Youngkin signs homemade food bill inspired by ‘kingpin of cake pops’

The front yard of Virginia’s Executive Mansion was turned into a miniature farmers market Monday as Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed a bill meant to make life a little easier for a home baker he called “the kingpin of cake pops.”

He was referring to Kelly Phillips, a 41-year-old cake pop maker from the Richmond area who was told she could face a criminal charge last year for selling her treats to the public without being in strict compliance with Virginia’s food safety regulations.

“I never thought in my wildest dreams that my story would catch the attention of the governor and he would want to talk about cake pops,” Phillips said as she spoke next to a table filled with cake pops depicting the Virginia flag and the “74” logo for the state’s 74th governor.

Youngkin — who swung by a variety of tables set up at the mansion offering homemade nuts, brownies, jams and pickles — called the cake pop issue an example of how government rules can at times seem to stifle entrepreneurial energy, joking that Phillips got in trouble for having “the audacity to use Instagram to promote her product.”

“In a world where we can track my pizza delivery in real time and I can see it arrive to the back door, it seems a little outdated that Phillips couldn’t use social media to advertise cake pops,” Youngkin said. “And that’s when we realized our regulations need to be modernized… Sometimes the most important thing we can do with regulations is get rid of them.”

The law Youngkin signed at Monday’s ceremony, which passed the General Assembly with broad bipartisan support and takes effect July 1, clarifies how food safety rules do and don’t apply to the smallest of small businesses.

Virginia House OKs ‘cake pop bill’ easing limits on small sellers of homemade goods

Virginia’s laws on inspections for food preparation areas include an exception for goods made in home kitchens, as long as those operations remain small and confined largely to face-to-face interactions with customers. 

The recently approved legislation will allow people who sell low-risk homemade food to promote their products online and give them greater leeway to sell at a variety of local fairs and events instead of limiting sales only to traditional farmers markets.

It was those two issues that got Phillips and her KP’s Kake Pops business in trouble last year with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which chided her for selling cake pops at a local holiday market that didn’t count as a farmers market and told her she wasn’t allowed to advertise on social media even if she wasn’t conducting actual sales online. 

State law prohibits uninspected food from being offered for sale on the internet, and officials originally interpreted that rule to apply to advertising as well. Phillips protested that the rule was out of step with the 21st century economy, in which many small businesses use social media to drum up in-person sales and let customers know when and where their products will be available.

Phillips enlisted the help of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning law firm that fights against what it sees as overly restrictive laws on homemade food. After media outlets reported her story, Del. Nick Freitas, R-Culpeper, amended a bill he had filed dealing with homemade pickles to also address the cake pop controversy.

“I don’t think most people understood that we had this burgeoning underground, black market cake pop industry,” Freitas said Monday. “Thankfully the governor and others came together to really recognize that sometimes the best work that we do around here is taking certain things off the books or reforming or adjusting it.”

Phillips thanked the officials in attendance at Monday’s ceremony for responding to her predicament with what she described as surprising speed, given the government’s usual reputation for sluggishness.

The governor thanked Phillips for calling attention to a problem that could be fixed.

“I want to thank you for your courage to stand up and say ‘Come on folks, this doesn’t make any sense at all,’” Youngkin said.