Underground market in San Francisco draws authorities’ notice

Posted: June 19th, 2011 - 8:04am by Doug Powell

“If you have untrained vendors selling food to 1,200 people, you have a high-risk situation.”

So says Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, the director of environmental health for the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

The New York Times reports for the past two years, the San Francisco Underground Market has served up haute fringe food, but on June 11, the monthly market, which now draws more than a thousand visitors, received an unwelcome serving of its own: a cease and desist order from the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

The market had positioned itself as a members-only club to circumvent the department’s retail food-safety permitting process.

The market started small but has become a kind of foodie phenomenon. The idea has been to provide an incubator for the Bay Area’s fledgling food entrepreneurs, many of them young people who said they could not afford the steep fees of a conventional farmers’ market.

The department has not received complaints of illness, Dr. Bhatia said, but given the popularity of the market — arguably no longer “underground” — it now does not qualify as a club but is a retail food establishment under state law and subject to the standard permit process.

Iso Rabins, 30, the market’s founder, said Friday that he planned to meet with the city attorney to discuss how the market might be “legitimized,” possibly by establishing a communal commercial kitchen.

Ahram Kim, 35, whose culinary pièce de résistance is pork sausage topped with kimchi, has his own theory about the crackdown. “I immediately thought: ‘Of course. The state is broke,’ ” he said.

 

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Categories: Food Safety Policy
Tags: food safety, kitchen, market, San Francisco

Comments

Anonymous says:

....immediately release "all" liaibility / responsibility from the health department if someone dies, gets seriously ill or theres a strong outbreak among citizens (especially the elderly, children under nine yr's of age, pregnant women, nursing mothers, immunocompromised individuals (SF has alot of these), people who are receiving chemotheraphy /other cancer treatments, etc.. and then you can have your underground market with full liability / responsibility on "YOUR" back......not on the back (and wallet) of others. BUT THIS ISN'T THE POINT. However. You can always relocate to Del-Norte county in northern California with your market. They love this kind of business (and allow it too).

Posted on June 20th, 2011 - 1:35pm

Jim Schmidt says:

Yah, that is what all HD's do. We drive around looking for unlicensed food vendors. Give me a freakin break! I have enough on my plate. However, I also promised to uphold and enforce the regulations and to protect the environmental and public health of the community. So if an unlicensed person shows up, yes they have to get licensed. Shouldn't they have to compete on the same field as the other licensed people? Those who have fully complied with the law shouldn't be penalized by having to compete with someone that doesn't obey the law. If people really think that we are out to "make" money then call me up, I'll take you out for some inspections etc. Every time there is an outbreak somewhere the local health department is usually questioned as to why they didn't do more but yet on the flip side you have people like the anonymous commenter and the owner of the market claiming absurd reasons for licensing (they need money) instead of the truth.

Posted on June 21st, 2011 - 10:50am

Anonymous says:

If you look at Iso Rubins' blogs through the last couple of years, he does make a point of stating that part of the purpose of this event is to circumvent the regulations that prohibit food for the public being produced in a private home. There was a premise of helping new operators try to decide if they had a viable product for the market, but I think that got lost in the weeds somewhere. Yes, its expensive to start up and appropriately license a retail food establishment, but this whole group is lucky they didn't cause a major outbreak of something or another. The words "unbelievably naive" come to mind. Any inspector can tell you that it is hard enough for a licensed operator in a commercial kitchen to keep things under control and that often even with oversight and regulations, people do whatever the H they want, even though they know an inspection will be conducted at some point. However, allow someone to work in a home kitchen without any oversight or accountability and it is an outbreak in the making. Maybe the answer lies in community commissaries, business and food safety classes for the new operators, and promotion of new business in a way that also provides safety and oversight. No doubt there is a movement underway to help people start their own businesses and to promote the use of local foods, but this doesn't have to be a situation of "if you don't let us cook out of our home kitchens, you are against local foods and entrepreneurship." There is middle ground. And health departments do have a charge to protect "public" health. There is a very, very fine line to try to stand on in trying to allow people their rights as individuals and in trying to protect the public from what those individuals can wreak. An inspector who gave the advice about it being a private event if there were memberships given, and a closed population was served, was giving correct information at the time. The event evolved into something different.

Posted on June 22nd, 2011 - 2:25pm

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