A year in review (2019) and a look forward into 2020 for the COOK Alliance, the non profit that legalized the sales of home cooked food and is stewarding the new home cooking industry towards justice & equity.

1. COOK ALLIANCEEstablishing a just and people-powered home cooking industry.

2. WELCOME, MAKE
YOURSELF AT HOME
We’re the COOK Alliance: a coalition of immigrants, stay at home parents, community
builders, educators, activists, policy makers, technologists, and home cooks.
We’ve been working to advocate for the recognition of home cooking as dignified and
socially invaluable work since 2014. We’ve legalized the sale of home cooked food by passing
two California laws and have helped thousands of cooks make money serving their
neighbors by building the largest platform for entrepreneurial home cooks.
More than who we are, or what we’ve done, is what we represent: A plate kept warm, a
“Dinner’s ready!” shouted up the stairs, a last bite offered up lovingly. We represent the
people and the moments of care, where we feel less lonely and more connected in this life.
Here is what we believe:

3. HERE IS WHAT WE BELIEVE:

4. OUR FOOD SYSTEM IS HARMING OUR
BODIES, OUR SOCIETY, & OUR PLANET.
Modern capitalism has increased material wealth, but at
great cost to people and planet. Nowhere is this more
evident than in the industrial food system:
• Processed food in diets has become the top risk for
mortality in the US, with well established links to
heart disease, diabetes, and other deadly epidemics.
• Crop monocultures & agricultural practices
threaten our planet and exacerbate global warming.
• 7 out of the 10 lowest-paid jobs are in the restaurant
industry, with women, immigrants, & workers of
color concentrated in the lowest paying segments.
This is the same industry that has trained us to outsource our
self-care by responding to our basest cravings for the
cheapest, most convenient, & most addictive products.
Increasingly, our time, energy, & money is spent on food
made by corporations, not loved ones - leaving us more
isolated and eroding the practice of caring for each other
through food.

5. CONSUMERS ARE WAKING UP.
WE WANT MORE THAN EASY &
CHEAP, WE WANT ETHICAL.
All over the world, consumers are becoming more informed and
sophisticated about the ramifications of industrialized food - not just
nutritionally, but environmentally and socially as well.

6. OUR ETHICS HAVE OUTGROWN OUR
FOOD SYSTEM
Despite massive efforts to co-opt cultural
traditions and natural food trends, industrial food
producers simply cannot meet shifting consumer
values. Our trust in commoditized food products
has been broken - we are looking for local
authenticity & cultural vibrancy that mass-
production simply cannot provide.
TV dinners and fast food
were sold to us as the
American Dream.
Our deteriorating physical
health drove the organic &
natural food movements.
Isolation & inequality is
re-awakening concern for
holistically ethical foods.
Cheap &
Convenient
Healthy &
Nutritious
Environmentally &
Socially Ethical

7. Where industrial
capitalism has
harmed,
Home cooking
can heal.

8. Home cooking provides immigrant security &
decolonizes food trends, letting people be the
faces & benefactors of their own cultures.
The Newcomer
The Community Pillar
Home cooking mitigates
gentrification pressure by helping
established local residents earn
income while offering new
neighbors warm food & welcome.
Home cooking gives parents an
accessible income opportunity
that meets them where they are,
works around their schedule, &
lets them prioritize family values.
The At Home Parent
FOR
COOKS:
The Entrepreneur
Legalizing home cooking
lowers barrier to entry for
food entrepreneurship and
decriminalizes previously
informal businesses.

9. Home cooking doesn’t just provide healthier food access and
strengthen community fabric. It also helps us remember that
we’re all in this together. That the everyday burdens, big &
small, don't need to be shouldered alone. We believe that in
moments of uncertainty or loneliness, it’s important to know
that somewhere nearby, there’s a seat at a table, in a warmly lit
kitchen, filled with the smells of home cooked food.
FOR OUR
COMMUNITIES:

10. We’ve spent 5 years helping communities
remember the power of home cooking

11. F o u n d e d J o s e p h i n e
We started working with home cooks in
Oakland, California to help them make
money selling food from home. Many had
existing informal food businesses.
2014
3 , 0 0 0 + h o m e c o o k s
Our online tools, food safety, &
entrepreneurship training helped our cooks
earn $1.8M in income. Our marketplace
helped 50,000+ users find meals made by
cooks in their neighborhoods.
2017
In 2014, we started Josephine, a
company to make home cooking a
means of accessible income.

12. J o s e p h i n e S h u t d o w n
In early 2018, due to regulatory pressure in
several states, we made the difficult
decision to shut down Josephine. We gave
cooks access to all of their business and
review data and helped them transition.
2018
S p o n s o r o f A B 6 2 6
2017
But we learned policy & culture
change take longer than investors
are willing to wait.
By 2017, we’d spent two years advocating for
regulatory change on behalf of our cooks.
We’d worked on city pilots (Portland) &
state working groups (Washington). AB 626
was our 2nd state bill in California.

13. L e g a l i z e d H o m e C o o k i n g
Our work culminated with the passing
of two California state bills, AB 626 &
AB 377 - the first laws to allow for
permitted sales of home cooked food in
the United States.
2019
F o u n d e d C O O K A l l i a n c e
In our first six months, our organizing
efforts yielded 80k+ petition signatures
and built a coalition of over 100 orgs,
all in favor of legalizing home cooking.
2018
We then launched the COOK
Alliance to organize cooks & focus
exclusively on policy change.

14. T o d a y
Legalization is just the first step.
We want to ensure a just, people-
powered home cooking industry.
2020

15. WE’RE OPTIMISTIC
BUT NOT NAIVE
We’ve seen firsthand the perils of both venture-backed growth &
over-regulation. We believe that it is critical to learn from the
shortcomings of other gig economies so that home cooking becomes a
new way to empower & connect, rather than commodify & extract.
Our movement needs to be built on values:

16. OUR VALUES:

17. SMALL IS
BEAUTIFUL
01(pro-local & against winner take all)
We’re anti-monopolists because we believe that
communities know how to serve themselves, and that
one-size-fits-all is often a force of oppression. We aspire
to live in biodiversity, not monoculture.

18. HOME IS
A FEELING
02The most important things are felt, not seen. Emotional
labor and cultural capital are hard to measure, but they
enrich our lives and deserve to be compensated.
(compensate care & culture)

19. HEALING IS
HARD WORK
03(self soothing ≠ self care)
Collective healing can only happen if we resist the
tendency towards ease & comfort and embrace the hard
work of learning from & facilitating between all sides.
Justice isn’t served - it’s the byproduct of healing &
growth.

20. This movement is just getting started.
Here’s what we hope to get done in 2020:

21. PERMIT
OFFSET FUND
As we’ve seen with cannabis and other newly
formalized industries, legalization alone is
not enough. We created the Cook Equity
Fund to provide small grants to underserved
home cooks applying for MEHKO permits .
cookalliance.org/equityfund

22. Several states have already started
modeling bills on our California
legislation & we expect nation-wide
adoption within a decade. We’ve
published model legislation, an
equity framework, & are providing
technical assistance nationwide to
ensure that legalization benefits
cooks & their communities.
cookalliance.org/policy
NATIONAL
CAMPAIGN

23. LEADERSHIP FOR
PEOPLE POWER
Legalization means that home cooking will soon
involve regulators, tech companies, & cities in new
ways. We are growing our leadership team to ensure
cooks’ voices are heard and that they have trusted
representation for advocacy & support— a modern
union for the empowered gig worker.
cookalliance.org/advocacy

24. IT TAKES A VILLAGE
As this movement takes on a life of its own, our work will be increasingly decentralized, with
emergent leadership in different contexts & communities. The COOK Alliance is connective tissue,
uniting diverse sources of energy, expertise, & resources in service of this shared work.
Volunteer Network
We’ve built local leadership
including County Leads in 30+
California counties, a policy
committee, and outreach team to
bring our movement into many
close-knit communities.
Partner Orgs
We’ve worked with partners
ranging from Airbnb to the Small
Business Administration on
values-aligned work spanning
policy, direct action, & cook
education.
Co-Directorship
Our core team is run through
collaborative decision-making
between our Policy Director, Cook
Success Director, Strategy
Director, & Implementation
Coordinator.
Alliance Members
Nearly 5,000 cooks & advocates
from across the country have
joined the Alliance for resources
and organizing efforts, helping
amplify our reach to 100k+
individuals taking direct actions.

25. For five years now, we’ve been working to close the gap between how
important home cooking feels and how our society values it. Initially, we
focused on putting dollars in the pockets of individual cooks who
needed it most, using technology & training to create a dream job for
passionate cooks.
As we came to better understand the systemic nature of challenges
facing informal cooks, we got into policy work to change the laws that
were keeping certain cooks informal in the first place.
Now, with the first home cooking laws going into effect & the
movement gaining momentum, our work will evolve yet again.
We invite you to join us in building the collective voice and power of
cooks to lead this new industry,
with care.

26. THANK YOU
h e l l o @ c o o k a l l i a n c e . o r g