If COVID-19 has shown us anything (and it’s actually shown us a lot of things), it’s that people are hustlers. Put between a rock and a hard place—in this case COVID-19 pandemic job losses—people do what they have to do!
Yeah!
Take making food at home and selling it to people who prefer not to cook. It’s definitely a thing, now. Although, apparently it was also a thing before COVID-19. In fact, it was such a thing that Santa Barbara County opted in to new state rules on Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operations around the beginning of 2020.
Back then, though, nobody was thinking about how much competition restaurants would have from the little guys. Restaurants were swinging.
Now, though, things are different. Restaurants have been empty because of the government. For the duration of the pandemic, those sit-down restaurants were fighting for to-go market share with each other and home kitchens. And the home kitchens grew in number because so many restaurant industry employees lost their jobs.
A home kitchens ordinance went before the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors on March 9, and it’s not being ignored this time.
Terri Stricklin, who manages The Hitching Post in Casmalia, spoke at the meeting on behalf of the Reopen the Central Coast Business Coalition, which apparently doesn’t believe these home kitchens have the right to be a part of their business coalition or society.
“Most of us are very active in the community and it was quite by accident that this ordinance came to our attention,” Stricklin said. “Brick-and-mortar restaurants and caterers have to follow stringent guidelines to operate, and that’s not even taking into account the past year and the severe restrictions that have been placed on everybody.”
Santa Maria Mayor Alice Patino is very concerned about inequities that brick-and-mortar restaurants could face with the 60 meals a week these micro-kitchens are allowed to produce. But Alice (Can I call you Alice?), during a “normal” period, if a restaurant isn’t serving more than 60 meals a week in their dining rooms, they should be very concerned about surviving, period—not competing with some person cooking meals in their home kitchen.
“We have, for decades, discovered abhorrent violations of illegal kitchens selling unsafe food out of dirty kitchens, garages, and yes, backyards,” she told supervisors.
Gasp! Backyards? I’ve never had a Santa Maria-style barbecue in my life that was cooked outside! Umm, Alice, isn’t the whole point of the ordinance to extend oversight to these previously illegal operations.
Kind of like marijuana, you know? From no oversight to some regulation. From no permit fees, to permit fees. Plus, this gives a little bit of help to the little guy, a “bridge,” 4th District Supervisor Bob Nelson said, from nothing to something. Which pro-business people don’t like? I don’t get it.
I think 1st District Supervisor Das Williams put it best: “It’s just kind of weird to hear for a long time, ‘We want you to give us business opportunities,’ … and then finally we have one example where the county’s going to legalize something that’s a great business opportunity, and then we have most of those same folks going, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa.’”
Yep, they’re saying, “Whoa, bro. This doesn’t help me.”
The Canary is all about the little guys and gals. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 11-18, 2021.