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APPROVED VEGAN FROSTINGS and HUGE EXTRA FEES
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David Crabill 8 years, 1 month ago.
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BriHi there,
I currently have several vegan cupcakes that I am trying to get approved. They are kicking back every frosting recipe I send. Just curious as to why dairy based butter is considered a non-hazordous food when not refrigerated, but ground cashews, vegan baking sticks, palm shortening, olive olive and other plant based shortenings are? I feel like they are just not approving them because no one in my area has ever tried to get these approved and so they have nothing to go off of. So instead of researching them, they are just rejecting them. My county has already made it very clear that they are very put out by the amount of recipes I have submitted and the work they have to do on my license. I am confused, as I thought that was one of their jobs, lol. They have already implemented an $80 an hour fee for submitting recipes after your initial license request and now, because of the amount of labels I submitted in the beginning(about 110 labels) to combat that fee, are implementing a cutoff on how many recipes you can submit to get licensed. It is very annoying since I already just received a bill from the planning department( I am outside of city lines) for $990 above the $238 that I have ALREADY paid them! They say it was for an extra 9 hours of work, but failed to include an itemized statement of where those 9 hours were spent. This dept. has nothing to do with the health department and now I am afraid I will get stuck with ANOTHER bill from them as well. No extra fees were ever discussed up front and I asked several times. Has this happened to anyone else in the state of California? Feeling very defeated and frustrated before I even begin selling! : (
JUST A cOMMENTJUST A GUESS……………
SOMETIMES “PLANT BASED” MAY BE INTERPRETED AS BEING INCLUSIVE OF PATHOGENS TYPICALLY ASSOCIATED WITH SOIL? MAY BE YOU CAN HAVE THE INGREDIENTS CERTIFIED OR TREATED BEFORE USE AND PRESENT THIS INFORMATION. THIS MAY NEGATE THE “HEALTH’ PERCEPTION OF THE FINISHED PRODUCT, BUT WILL AVOID A POTENTIAL FOOD PATHOGEN ISSUE….JUST A GUESS AS TO WHY THE RECIPES ARE BEING REJECTED.
GROUND NUTS: HOW CAN DEMONSTRATE THEY DO NOT INCLUDE HIGH LEVELS OF BUGS OR ANIMAL DROPPINGS. ..MAY BE NEED TO SOURCE WHOLE NUTS AND CHOP THEM YOURSELF OR MAYBE SOURCE FROM A SUPPLIER WHO WILL CERTIFY THE INGREDIENT CONTAMINATION LEVELS AND PURITY. ALSO, DO YOU EXPLAIN HOW YOU WILL MANAGE THE POTENTIAL FOR ALLERGEN AND CROSS-CONTAMINATION. FOR EXAMPLE, I CAN EAT CASHEWS, BUT GET SICK FROM MACADAMIA NUTS….
OLIVE OIL: CAN BE CONTAMINATED WITH OTHER OILS OR NON-OILS. VERY DIFFICULT TO VERIFY THE COMPOSITION AND PURITY….IF NOT FROM A COSTLY CERTIFIED SOURCE.
BUTTER: CAN GO BAD; HOWEVER LASTS LONGER IF SALTED AND HELD FROZEN UNTIL USED.
There are some counties that will not approve anything that isn’t explicitly on the approved list, and it sounds like you’re in one of those counties. In that case, you either need to adapt your products or go the commercial route.
MUCH MORE IMPORTANTLY, I would never recommend spending hundreds of dollars to get unvetted recipes approved. I can understand why the health dept is frustrated… although it is now their job to approve CFOs, their much bigger and more important job is to inspect the commercial facilities in the area.
I highly recommend cutting your menu back to just a dozen or two dozen recipes and giving those a shot so you can see what it’s like to run a business. Figure out what you think is most likely to sell and focus on those, and then add more things down the road if you’re successful.
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