SB 972 in California: Health Permits, Carts, and Commissary Rules

California’s SB 972 rewrote the sidewalk vending rulebook by creating a new category in the California Retail Food Code called the compact mobile food operation, or CMFO. The California SB 972 sidewalk vending rules took effect January 1, 2023, and they do three practical things for someone pushing a food cart: they replace criminal penalties with administrative fines, they shrink the equipment demands that used to apply as if every cart were a full food truck, and they let permitted home kitchens serve as a commissary.¹ SB 972 sits on top of SB 946, the 2018 Safe Sidewalk Vending Act, which governs where and how cities can regulate vendors on the sidewalk itself.

Who Counts as a Compact Mobile Food Operation

A CMFO is a mobile food facility that operates from a pushcart, stand, display, pedal-driven cart, wagon, showcase, rack, or other nonmotorized conveyance, or directly from the vendor’s person. The dividing line is the motor. If your setup has an engine, you fall under the older mobile food facility rules written for trucks and trailers. If you push it, pedal it, or carry it, you are a CMFO and SB 972 applies to you.¹

Do You Need a Health Permit

Not every sidewalk vendor needs one. SB 972 fully exempts a CMFO from county health permitting if two conditions are met: the display area is 25 square feet or less, and the vendor sells only prepackaged food that does not require refrigeration, or whole, uncut produce.¹ A cart selling bagged chips, bottled drinks, and whole fruit fits that description. Exempt vendors still have to follow basic food safety rules on labeling, adulteration, and sanitation, but they skip the plan check and the annual fee.

Everyone else needs a health permit from their local county enforcement agency. The traditional plan check requires submitting to-scale construction drawings of your cart, which takes time and money. SB 972 gave counties the option to pre-approve standardized cart blueprints, so a vendor buying a cart built to a design the county has already accepted can skip the individual plan check.¹ Permit fees are set by each county. Sacramento County, for example, charges $391 for a CMFO permit. Call your county environmental health department for the current number before you buy or build anything.

What You Can Cook and What You Need on the Cart

A CMFO is limited to what the code calls “limited food preparation.” The category is wider than the name suggests. It covers heating, frying, baking, roasting, steaming, blending, ice shaving, slicing and chopping produce that was pre-washed at an approved facility, assembling food items, juicing for immediate service, and hot or cold holding of food prepared at an approved kitchen.¹ What you cannot do on a standard CMFO is handle raw meat, poultry, or fish. That trips the full warewashing requirements.

Sinks and Water

A CMFO that does not prepare raw meat, poultry, or fish needs only a handwashing sink with at least five gallons of potable water. The county can approve a smaller tank if your operating location allows for water refills during the day. These carts are also exempt from carrying a water heater or supplying warm water.¹

If you do handle raw meat, poultry, or fish, you must meet the standard handwashing and warewashing facility requirements. There is one flexibility built in: vendors can satisfy the sink rule by demonstrating access to a permitted auxiliary conveyance, a separate cart or vehicle carrying the required sinks, when operating at a fixed location.

Restrooms

The old rule required restroom access for the operator at all times. SB 972 exempts a CMFO from that requirement when multiple employees work the cart and can rotate, so one leaves to use a restroom while another stays.¹ Solo operators still need a restroom plan, which usually means identifying a specific nearby accessible restroom in your operating procedures.

Food Handler Cards

CMFOs are exempt from the more intensive food safety manager certification larger facilities require. Every operator and employee who prepares, stores, or serves food needs a food handler card that meets state standards.¹ Courses are available online, take a few hours, and cost less than a manager exam.

Using a Home Kitchen as Your Commissary

Renting commissary space is one of the biggest ongoing costs in mobile food. SB 972 opened an alternative. A permitted cottage food operation or microenterprise home kitchen operation (MEHKO) can serve as the commissary for up to two CMFOs, if the local enforcement agency endorses the home kitchen as capable of supporting the vendor’s food preparation and storage needs.¹

Food prepared in a MEHKO can be sold directly from a CMFO run by the same permit holder. Local governing bodies can also authorize MEHKOs as commissaries for CMFOs and can raise the meal and income caps that ordinarily limit MEHKO operations. One hard limit: food prepared in a private home that is not permitted as a cottage food operation or MEHKO cannot be sold from a CMFO, and doing so can lead to suspension or revocation of the CMFO permit.

Where You Can Set Up

Location rules come mostly from SB 946, not SB 972, but they apply to every CMFO vendor. Cities cannot ban sidewalk vending outright. They can regulate time, place, and manner, but the regulations have to be tied to objective health, safety, or welfare concerns rather than aesthetics or a general wish to keep vendors away.²

Cities can restrict vending in a few defined situations:

Stationary vendors can be prohibited in areas zoned exclusively residential, but roaming vendors, meaning those who move between locations and stop only to complete a sale, cannot be barred from residential zones.
Vendors can be prohibited in the immediate vicinity of a permitted certified farmers’ market or swap meet, but only during its operating hours.
Vendors can be restricted around a temporary special event permit area for the duration of the event, and any vendors already permitted there get the same notice and mitigation offered to other affected businesses.

Cities also cannot confine vendors to a single designated area unless the restriction is directly tied to documented health or safety concerns. And every setup must comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which in practice means leaving wheelchair clearance on the sidewalk, keeping curb ramps unblocked, and preserving accessible routes.

Fines Instead of Criminal Charges

SB 972 eliminated criminal penalties for health code violations by CMFO operators. Before the law, a sanitation violation could bring a misdemeanor charge. Now the enforcement runs through an administrative fine schedule.³ The health code schedule works like this:¹

First violation: a written notice describing the violation and the code section, no fine.
Second violation within one year: up to $100.
Third violation within one year: up to $200.
Each additional violation within one year: up to $500.

Operating without a required health permit carries a separate, stiffer penalty of up to three times the cost of the applicable permit.

Local sidewalk vending ordinance violations have their own fine schedule under Government Code Section 51039:⁴

First violation: up to $100.
Second within one year: up to $200.
Each additional within one year: up to $500.

Vending without a required local permit brings heavier fines: up to $250 for a first violation, up to $500 for a second within one year, and up to $1,000 for each additional violation within one year. If you receive a no-permit fine and then obtain the permit, the fines drop back to the lower schedule. A local authority can rescind a vendor’s permit after four or more violations in a permit term. For vendors who qualify as low-income under Government Code Section 68632, the local authority must accept 20 percent of the fine as payment in full.⁴

How to Start Vending Legally

The SB 946 and SB 972 framework creates layered permitting. A workable sequence:

Determine your food type. Prepackaged shelf-stable food or whole uncut produce from a display of 25 square feet or less is exempt from the health permit. Everything else needs one.
Contact your county environmental health department. Get the current CMFO permit fee, ask whether pre-approved cart designs are accepted, and confirm any local construction guidance.
Line up your commissary. Identify a licensed commercial kitchen, or apply for a MEHKO or cottage food endorsement if you plan to work from your home kitchen.
Get food handler cards for everyone who will handle food on the cart before you open.
Check your city’s local vending ordinance for a separate sidewalk vending permit, its cost, and any location restrictions.
Obtain a general business license from your city.
Obtain a seller’s permit from the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration if you sell taxable goods.

SB 972 set the statewide floor. Counties and cities fill in the specifics, and the details vary. Your county health department is the single most useful first call.

1
California Legislative Information. California SB 972 – California Retail Food Code
2
California Legislative Information. California SB 946 – Sidewalk Vendors
3
Public Counsel. Legislative Alert SB 972 – Sidewalk Food Vending
4
California Legislative Information. California Government Code GOV 51039