Hullo to readers old and new.
I’m doing my best to eat non-stop in a Singapore that seems normal (to the extent that Singapore ever is) except for the face masks. More on that over the next few weeks. As always, a reminder that this newsletter is free and a labor of love. If you like it, the best way to show your support is to share it with someone else.
This January, Riverside County became the first county in California to fully implement California Retail Food Code AB-626, which might be the best thing to happen to the American food scene in years. From the text of the bill:
This bill would, among other things, include a microenterprise home kitchen operation within the definition of a food facility, and would define a microenterprise home kitchen operation to mean a food facility that is operated by a resident in a private home where food is stored, handled, and prepared for, and may be served to, consumers, and that meets specified requirements, including, among others, that the operation has no more than one full-time equivalent food employee and has no more than $50,000 in verifiable gross annual sales.
In the jurisdictions where this bill has been implemented, it will do more for the people who want to make their living feeding others than any amount of breast beating in the food media ever will. The tragedy is that the bill will only affect a patchwork of localities in California (each county has to adopt it individually).
For all the convulsive action of the summer, the structures on which the restaurant world runs remain largely intact. The obituaries for the celebrity chef largely quoted celebrity chefs. The bodies that hand out gongs conspicuously failed to question whether gongs are necessary. Mainstream media collectively stopped for a minute to ask who should get the spotlight, without thinking that perhaps the spotlight does more harm than good. And for all the talk about the death of cities, the patterns of finance and development that created the food scene we know remain unchallenged, and as we await a return to “normal” we are, consciously or not, waiting to give these patterns primacy again.
As long as it is expensive to open restaurants, the flows of capital and opportunity, and hence the composition of the restaurant landscape, will be dictated by the habits and prejudices of landlords and investors. As long as we continue to demand that food be cheap and restaurants be run mostly by employees rather than owners, abusive workplace practices will persist.
AB-626 potentially does away with all that by taking capital out of the equation and unlocking opportunities for self-employment and self-determination. This sounds suspiciously like the pitch that the ride-sharing services made, but crucially, there are no venture funded startups trying to plant themselves in the middle of the transaction.
(6) Small-scale, home-cooking operations can create significant economic opportunities for Californians that need them most — often women, immigrants, and people of color.
(7) Under existing law, individuals can sell food through retail food facilities or cottage food operations, the latter of which being limited to a restricted list that primarily consists of nonperishable food items that can be prepared in the home. Both of these options make it difficult for the vast majority of home cooks to independently benefit from their labor, skills, and limited resources.
This bill has created no new awards. It contains no instructions to the press. It does not address labor rights in any way, nor is there any rhetoric about system racism, decolonization of the food system, or indeed, any language beyond the plain bureacratese of legislation. It simply assumes that when you give more people the ability to work for themselves, economic opportunity and equitable employment – and a desert bloom of new and unexpected eateries – will result.
Unfortunately, Riverside County’s experiment has mostly overlapped with coronatime, so it’s impossible to say if this AB-626 will have any real effect on the hospitality labor market, but it doesn’t seem far-fetched to think it might. If you can make a living feeding people food of your choosing, in your own home, why would you seek employment in an industry that devalues and exploits you? While some commenters have voiced concern that $50,000 is too low a cap on revenue, even assuming a (very achievable) 25% cost of goods, operators would make more than the average CA restaurant wage.
By giving cooks a way to opt out of restaurant employment while still cooking, and by giving diners the option to directly, intimately, support individual cooks, this bill tips power away from the large restaurant groups, corporate hospitality operators, developers, investors, and media that have shaped the restaurant scene.
Writing from Singapore, it’s impossible for me not to see a parallel with the hawker economy. The beauty of a hawker stall is that it requires almost no capital. Most of them rely on family labor, and don’t need specialized supply chains. They traditionally do no marketing (though this is changing), and if you can survive without marketing, then you need not please the gatekeepers. The picture is not all rosy – as I (and many others) have written elsewhere, they have not been well served by the government, and the path it has traced for the country’s development.
If all this sounds good to you, please consider supporting Cook Alliance, a non-profit that advocates for wider adoption of AB-626 and, crucially, help home cooks obtain their license (including by providing financial support for their applications). I will also, with some reservations, point you to a for-profit marketplace that lists licensed home restaurants, and walks them through licensing.
Genuinely mind-altering. Pilgrims on the Hajj brought ful medames back to Singapore, where it is known as Kacang Phool. I’m told there are only 3 hawkers stalls on the island that serve it. This one is apparently the best. If it’s not, I really want to try the others.
This is let them eat cake, a weekly essay about food systems (and also, food). I write about these things because I’ve worked in food for over a decade, mostly as a chef, and am writing a book about how deeply fucked up, and how deeply worthwhile, this whole enterprise of feeding people is. Also, writing is cheaper than therapy.
Once again, this newsletter is free and a labor of love. If you like it, the best way to show your support is to share this with someone who’ll like it too.
If you’d like to give it a shout out on social media, you can find me @briocheactually on both twitter and instagram.
best,
tw