Claudia Villanueva makes thick, savory pupusas and steamy tamales out of her home in Indio. And since late August, she's been able to sell them to her neighbors with permission from Riverside County.
Villanueva is one of 26 cooks to receive a micro-enterprise home kitchen permit from Riverside County's Department of Environmental Health. She operates Yami's Salvadorena Mexicana y Americano Food out of her home and, since opening in late summer, has sold only about 10 meals a week, she said.
Although she was able to open a business, Villanueva said she has mixed feelings about Ordinance 949, which the County Board of Supervisors passed in May, allowing residents to apply for home kitchen permits.
She hasn't fully recouped the $651 she paid for the one-year permit, but said, as a cautious person, she enjoys the peace of mind it offers. Without a permit, she doesn't think operating a home kitchen wouldn't be worth the risk of getting fined. The county fines unlicensed kitchens $50 to $100 the first time they're caught operating without permits and up to $1,000 for subsequent offenses.
"It's pricey," Villanueva said of the permit, "but getting fines from the county is pricier."
In May, less than a year after the state assembly passed Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia's bill to revise California's retail food code to allow home kitchens, Riverside became the first California county to adopt an ordinance to permit them.
Garcia, D-Coachella, said he was excited that Riverside County was leading the way on micro-enterprise home kitchens and hoped creating a legal framework to permit them would gradually provide more opportunities for cooks to start small businesses.
"This is brand new, and we look forward to the opportunities for economic empowerment that will be created now that we have knocked down the unjust legal barriers and laid the groundwork for a more inclusive food sales system," he said in a statement.
Small business advocates rejoiced over Ordinance 949 and said it would expand opportunities for people who'd been excluded from the formal economy or were selling cooked food without licenses. Reporters with CalMatters and public radio stations across the state wrote multiple stories on Riverside County's home kitchens as part of their "California Dream" collaborative series on expanding economic opportunity in the Golden State.
Seven months after the ordinance's passage, the county's environmental health department has approved 26 micro-enterprise home kitchen operations. The ordinance’s proponents say they’re satisfied with the progress but critics and some food vendors say the permit's $651 cost is too high for the kind of mom-and-pop food vendors working out of their homes that the ordinance intended to target.
When he spoke in favor of the ordinance in May, County Supervisor V. Manuel Perez said for Latino communities in the eastern Coachella Valley, home kitchen businesses are "part of our cultural heritage and ... who we are as a people." But the county has issued permits to only five home kitchens in the valley, with one in Indio and none in Coachella.
Villanueva isn't surprised the program hasn't gained traction in east valley due to its cost and restrictions. It limits the number of meals home cooks can sell to 30 a day or 60 per week. It requires them to submit to safety checks, follow California Health and Safety Code Guidelines and prohibits permitted kitchens from selling food outdoors in food stands.
To keep her permit, Villanueva follows the rules. Some of her friends and neighbors, however, continue to sell home-cooked food outdoors and without permits, putting her at a competitive disadvantage, she said.
Personal trainer Robert Puentes, who sells high-protein cookies and cookie mixes out of his home in Cathedral City, discussed the ordinance with Perez's staff and spoke in support of it in a May Desert Sun story. But after originally planning to apply for the permit, he ultimately decided the cost was too high.
After the county passed Ordinance 949, he found out that he couldn't hold both the county's Cottage Food Operations permit, which allows home cooks to sell low-risk foods (for example, those without dairy), and a home kitchen permit. Because the cottage food permits are only $353 and don't limit the number of meals that he can sell a day, he stuck with the cottage food permit.
"I personally just won't pay that much," the retired Marine said. "I'm doing event after event to get people to buy and, if you say you have a home kitchen, people hesitate; I don't know why that is."
Coachella Valley Small Business Development Center consultant Angela Janus, who advocated for the ordinance in May, said she expected the number of permit applications to rise once more people become aware of the program. She still believes in its ability to expand the "California Dream," she said.
It took years, she said, for businesses to fully understand and take advantage of the Cottage Food Operations program after Riverside County adopted it in 2011.
"The goal was to give people a low-risk opportunity to start a food business … to experiment, learn to own and operate something and then really decide whether they want to pursue it on a larger scale," she said.
She said she had discussed the permit cost in meetings with county staff. After the initial months of the program, she's confident the ordinance will continue to expand opportunities for cooking aficionados who can't afford to open brick-and-mortar restaurants to enter the food industry.
The county's 26 permitted home kitchens, she said, are just a start.
Ken Chandler, a program chief at the Riverside County Department of Environmental Health, said the county decided on a fee structure based on the cost of licensing home kitchens. After sending inspectors into the community in the months following the ordinance of the passage, he said the permit cost was about equal to the amount the county spends on licensing.
Although $651 may seem costly for home cooks, one of the rationales for the ordinance was enabling small food businesses to operate without having the funds necessary to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant. And comparatively, Chandler said, the micro-enterprise home kitchen permit's $651 cost is low.
"Six months into the program, it looks like our estimate was accurate," he said. "In perspective with traditional restaurants, this option is more affordable."
Sam Metz covers politics. Reach him at samuel.metz@desertsun.com or on Twitter @metzsam.
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December 09, 2019 at 08:00PM
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Riverside County has issued just 26 home kitchen permits. Some cooks say $651 fee too high - The Desert Sun
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