San Francisco is set to take its first vote on Wednesday on a controversial proposal that would create a new permit for street food vending — a move vendors and advocates say would push many Mission District vendors out of business.
Carrying a sign that read “we pay taxes” on one side and “I’m food-prep certificated” on the other, tamale vendor Ana protested the proposal alongside fellow vendors outside the 24th Street BART station on Tuesday.
The proposal is scheduled to be heard by the Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Finance Committee on Tuesday at 10 a.m. A full Board of Supervisors vote is expected on February 11.
If the legislation is approved, Ana would be required to prepare her food in a certified commissary kitchen, at a cost of about $30 an hour, more than she makes herself. The requirement would also force her to change her work schedule. Ana begins preparing food at 2 a.m. so she can start selling by 7 a.m., hours when nonprofit commissary kitchens such as La Cocina are closed.
The legislation would bring San Francisco’s rules in compliance with the California Retail Food Code after Latino state legislators pushed through SB 972, a bill that decriminalized street food vending statewide in 2023.
Rather than legalizing vending outright, the ordinance creates Compact Mobile Food Operations (CMFOs), a new permit category for non-motorized food vendors operating from carts, pushcarts or stands.
El Tecolote first reported in September that the city’s proposed CMFO permit, framed by officials as a “pathway” to legalization, would likely be out of reach for many informal vendors due to commissary requirements, equipment costs and stepped-up enforcement. Vendors warned then that the proposal risked dismantling street vending altogether.
Under the ordinance, CMFOs would be classified as low-, moderate or high-risk operations depending on the type of food sold and the level of preparation involved. Permit and plan-check fees would range from $188 to $502.
Vendors would still be required to obtain permits from the Department of Public Health and the Department of Public Works, and in some cases the Fire Department, and to comply with state health code requirements around food preparation, equipment and handwashing facilities .
Vendors and advocates have pointed to an alternative model not included in the City’s proposal: the Micro Enterprise Home Kitchen Operation (MEHKO), a 2018 California law already enacted in Los Angeles. MEHKOs allow food to be prepared in home kitchens for sale. The proposal would require the City to oversee and regulate private home kitchens.
While San Francisco’s proposal would streamline the permitting process and forgive first-year fees, it would also require vendors who sell fresh fruit and hot food prepared on site, to use standardized carts costing around $15,000, a prohibitive expense for many vendors whose only source of income is selling food on the street.
Many vendors were able to attend the protest because San Francisco police have swept many unlicensed vendors off the Mission Street corridor since Saturday, ahead of the Super Bowl events in the city, according to a police officer in the vicinity who asked not to be quoted.
As enforcement has intensified, vendors have increasingly organized. Andrea Guirola, a street food vendor, has become a leader and advocate for a 60-strong group of Mission District Street food vendors, organized by Nuestra Causa.
Last week, Guirola and several vendors knocked on Supervisor’s doors to ask for their support .
“Some locked their doors,” Guirola said. “Others, like Jackie Fielder, were extremely welcoming.”
Cecilia, a 46-year-old who has made a living selling tamales in the Mission District for five years, said the proposal would leave vendors with no viable options.
“Mine is decent work, but the little I make would all go to (satisfy) the City,” she said. “This [ordinance] would take us to the brink of stealing in order to eat. Who wins from that?”
