Preschool Bake Sale Gets Shut Down by Health Department

on October 18, 2011 at 2:44 PM

fairy cakes bake sale It's pretty tough to imagine a bake sale being shut down by city officials, right? And no, I don't mean a get-baked sale (pot brownies are for funerals now, haven't you heard?). I'm talking about a harmless preschool bake sale where parents sell cupcakes and cookies and whatever else they happened to have ingredients for when they got home from work the previous evening and said, "D'oh! Tomorrow is that stinking bake sale?"

But that's exactly what happened in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, when a small bake sale held to profit the Rocky Mountain Participation Nursery School was shut down because the moms and dads didn't have a permit to push their homemade lemon bars.

For shame, San Francisco. I get that you're having some kind of anti-foodie movement right now, but a bake sale for a preschool with just 22 students? Get real.

Apparently even Rhajiv Bhatia, the director of environmental health at the city's health department, was aghast when he heard about the bake sale bust.

"The laws are designed for people trying to make a living doing this," he said, his head in his hands (or maybe his head wasn't in his hands, but doesn't that make a better visual?).

Several months ago, San Francisco shut down The Underground Market, an uber-popular monthly food fair for local chefs and aspiring restaurateurs, because vendors were unlicensed. Since then, a bunch of "mini pop-up markets" have been, well, popping up in defiance all over the Bay Area.

So essentially, the preschool bake sale was shut down as part of a sweeping, overzealous effort run by people with no common sense and an inflated sense of authority.

Let me tell you, if I were one of those parents who stayed up until 1 a.m. the night before trying to figure out how to turn on the mixer without waking up the baby, silently cursing myself all the while for forgetting about the @#$!*% bake sale in the first place?

I would have been pretty ticked off. San Francisco Treats? Hardly!

What would you do if your town tried to shut down your school bake sale?

Image via Paul Chaloner/Flickr

About the author Jacqueline Burt

has written for numerous magazines, newspapers, and websites. She is easily bored and often tired, so she requires constant entertainment to keep her awake. Dance, Monkey! Dance!

Filed Under: nursery school

Comments (6)

aeamathis

on Oct 18, 2011 at 3:56 PM

I honestly thought bake sales were pretty much always prohibited now. Licensing, food handling permits, professional kitchens only, etc.

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PonyChaser

on Oct 18, 2011 at 10:59 PM

I'd go the way of those protest sales. Honestly, we're all in a dither about organic this and natural that, but God forbid, we MAKE a few edible things to support our children!! All that packaged crap is the bane of their existence, AND it tastes awful! Homemade rocks.

I am SO glad that I send my son to a teeny-tiny parochial school, in our teeny-tiny little town. Every Tuesday, the older kids in the school (the fifth grade through eighth grade) hold a bake sale, selling treats that they make with their own little hands, to other kids in the school. All items are $.50. ALL proceeds go to their Service Projects - either Heifer International or the child they've sponsored overseas. I never thought something like that would be an act of Civil Disobedience! We really need to rein in ALL forms of government in this country. Unbelievable.

DomoniqueWS

on Oct 18, 2011 at 11:12 PM

Its not just San Francisco, I'm not even allowed to bring cookies to students, its all of California. A law was passed about 4 years ago that only allows healthy foods. So we do get great lunches, and what not, but not allowed to encourage sweets. Any school should know this.

MRMama

on Oct 19, 2011 at 12:43 PM

Reason #2933490828092 that we are going to homeschool.

Kittty_Katt

on Oct 20, 2011 at 3:02 PM

its like ppl arent allowed to raise theyr own kids ..id find another town that allows it and sell there..

Facebook comment from Andrea Byrd Plate

on Oct 22, 2011 at 10:10 AM

This is crazy. As someone who worked in professional kitchens as a pastry chef before I became a SAHM, I can attest that the cleanliness standards in those kitchens are much, MUCH lower than in most home kitchens I've been in. As a result, I hardly ever will buy a baked good when I'm out and about, and I have to just get over myself when I want a meal out. The authorities need to spend their time enforcing the standards they themselves drew up for professional kitchens, not busting a pre-school bakesale.