Berkeley resident Traci Siegel had always loved cooking and experimenting with recipes but never pursued a career in the food industry — until she started cooking for Oakland startup Josephine, an online platform that connects home cooks with others in their neighborhood who want to buy their meals.

But Siegel and other cooks on the platform soon started getting cease-and-desist letters from local health departments. Under current law, individuals are only allowed to sell food through retail food facilities or, thanks to a 2012 bill, “cottage food operations” — which are limited to a restricted list that consists mostly of nonperishable food items that can be prepared in the home.

Now, help for home cooks looking to participate in the so-called “informal food economy” could be on the way from Sacramento lawmakers. The state Assembly’s health committee voted Tuesday to move forward AB 626, a bill that will make it legal for home cooks to sell meals made out of their homes for profit.

“By doing that cooking, I was basically able to create credibility as a cook,” Siegel said. “People got to have my dishes. That allowed me to build my own personal businesses — that gave me that start.”

Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella, said at the committee meeting that the bill was about “making food sales more accessible out of your home for chefs and cooks who operate that way.”

“They operate under the table unfortunately today as a result of the legal barriers that exist,” Garcia said.

Users of Josephine, which is sponsoring the bill, can log on, see which meals in the area are featured that day, place an order, and pick up the food from that neighbor’s house. For those cooks who rely on selling food for extra income, the platform provides exposure and an easier way to sell their product.

But as a result of the cease-and-desist letters, Josephine was forced to shut down its public marketplace in California (it still operates in parts of Oregon and Washington).The startup’s founders saw a need for the business, and the company set forth to help change the rules, said co-founder Matt Jorgensen.

After Josephine sponsored a similar food bill last year that was pulled before it reached committee, the company regrouped, working with Garcia and a group of stakeholders, including cooks, labor justice activists and health regulators to ensure the bill would address concerns not just for the cooks whom it would impact but the regulators who create and enforce health codes.

The bill would add “microenterprise home kitchen operations” to the list of what constitutes a “food facility” under the Health and Safety Code. It would define such operations as food facilities “operated by a resident in a private home where food is prepared for a consumer” that meet specific requirements.

Home kitchen operations cannot have more than one full-time equivalent food employee, not including a family member or household member, and food has to be prepared, cooked and served on the same day, picked up by the customer, or delivered within a safe time period based on holding equipment capacity, the proposed bill says.

For it to qualify as a microenterprise home kitchen operation, the household would have to limit its meals to 30 individual meals per day and no more than 60 per week, unless approved differently by the local enforcement agency. It also cannot make more than $50,000 in gross annual sales, nor include catering operations.

Despite those requirements, public health officials are wary of opening up the possibilities for people to get foodborne illnesses from ill-prepared meals.

“Foodborne illness still presents a real threat to public health,” said Cynthia Bartus, a registered environmental health specialist, at the committee meeting. Bartus cited an incident in November in which three people were killed and 22 more sickened by food prepared at people’s homes and served at a Thanksgiving meal put on by a church group in Antioch.

Supporters of the bill say the guidelines provided in the bill and the potential rules set by counties will help crack down on what is currently an underground economy.

It would also provide an avenue for legitimate entrepreneurship, said Mark Herbert, California director for Small Business Majority, a small business advocacy organization.

“A lot of our cooks really just want to make an extra $10,000 to make ends meet,” Josephine’s Jorgensen said. “For them, cooking is the most viable method of economic empowerment.”

Josephine cooks are 85 percent women, and 35 percent are recent immigrants. About 40 percent have a household income under $45,000 per year.

For many of them, Jorgensen added, it does not make sense to look for work in the traditional restaurant industry, where cooks often work long hours with little flexibility. Some Josephine cooks are full-time parents, some are immigrants without English language skills, and some are retirees looking for extra money.

For cooks like Siegel, the Berkeley resident, selling home-cooked meals can be the best way to develop a new business. Siegel does not cook for Josephine anymore, but she credits it with helping her build her personal chef and cooking-instruction business and wants others to have that opportunity.

“I’ve experienced what this could mean for other people,” Siegel said. “I have friends who have siblings or parents who cook delicious food who would like to get into the food industry but don’t know where to begin.

“It could be really life changing for a lot of people.”