If your products contain allergens, you must list them on your advertisements. The 8 FDA-recognized allergens are milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, and soybeans.

Delivery must be made within a safe time period, and food must be held at a safe temperature. Delivery may only be made by you, your employee, a family member, or a household member. In other words, you cannot use a delivery service (like Postmates) to deliver your products. You must have a copy of the driver’s license on file for any delivery driver.

Although you cannot sell through a third-party, you can sell via an online platform. However, that online platform needs to register with the health department and follow a number of rules (section 114367.6 of the bill). This likely means that you would not be able to use a generic online platform (like Facebook) to sell your products.

If you have a permit with your county, but a city in your county has created an ordinance preventing their residents from starting microenterprise home kitchen operations, you can still sell in that city.

You can make virtually anything with your business, BUT you must prepare and serve it on the same day.

This law is mostly intended for people operating a food service establishment for meals, rather than kitchen staples (like mustard, coffee beans, spice mixes, nuts, jellies, etc).

If your business is focused on non-perishable products, you would likely be better off starting a cottage food operation.

You cannot make anything that requires a HACCP plan. You can see the full list of disallowed items here, but essentially you cannot utilize certain methods to preserve food for long-term storage. Most notably, this would prevent canned goods that are acidified foods, as well as some dehydrated foods. For instance, beef jerky and canned pickled goods would not be allowed. You would likely not be affected by this restriction, since you are required to prepare and serve food on the same day, but it could become a factor if your recipe used one of these homemade items as an ingredient (such as home-canned pickled vegetables).

You cannot use non-commercial meat or fish in your products.

You cannot sell raw oysters, raw milk, or raw milk products.

Food facilities typically need to use commercial kitchens, which have dozens of requirements, many of which are impractical for home kitchens. This law exempts you from many of the standards for commercial kitchens, but it does specify some rules in lieu of the exemptions (the full list is in section 114367.1(b) of the bill):

• Your sinks must have hot and cold water
• If you display food that is uncovered or unprotected, it cannot be sold or served to guests
• Your food preparation area must be well-lit while you are preparing food
• Linens used for your business must be laundered separately from your personal laundry
• Clothing and other personal items not typically found in the kitchen should be placed away from your kitchen
• Gases, odors, steam, heat, grease, vapors, and smoke must be able to escape from your kitchen
• Your kitchen and bathroom’s floors, walls, and ceilings must be smooth and easily cleanable

In addition to the exemptions, some requirements are not exempt:

• You must post handwashing signs at the sinks in your kitchen and bathroom
• You must have a meat thermometer and a refrigerator thermometer

You can make your food in an open-air barbecue or outdoor wood-burning oven.

You need to have your permit on display while your business is in operation.

This law was started by a group that had a very specific purpose, for a specific type of food producer, for a specific section of the state. In the middle of 2016, chefs on Josephine, formerly a popular web app for home cooks in Berkeley, were shutdown by health officials. The creators of Josephine tried to adapt by creating the C.O.O.K. Alliance and initiating this bill in early 2017, in hopes that the new legislation would allow their platform to legally exist. When the bill got delayed for a year, Josephine ran out of funds and closed in early 2018. But only six months later, the bill did pass, and unsurprisingly, it is most suited for a company exactly like Josephine. As this law began to see more adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic, many tech marketplace platforms cropped up to try to capitalize on this growing micro-restaurant movement.

In 2021, Utah became the second state to create a MEHKO law.