Does This Sound Legal To You?? (California)
Business By MrsNancyB1 Updated 30 Mar 2011 , 3:26pm by jason_kraft
Here in Los Angeles county, I can not rent space from a commercial kitchen to sell cakes legally out of my home. This has put a huge banner of red tape on my dream to actually get a cake business going here.
My DH and I were chatting, and he suggested something that I hadn't thought of before. He suggested finding a catering company or a restaurant etc, and discussing the prospect of becoming an 'employee' of theirs. That employer wouldn't pay me, instead me and that employer would each get a percentage of every cake sale. So basically, I would be generating income for that employer, and that employer wouldn't have to pay me an actual salary (ie my 'pay' would be commission based through each cake I made).
Does this scenario sound like it could work legally?? What about advertising? Would I be able to advertise through the company, or would advertising be done by my employer?
TIA!
Mrs. Nancy,
What exactly did they tell you regarding renting a commercial kitchen and how that would work?
I might be misunderstanding your statement: "can not rent space from a commercial kitchen to sell cakes legally out of my home". As far as I understand in any state without a cottage food law that statement would be true. If you rent a commercial kitchen you have to sell your cakes from the commercial kitchen. This means you must store all ingredients and produced product in the rented kitchen until delivery or pick up. In Texas (which does not currently have a cottage food law), if I rent a commercial kitchen I can not bring the product in or out of my home. Again this is just my understanding. Hopefully someone in California will have more details for you.
My DH and I were chatting, and he suggested something that I hadn't thought of before. He suggested finding a catering company or a restaurant etc, and discussing the prospect of becoming an 'employee' of theirs. That employer wouldn't pay me, instead me and that employer would each get a percentage of every cake sale. So basically, I would be generating income for that employer, and that employer wouldn't have to pay me an actual salary (ie my 'pay' would be commission based through each cake I made).
That would probably work, in that type of business relationship you would typically be an independent contractor instead of am employee.
Does this scenario sound like it could work legally?? What about advertising? Would I be able to advertise through the company, or would advertising be done by my employer?
As a contractor (or employee) creating a work for hire, the employer's name would be on the final product and they would be the ones who would advertise. I'm not sure how the health dept would interpret it if you continued to advertise your own company as operating out of the employer's kitchen (the employer probably wouldn't like it either).
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