While opening and operating a restaurant in Los Angeles can be an extraordinary endeavor, it can entangle restaurant owners and chefs in a bureaucratic web of city, county, and state regulations that are often costly and, many say, outdated. From requiring alcohol-serving establishments to install extra restrooms to forcing small restaurants to build drinking fountains on the premises, restaurant owners and operators are required to meet countless regulatory demands to serve food and drink to the public.

Eddie Navarrette, the founder of FE Design & Consulting, hopes to reduce the challenges faced by restaurants by directly challenging some of these state laws. He knows them well — since 2003, Navarette’s hospitality consulting firm has participated in the development, opening, and building of hundreds of restaurants and bars in Los Angeles. “I see the barriers that businesses go through,” says Navarette. “These codes don’t reflect our current environment. There are things we can do that will have low to no impact on public safety if we just cut some of the red tape off.”

Navarrette recently traveled to Sacramento to garner support for Assembly Bill 2550 (AB 2550), also known as the Small Business Support Act. The bill, which Navarrette originally conceived and for which he served as technical adviser, was introduced to the California Assembly’s Health Committee on April 9, 2024, by assemblymember Jesse Gabriel of the San Fernando Valley and sponsored by the Independent Hospitality Coalition (IHC), an organization comprised of LA hospitality operators, advocates, and workers who help shape state policy.

The bill seeks to amend existing codes in a multitude of ways, including eliminating the separate gender-designated restroom requirements if a business serves alcohol; allowing businesses to add a new outdoor patio area of up to 1,000 square feet without providing additional restrooms; eliminating the requirement to construct drinking fountains in food service establishments with less than 100 occupants; adding more specific language around the ventilation requirements for operators with baking ovens, and creating clear expectations on enclosure requirements at temporary food stalls; among others.

Eddie Navarrette

Many of the codes that AB 2550 attempts to update have gone unaddressed for years, according to Navarrette. For example, California’s drinking fountain requirement is a decades-old code that impacts all places of employment, including restaurants already required to serve water on-site. For other codes, legislative developments have shifted in recent years. As cities move to gender-neutral restrooms, the bill is designed to follow the lead of Senate Bill 1194, which allows cities to include gender-neutral bathroom stalls. If a restaurant expands its square footage and officials require the same business to install a new bathroom, installing two gender-specific bathrooms can run up to $25,000 and include time-consuming inspections.

AB 2550 specifically targets a dozen of what Navarette considers outdated code sections, which he says will not come at the cost of tax or restaurant revenue and public safety. “I don’t feel like [AB 2550] is going to contribute to any problems like foodborne illnesses,” says Navarrette. “It feels like it will be creating a positively impactful environment in our restaurant communities with more small business growth, and the ability to build more businesses.”

In addition to easing some of the red tape experienced by restaurants, AB 2550 aims to provide relief for government workers, especially its overburdened restaurant health inspectors. Navarrette says that city and county officials are aware of the outdated rules but are unable to offer any assistance or accommodations. “I’ve seen what inspectors go through, especially during the pandemic,” says Navarette. “Certain regulations were forced upon them with no training or how to enforce them.”

Navarrette plans to bring a restaurant operator or constituent who will be directly impacted by AB 2550 to each meeting in Sacramento. Navarrette and chef Vanda Asapahu, the owner of Westchester’s Ayara Thai, attended AB 2550’s first hearing in front of the Health Committee on April 9, which passed unanimously. On April 23, Navarrette and Casa Vega owner Christy Vega presented the bill to the Business and Professions Committee, which investigates and studies proposed bills that may require creating new statewide regulatory entities. Once again, the bill passed unanimously.

Navarrette says that AB 2550 will now move on to several other committees before returning to the Assembly for a full vote. The bill will go through the California State Senate’s approval process before being presented to Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign into law.

“AB 2550 is simply changing building and health codes that will save California businesses millions in unnecessary construction, and save local jurisdictions tons of hours from not having to enforce these archaic policies,” says Navarrette. “I want to do more of this work, but this is our starting point.”