Home chefs selling their products online have drawn the ire of some in the local food industry and potential increased scrutiny from authorities.
In Manitoba, it’s illegal to sell food made at home, with exceptions for farmers markets and craft sales. Still, online forums such as Facebook Marketplace are flooded with products for purchase.
While some vendors use inspected commercial kitchens, others operate in residential settings, noted the executive director of the Manitoba Restaurant & Foodservices Association, hinting at upcoming regulatory changes.
“We’re looking forward to being able to see a more level playing field,” Shaun Jeffrey said. “There definitely is going to be some changes coming in the way that businesses operate.”
Jeffrey didn’t disclose when any such change would arrive, what it would entail or what level of government would set the new rules.
The province is responsible for inspections of food-handling establishments. Consumer Protection Minister Lisa Naylor didn’t respond to questions by print deadline Tuesday (which was also Manitoba’s budget day).
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency also didn’t respond to questions by print deadline.
Meantime, entrepreneurs in the food industry are feeling the pinch of competing with home-based cooks.
“This is a huge problem,” said Rakhi Ahluwalia, co-owner of Mexsala By the Sugarcane Regent in Winnipeg. “If people are selling their food for $5, $6, who will come to the restaurants?”
Ahluwalia said she regularly scours websites and social media platforms, looking for such food sellers. She’s found people offering Indian cuisine for cheap — it’s hurt her business, she said.
Ahluwalia and her husband opened a second Curry Up Indian Kitchen location at the corner of Grant Avenue and Kenaston Boulevard last year. It closed after eight months, following slow sales.
The couple converted their original Regent Avenue site to Mexsala By the Sugarcane Regent, which emphasizes breakfast. Sales have since rebounded, Ahluwalia said.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything in the industry, she added, highlighting risings costs of food and labour.
“The restaurant owners can manage, but how will they manage if… people are supplying food from home on a cheaper rate?” Ahluwalia said. “They don’t have to pay (a business-sized) rent, they don’t have to pay their utilities.”
Meantime, she and fellow restaurateurs are paying taxes and overhead costs, Ahluwalia said. Her business has cut down on staff — from three to one working employee — and has changed its food-buying patterns to save money.
Gift Enone, owner of Sangees African Groceries Shop in Brandon, echoed the sentiments.
People selling African food online are “bringing the business backwards,” Enone said last week.
“By the time you’re done selling in the shop, you’re selling for $12,” she said. “Dudes that are not paying tax, not paying for the shop, are selling for $8 — that will reduce your sale for the day.”
Some online merchants charge the same prices for their baking as High Tea Bakery does. However, they’re not spending money to upkeep the codes High Tea Bakery must abide by, said owner Belinda Bigold, when contacted by a reporter.
“A lot of them look like legitimate stores,” Bigold said. “I think that’s very misleading to the consumer, (and) potentially hazardous.”
Complicating matters further is many online food businesses follow Manitoba’s laws and operate out of commercial kitchens, Bigold underlined, adding it can be hard to tell just who’s baking from home.
American home and hospitality star Martha Stewart is among the big names who began as home cooks.
“Everybody needs to start somewhere,” Bigold remarked, adding there has to be some regulation. “I think there’s a big difference from, ‘My friend needs baby shower cookies, so I’m going to try it out… and charge for them.’
“When you’re selling them online on a regular basis (and) you have no inspections… I think that’s misleading.”
Bigold noted cottage laws in the United States: home cooks can sell products to the public but they must have food-handler permits, label products appropriately and stay below a certain income limit, in most cases.
Sabrina Dean, a Manitoba food safety consultant, clocked a rise in home cooks selling food during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many had available time and were looking to earn extra cash.
“I don’t think it’s changed,” Dean said. “It really has exploded.”
Manitoba’s health protection unit received 83 complaints of unsafe food practices in 2023 (generally of food prepared at home and sold to the public). This year, it’s received two such complaints.
(Manitoba began tracking such complaints in 2021.)
Inspectors “educate home-based food business owners” on regulatory requirements upon receiving complaints. There’s a high level of compliance from entrepreneurs who’ve been educated, a government spokesperson wrote in a statement.
Further action involves issuing warnings and tickets. Over the past two years, Manitoba has issued five tickets, up from just one between 2018 and 2019.
Part of the problem with enforcement — leading to a complaint-driven system — is a lack of labourers, Dean noted.
“They just don’t have the resources to manage it all,” she said, adding inspectors prioritize foods more likely to lead to illness.
Stuart Smyth, a University of Saskatchewan professor of agricultural and resource economics, considers selling food online, including on social media, “an innovative strategy,” when done right.
Home-based foods don’t truly compete with restaurant meals, especially if just one type of product is being offered, Smyth said.
He pointed to higher food costs and noted customers are “looking for all kinds of opportunities to make those grocery dollars go further.”
Gabrielle Piché
Reporter
Gabby is a big fan of people, writing and learning. She graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in the spring of 2020.
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