When the pandemic hit, Newark single mom Shereen Aly needed a Plan B.
She started cooking food from her native Egypt — chicken shawarma, masri koshari, fattoush salad — and selling it via Shef.com, an online marketplace for home cooks.
“I’ve been blessed ever since to be on this,” she said. “I’m able to balance being with my daughter and doing something I enjoy.”
Aly is among scores of people selling their culinary creations on Shef.com. Many hail from overseas; their profiles discuss their love of cooking and connections to their roots.
The San Francisco company, whose wares are available in parts of the Bay Area, New York and recently Seattle, said it’s served more than 400,000 meals in two years of operation.
Shef’s co-founders, both sons of immigrants who witnessed their own parents’ struggles to forge new lives, see the company’s mission as a social one, given added urgency by widespread pandemic unemployment among restaurant workers and others who need ways to earn income.
“When we started the company, we were squarely focused on a way to help immigrants and refugees gain access to meaningful economic opportunities from home,” said co-CEO Alvin Salehi, formerly a tech adviser in the Obama administration. “We heard the same stories over and over: ‘My spouse works two jobs, I wish I could contribute to the household income but I can’t afford to pay for daycare.’”
Shef’s name, a mashup of “she” and “chef,” pays tribute to the co-founders’ mothers, as well as to the company’s demographics. It said that 83% of its chefs are women, 77% are women of color and 92% are people of color.
But Shef faces a big roadblock.
“We realized this was illegal in most places in the U.S., which is why it hasn’t been done,” said co-CEO Joey Grassia, whose first food company, Kutoa, was inspired by the energy bars he made for himself in college.
California became the first state to legalize sales of home-cooked meals with laws passed in 2018 and 2019 for “Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operations” or MEHKO. However, each county must set up its own program, including annual inspections. Consumed with pandemic issues, most health departments lack bandwidth. So far, only Riverside County has fully implemented this — although now some Bay Area counties are gearing up.
The co-founders spend a lot of time lobbying to get their startup legalized.
“We want to work with lawmakers around the country to come up with well-formed legislation to expedite and accelerate adoption of home cooking with an eye to post-pandemic recovery,” said Salehi.
Meanwhile, they say they’re following the rules by requiring their Bay Area cooks to use commercial kitchens, rather than their homes.
Now Alameda County, and the city of Berkeley, which has its own health department, are on track to have permits for home cooks by spring.
“We think this is a good idea,” said Alameda Supervisor Wilma Chan, who sponsored the legislation. “People are already doing it informally; it would be much better to legalize it and have rules in place.” The county has shut down some informal food sellers in recent months.
Chan said she hopes that some home cooks eventually create their own pop-up restaurants to enhance the local food economy.
San Mateo County passed a resolution supporting home kitchens in 2019 but got held up by implementing the inspection process.
“If we had the resources, I would do it in a heartbeat right now,” said Board of Supervisors President David Canepa, who co-sponsored it with Supervisor Don Horsley. “It’s more important than ever because of the economy.”
After hearing that Alameda and Berkeley are considering video inspections, he said he was encouraged by the idea of a less-expensive way to handle inspections.
Solano County also voted in 2019 to legalize home cooks, but has not implemented its system.
Some Shef cooks said they can’t wait to get permits to use their own kitchens.
California passed AB626 and AB377 in 2018 and 2019, respectively, allowing people to apply for permits to sell home-made meals. But permits for Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operations, or MEHKO, are not available statewide.
How does it work? Each county must create a permitting process that includes annual inspections. So far only Riverside County has a full-fledged program. Alameda County and Berkeley (which has its own health department) expect to set up permitting processes this spring. Solano and San Mateo counties had started to legalize home kitchens, but got stopped by the pandemic.
How much can be sold? Home restaurants are limited to $50,000 a year in gross sales, 30 meals a day and 60 meals a week.
Is there training? Home cooks and their helpers must take an 8-hour course in food protection and pass an exam.
Any other logistics? The home cook can hire one employee, and get help from household members. Helpers must have food handlers’ certification. Third-party delivery services are not allowed; food can be eaten at the cook’s home, picked up to go, or delivered by cooks and their helpers.
Are there foods not covered by the MEHKO regulations? A separate California law governs “cottage food” operations, allowing sales of 34 types of home-made foods, including baked goods, candy, dried fruit, dry pasta, vegetable and potato chips, vegetable soup mix and other items.
Source: Cook Alliance
“It is a bummer that Alameda County does not allow cooking from home,” said Beena Hasan, who commutes from her Pleasanton home to commercial kitchens in San Jose or San Francisco to prepare foods from her native Pakistan. “That put a damper on a lot of things.”
Still, she loves making the recipes she’s collected over the years from relatives.
“What I would cook at home for my family is the kind of food I cook for my customers,” she said. “I use as much organics as possible, grind my own spices, don’t use anything boxed.”
Matt Jorgenson co-founded Josephine, a marketplace for home cooks akin to Shef. It shut down in early 2018 after about two years because of legal issues. He and his co-founders now work on the Cook Alliance, a nonprofit pursuing policies to legalize home cooking.
He sees Shef “as part of the energy to get this widely known and adopted,” but has some concerns about it being a venture-backed startup. Shef raised $8.8 million last summer.
“Any company trying to do this with the best intentions but raising millions of venture capital, it puts them in a ‘unicorn or bust’ mentality,” he said. “The pressure to make it work even at the risk of cooks bearing direct liability is always going to be there.”
Shef’s co-founders said they decided to raise money to bring the company to as many people as possible to help ease pandemic financial hardships.
“We are not going to compromise the safety of chefs or customers in pursuit of growth,” Salehi said. “Our investors are mission-aligned.”
The company takes a 15% cut of cooks’ earnings, but for now is also charging them for the cost of DoorDash deliveries. When counties legalize home kitchens, outside delivery services won’t be allowed, so cooks will have to offer pickup, do their own deliveries or allow on-site dining.
Chef customer Mark Seiden, a long-time computer security consultant and self-described “old chowhound,” said he appreciates the chance to eat regional Indian specialties not usually served at restaurants. For instance, a Shef cook from the Indian state of Kerala uses Matta rice, an indigenous variety grown there, he said.
Shef food “is like what they would cook for their families at home,” he said. “The taste is authentic.”
He also found it a good value, especially when using the companies’ promotional offers.
“It’s like 20 bucks for a combination of dishes that will last me for diner and couple of lunches,” he said.
The downside: “It’s not an impulse buy,” he said. “You have to order two days in advance.”
After a decade as a stay-at-home mom, Hasan said she’s found it “liberating and empowering” to put her culinary heritage to work.
“There are people out there who can really benefit from the extra income,” she said. “Thank God my husband still has his job, but if we had a different situation, this would be a lifesaver.”
Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid
