For more than a decade, startups have built online marketplaces in hopes of turning home kitchens into legitimate food businesses. Unfortunately, for most of that time, while demand existed, the regulations permitting these businesses did not.
The first serious attempt came more than a decade ago with Josephine, a startup that gave home cooks a platform to sell meals directly to consumers. Josephine raised more than $2 million, attracted a loyal user base, and helped popularize the idea that home cooking could become a marketplace. But in 2018, the company shut down.
“We have simply run out of the resources to continue to drive the legislative change, business innovation, and broader cultural shift needed to build Josephine,” CEO Charley Wang wrote at the time.
Josephine’s failure wasn’t about product-market fit, but about a lack of regulatory policy. While food safety measures and clearly defined rules are necessary to ensure that food made in people’s homes is safe to eat, at the time there was, for the most part, a lack of understanding and a regulatory framework to both protect consumers and guide these businesses. That gap ultimately doomed Josephine and created an uphill battle for those that followed.
Cottage food laws varied widely across states, inspections were costly, and regulatory progress was slow. Even as California debated what would become AB 626, the bill that ultimately created Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operations, or MEHKOs, other states lagged behind.
Over time, regulations began to evolve, in part due to advocacy from platform builders and community leaders who saw an opportunity. In California, AB 626 was passed in 2018 after years of work by organizations like the Cook Alliance, creating a legal pathway for home cooks to sell freshly prepared meals from their primary residence. Since then, MEHKOs have expanded slowly but steadily. A recent Cook Alliance report found that MEHKOs have exceptionally low complaint rates, strong food safety records, and are disproportionately operated by women, immigrants, and people of color.
In a 2024 article, The New York Times documented the shift in Riverside County and Los Angeles, where home kitchens can now operate as legal restaurants, serving everything from takeout to backyard dine-in meals. Still, while MEHKOs work, nationwide the system remains fragmented, highly local, and difficult to scale for both business operators and local municipalities.
That’s where Paul Gerstenberger believes his startup, Supper at Home, can help.
Gerstenberger is the founder and CEO of Supper at Home, a platform that connects diners with home cooks offering private, dine-in meals. The company, which Gerstenberger cofounded with his wife, Celerina Gerstenberger, remains early and largely pre-revenue. For now, Gerstenberger’s focus has been on expanding the number of hosts on the platform and encouraging states across the country to adopt his new framework.
“It hasn’t been a technology challenge,” Gerstenberger told me. “It’s been a regulatory challenge.”
Before founding Supper at Home, Gerstenberger worked as a food inspection specialist in the U.S. Army. Drawing on that experience, he developed a MEHKO-style framework centered on inspection readiness rather than scheduled inspections.
“The primary pinch point for states doing this has been that they have to send out food inspectors to each home,” he said. “By creating a pop inspection, the states don’t have to create a whole army of food inspection specialists.”
Under the model Gerstenberger has been sharing with state and local health departments, home kitchens are subject to surprise or short-notice inspections rather than fixed schedules. The idea is to reduce enforcement costs while keeping kitchens inspection-ready at all times.
Gerstenberger told me he has sent versions of this framework to all 50 states and that elements of it are now under consideration or adoption in dozens of them. In Hawaii, where he lives, he points to recent regulatory changes that allow home cooks to serve meals inside their homes.
“We wrote to the head of health here in Hawaii and also to our congresswoman,” he said. “Two weeks ago, [the inspector] called and said the laws have now changed. You can do it.”
Supper at Home itself takes a narrower approach than Josephine. Rather than delivery or pickup, the platform emphasizes private, dine-in meals for small groups, served at a set time with a fixed menu.
“Just imagine setting a supper for you and your family,” Gerstenberger said. “It’s private just to you. You show up at the door on time… everything’s on the table.”
The company has signed up roughly 900 hosts since mid-2025, driven in part by viral YouTube videos explaining the concept. Gerstenberger says Supper at Home is intentionally building its host base before pushing hard on diner acquisition.
While I’ve always thought the cottage food space represented a potentially exciting new shared-economy micro-opportunity, there are no guarantees of success for either the platforms or the home cooks that use them. As The New York Times reported, a significant percentage of MEHKO businesses shut down within months due to thin margins or marketing challenges. Still, the combination of lower regulatory burdens for agencies and higher revenue caps for cooks suggests this market may finally have a shot at working.
MEHKOs are no longer theoretical. Advocacy groups like the Cook Alliance continue to push for change, and Gerstenberger and Supper at Home believe they have a way to help make the model work for both state health agencies and home cooks.
You can see my full interview with Paul Gerstenberger below.
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