
California Law to Protect Immigrant Home Cooks May Help Tech Giants Instead - kawera
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ab626-immigrants-reality-20190218-htmlstory.html
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tschwimmer
"Tech Giants" is being used in agreement with virtually no reasonable
definition of the phrase. For those who didn't read the article, the bill
allows people to sell up to 50k a year of home cooked food with relaxed
licensing restrictions. The author argues this bill will do virtually nothing
to help independent dumpling makers, tamale vendors, etc while the bill is
being advertised to help these types of business owners. Instead, the bill was
essentially written as a carveout for a startup called Josephine.com which is
a marketplace for homecooked meals. The company is currently out of business,
so it's hard to see how it could be characterized as a tech giant. A bit of
research turns up 3.1 million in seed funding. [1]

I acknowledge the author's argument here, but they're really decrying the the
fundamental nature of an open democracy. This bill was a direct gimme for the
startup, but it actually doesn't seem to be a bad thing. A business that lots
of people want to patronize now gets to operate legally. I find it hard to see
how that's a bad thing.

[1][https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/josephine#section-
ov...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/josephine#section-overview)

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Eridrus
Is it a good bill though?

I don't know what we demand in terms of permits, but ensuring that many small
vendors are actually taking food safety seriously is generally harder than for
a few large vendors.

I like the idea of using existing kitchens more efficiently, but I do wonder
what caused home kitchens to be banned in the first place.

I'm also not really sure what can be done about undocumented immigrants who
are living off the grid in fear if the authorities knowing about them.
Exempting them from food safety laws doesn't seem like the right option.

