Seeking a Balanced Diet of Permits and Empanadas - New York Times

As citizen uprisings go, it was rather scrumptious. Instead of chants and bullhorns, the protest in San Francisco's Lower Haight on Oct. 2 featured bourbon apple walnut crumble pie and Madagascar vanilla ice cream con sea salt.

Street Sweets, an unlicensed open-air food sale, was a defiant response to the city's closure in June of the popular Underground Market, a monthly event that allowed aspiring Bay Area chefs to test their fare on thousands of local appetites. Health department officials said the market lacked permits and posed potential dangers with unsafe cooking conditions and food that was prepared without following health codes.

Vendors saw it differently: "An incubator for food start-ups," said Willi Schrom, co-owner of Jilli Ice Cream.

"Having a thousand or so people walk by your logo and taste your stuff was great," said Kai Kronfield, whose candy company Nosh This began at the market and is now sold in stores. "I miss it a lot."

Street Sweets is the latest miniature "pop-up market" (others include gatherings of Vietnamese food vendors and pies-in-parks events) attempting to fill the Underground Market's void. It also showcases the larger frustrations felt by some trying to enter the city's vibrant food community.

Interviews with a dozen people involved with food start-ups said the city's rules make it expensive and difficult to be entrepreneurial — hence many try to avoid the city's permitting system entirely.

Indeed, the city can seem to overstep.

Paula Tejeda, owner of The Girl from Empanada, said that when she tested the market by selling her stuffed breads from a basket carried around the Mission, she was confronted by city officials who demanded to know if she was collecting sales tax properly.

"Their badge in hand, they then asked me where can they find the Tamale Lady," Ms. Tejeda said. "How insane is that?"

Such confrontations are not just reserved for aspiring food professionals. On Oct. 1 a small bake sale in Golden Gate Park by parents to benefit the Rocky Mountain Participation Nursery School, a preschool serving 22 children, was shut down for lacking a permit.

"If there was some expedited and lower-cost permit system, then we'd be interested," said Daniel Ransom, a parent, adding that the annual bake sale raises just $1,500. "But as it stands it's a very complicated and bureaucratic process."

Sharon Miller, executive director of the Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center, a local nonprofit organization that assists fledgling businesses, said San Francisco is among the nation's most expensive cities for start-ups, especially food, in part because of fees and permits and a labyrinthine system not clearly explained to beginners.

"There's less openness on how people can get started," Ms. Miller said. "It's really hard for small businesses."

Rajiv Bhatia, director of environmental health at the city's health department, which inspects and regulates eating establishments, said that the rules are not too strict. "We're very supportive of creative business enterprises," Dr. Bhatia said.

But he seemed dismayed that the city closed a preschool bake sale. "The laws are designed for people trying to make a living doing this," he said.

Food sellers who pursue substantial revenue, he said, should be able to rent commercial kitchen space (for as little as $20 per hour) and follow health codes that protect the public from food-borne illnesses.

As proof of the effectiveness of the city's rules, Dr. Bhatia said that from 2006 to 2008 there were only four outbreaks of illnesses traced back to food handlers — just about one per year in a city with 4,500 licensed eating establishments, the highest number per capita in the nation.

Iso Rabins, founder of the Underground Market, said he required vendors to follow safe food handling procedures, and during the 18 months the market operated, more than 50,000 patrons were served and there were no reported illnesses.

"They shut down the Underground Market because this was the most visible example," Mr. Rabins said. But aspiring chefs' ambitions and the public's appetite has led to "a lot of interesting pop-ups going on right now," he said.

Dr. Bhatia was unsure about the legality of these new smaller markets — they could be considered private events — but said that regulating them would be "infeasible" because they are secretive and spontaneous.

Perhaps trying won't be necessary — these spinoffs could soon be returning to their mother ship. Both Dr. Bhatia and Mr. Rabins hinted that the Underground Market might reopen, maybe within weeks, this time complying with regulations.

"We want to make it work," Dr. Bhatia said.