. But when Hai Ngoc Lam arrived in the United States five years ago from Vietnam, he found out what other would-be food entrepreneurs here already knew: It’s illegal in California.

That changed this week with the signing of a law that authorizes small-scale home food businesses.

“It’s amazing for me,” said Lam, who with his husband, Joe Acanfora, runs an under-the-radar business selling home-cooked Vietnamese food in the Bay Area.

The law, which limits licenses to those with maximum revenue of $50,000 from home cooking, comes into effect in January and will apply only to counties that choose to participate. A small category of food considered the riskiest — oysters and raw meats among them — are not allowed.

The goal of the law is to “reclaim cooking as a means of economic empowerment for the people who need it the most,” according to the bill’s main author, Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella.

The law’s supporters say it will be most helpful for people hoping to get a toehold in the food business — especially women, people of color and immigrants, many of whom can use social media as a way to connect with customers.

“Technology is making it easier for people to cook at home and sell it,” said Matt Jorgensen, coordinator of Creating Opportunities, Opening Kitchens (the COOK Alliance), an organization that helped sponsor the bill. “It’s a class of domestic and local labor that hasn’t been able to think of themselves as legitimate entrepreneurs.”

Jorgensen says California is the first state to legalize home cooking but that similar laws in other states are already in the works.

Starting a food-truck business in the Bay Area typically costs more than $100,000, Jorgensen said. A home-cooking license, including a mandatory inspection, will cost around $500, he estimated.

Before moving to the United States, Lam ran a small restaurant in Vietnam, a business that his late grandmother started in her kitchen. Lam hopes to continue that tradition in America.

“It’s my dream come true,” he said.