Home bakers hope Norfolk will ease regulations

NORFOLK

Kerry Achatz hoped to roll dough in her Sherwood Forest home kitchen when she started her bakery business a year and a half ago.

Setting up Lenora Belle Cookies and Cakes, named after her late grandmother, in her home would have saved her lots of money and time, Achatz thought. But when she got ready to launch the business, "not so fast" was the message she got from the city, where zoning laws ban residents from concocting and selling baked goods in their homes.

"I'm just baking cookies, and I couldn't use a home residential oven," she said.

Bakers such as Achatz might soon get the chance to do their entrepreneurial baking at home. The City Council will soon consider a change to its zoning codes that would allow residents to use home kitchens to prepare food for commercial sale.

Planning Director Frank Duke presented the proposal to a council committee last month and plans to bring the revisions before the entire council within 60 days.

Ghent resident Tania Kalupahana said the city's current rules stopped her intentions of selling goods at the Portsmouth Farmer's Market last year.

Officials noticed her home address on food labels and said she couldn't sell there because of Norfolk's rule, Kalupahana said. The owner of a deli where she works allowed her to use the store's kitchen, which had passed inspection.

But all the runaround discouraged Kalupahana from baking her lemon treats and goat-cheese bars, a hobby she had hoped to parlay into a business.

"It's just inconvenient," she said.

The proposal the city is considering would only apply to baking goods, Duke said. Home bakery owners still would not be allowed to host employees, serve clients or conduct sales from their homes.

"The idea is not to have a lot of cars going into our neighborhoods where we'd be turning homes into retail establishments," he said.

Under the proposal, home kitchens would have to pass inspection by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, as stipulated in a similar exemption in state law. If the kitchen failed inspection, the city health department would have authority to shut it down and the city would then revoke the owner's business license.

The inspection costs $40 annually, on top of license fees. Department spokeswoman Elaine Lidholm said inspectors check for sanitation, temperature control, ingredients lists, and general food-safety precautions in the food-preparation area.

"It has to be enclosed," she said. "It can't just be the kitchen that your kids and the dog run through."

Bev Sell, who runs the Five Points Community Farm Market in Norfolk, said food safety is important and that she and other staffers screen vendors who run their businesses from the market on their preparation procedures.

Sell said she favors the proposal the city is now weighing because current guidelines limit the diversity of products the market can offer. To help its vendors, the market installed a $20,000 hood for its oven.

The market is also where Achatz now operates Lenora Belle Cookies and Cakes. She invested $10,000 in startup costs because of the current rules, she said.

"I had to go out and get a commercial oven," she said, "because now I'm in a commercial establishment."

Achatz said the proposal would help startups but could hurt some business owners whose pricing is affected by higher overhead costs. She charges $2 for each cookie or $20 for a baker's dozen.

"Now," she said, "the people who can go and bake at home in Norfolk can go to the places I still provide my cookies to and say, 'Oh, I can sell you the same cookies for a quarter because I bake them in my home.' "

Cherise M. Newsome,757-446-2794, cherise.newsome@pilotonline.com