Yesterday I wrote about a piece of legislation before the California Assembly’s Health Committee, the “2017 Homemade Food Act (AB 626)”.
After yesterday’s vote, it looks like California may be on its way to allowing entrepreneurial home cooks to start selling their food to neighbors, opening the door to “Uber for Home Cooking” platforms like Josephine.
The 15 member Health Committee saw 12 yes votes and zero no votes (there were three no responses), voting the bill out of committee on a bipartisan basis. The bill is on track for a summertime vote by the full legislature, and if the bill passes a house vote, it would mean Josephine could resume operations in the Bay Area by this summer.
Nationally, Josephine is pursuing similar efforts in other states to have local legislatures reevaluate antiquated cottage industry food laws that restrict home cooks from selling their food as a business. Some states – such as Wyoming – have very permissive laws, while others are similar or more restrictive than California’s.
I think home cook sharing economy platforms make sense. As I wrote yesterday:
“Just as how Uber, Airbnb and other sharing economy platforms gave entrepreneurial folks a marketplace to rent their underutilized assets – whether that be a car, apartment or a person’s own time and labor – it’s logical that there’d also be demand to do so with home cooked food. In fact, it would be hard to argue there isn’t a large potential market of people on both sides of the equation – those who can cook and need to make some extra money, and those who like to eat – to make a marketplace like Josephine successful in the long run.”
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