California Legalized Selling Food Made At Home And Created Over A Thousand Local Businesses

Forbes ^ | January 29, 2014 | Nick Sibilla

[2ndDivisionVet]

A government official appears at a man’s door. The man has been breaking the law: He has sold bread baked at home.

This isn’t a page from Kafka—it happened to Mark Stambler in Los Angeles.

For decades, Stambler has followed traditional methods to bake loaves of French bread. The ingredients are simple: distilled water, sea salt, wild yeast and organic grains. Stambler even mills the grain himself. To make it easier to steam loaves, he built a wood-fired oven in his own backyard. Stambler’s loaves came in first place at the Los Angeles County Fair and the California State Fair.

Soon after that, Stambler got the idea to expand his hobby into a home business, which became Pagnol Boulanger. Word of mouth spread. In June 2011, The Los Angeles Times profiled Stambler and his bread in a full-page feature.

Unlike his bread, that profile was bittersweet. He was busted the very next day. As he described it, the health department “descended like a ton of bricks on the two stores that were selling my bread…they could no longer sell my bread.”

An inspector from the health department even showed up at his doorstep to make sure “no bread baking was taking place.” For the next 18 months, Pagnol Boulanger was forced to go on hiatus....

[T Ruth]

these laws are the corporations’ way of squashing would be competitors.

Exactly.

[P-Marlowe]

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

[Talisker]

I should have clarified - I meant to say that in California, if you are a vet and you open a business that requires health department fees to operate, you are exempt.

[Tanniker Smith]

Wait until the feds step in and say that they’re affecting interstate commerce.

[JoeFromSidney]

I never thought about this. At our local farmers' market, there are lots of home-made products: pies, cakes, jams, jellies, pickles, etc. I've never heard of any requirement for health department inspection or licensing.

[VermiciousKnid]

Have you been made sick by any of the products?

Because to tell you the truth, most of the cases of food poisoning I’ve ever heard of came from government-inspected facilities. (Restaurants, etc.)

In my experience, food-handling/health inspectors are among the most arrogant, self-important, and corrupt government officials anywhere. (And that’s saying quite a bit.) I’ve never met a single one that I’d trust to walk my dog.

Regards,

[TXnMA]

Without a doubt, Mexicans in CA have been selling home-made tamales (and good ones, too) since Montezuma was a niño...

[TXnMA]

"I’ve never met a single one that I’d trust to walk my dog."

I've never met a bureaucrat that I'd trust to to scoop up after my dog...

[Victoria_R]

Without a doubt, Mexicans in CA have been selling home-made tamales (and good ones, too) since Montezuma was a niño...

They sell them in Idaho also. Yesterday in the parking lot of the grocery store, I saw a lady and her kids selling tamales from a cool box in the back of her car. It's "under the table". No signs, no business license, no income reported, no sales tax, etc.

[Sivad]

Well, go back to detective school and learn how demrats give
themselves cover while they tax and regulate businesses out of
the state.