Emeryville Small Business Owner Says City Should Help Small Business Owners

 Letter to the Tattler: My Emeryville Small Business Is Under Attack

Emeryville Resident and Small Business Owner, Empress

Small Business in Emeryville Should Be Encouraged

What's Happening Here is Discouragement

The Tattler offers citizens with news worthy stories about Emeryville to submit letters for publication for the 'Letters to the Tattler' feature.

I run a small, street-facing live-work business on Sherwin Avenue at The Emery, on the historic grounds of the former Sherwin-Williams site, where I craft and sell artisan cookies through my company, Choc’late Mama Cookie Co. What I’ve built is more than a cookie business. It’s a community-centered space rooted in culture, wellness, and connection. It’s also exactly the kind of neighborhood-serving storefront the City of Emeryville envisioned when approving this mixed-use development: active, locally owned, and engaged with the public sidewalk.

But since October, my ability to operate has been under coordinated attack.

A neighboring resident, Emeryville Housing Committee member James Brooks Jessup, who occupies an adjacent live-work unit, has led an effort to challenge the legitimacy of my business. He and a group of aligned neighbors have repeatedly claimed, falsely, that I am operating an illegal restaurant rather than a permitted retail cookie business. These claims have been submitted to the City, Alameda County, and property management, triggering investigations and enforcement actions.

The truth is straightforward: I have the permits required to operate my business. The City has confirmed this. And yet, a pattern has emerged where complaint-driven enforcement continues to escalate, regardless of verified compliance.

Through documents obtained via the California Public Records Act, I have uncovered what appears to be a coordinated campaign of complaints, surveillance, and targeted reporting. The result has been an environment of ongoing scrutiny and intimidation, one that no small business owner should have to endure simply for operating within the bounds of the law.

At the center of the current dispute is an attempt by Alameda County to reclassify my business under a Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operation (MEHKO) permit. This designation is intended for home-based food businesses not street-facing, mixed-use storefronts like mine. Applying it to my business would impose a cap of just 90 sales per week, effectively making it impossible to sustain operations or grow.

I declined this misclassification and requested a designation that accurately reflects my live-work storefront model. At present, no such classification exists.

This is not just about my business. It reveals a larger systemic failure: outdated regulatory frameworks are being used to govern modern, hybrid business models; enforcement is being driven by complaints rather than facts; and there are no meaningful protections in place for small business owners facing bad-faith reporting.

Despite bringing these concerns forward, I have received little support from the City of Emeryville and no support from property management at The Emery. In fact, I was forced to remove my signage and outdoor seating from the patio outside my unit that is clearly designed for such use. With the exception of Councilmember Kalimah Priforce, there has been no meaningful intervention to address the harm being caused or to protect my ability to operate as intended within this development.

What’s at stake is more than one business. If I am forced out, it is likely that my unit will revert to residential-only use, leaving a dark storefront where there was once community engagement. That outcome would directly contradict the City’s stated vision for The Emery as a vibrant, activated neighborhood with locally serving retail at its core.

Instead, I now face housing insecurity, loss of income, and the erosion of a business I have spent years building while the systems meant to support small entrepreneurs remain silent or ineffective.

When I moved into The Emery, I was told these storefronts were meant for businesses like mine locally rooted, community-driven, and accessible to the public. That is exactly what Choc’late Mama Cookie Co. represents.

The question now is whether Emeryville will honor that promise.

BIO: A single-mother and lifelong native of 94608, Empress founded Choc’late Mama Cookie Co., now the only Afro-Indigenous woman-led cookie café and community hub in Emeryville.  For over a decade, her work has used culinary art and hospitality as both nourishment and medicine, intentionally creating spaces that cultivate connection across the Bay Area and beyond.

This moment is about more than cookies, she says.  It’s about who gets to exist, create, and thrive in spaces that claim to support small, local business, and what happens when that support is tested.  

Choc'late Mama Cookies' mailing address is 4310 Hubbard Street but pedestrian access is on Sherwin Avenue between Hubbard and Horton streets.  Phone: (510) 846-1229

Follow @chocolatemamacookies on Instagram to witness the community, culture, and consistency behind her work.

Emeryville's Bogus Small Business Bonus Point System

Forget the Bonus Points: 

Small Business 'Bonuses' Should be in the Form of Free or Reduced Rent Paid by the Developers

News Analysis/Opinion
Arguably one of the most important pieces in the livability puzzle for a town is the idea that small locally serving businesses should be attracted and retained as an amenity for residents.  It's a subject near and dear to almost everyone in Emeryville as revealed in many public resident surveys.  That virtually everyone seems to want small locally serving business, especially retail, is equally remarkable as the fact that Emeryville always seems to be lacking in this department.  City Hall (or the free market) can't seem to deliver what everyone wants; it's a conundrum and a would be untenable condition in a democratic polity such as ours.  And yet still we wait for our non-formula independent bookstores or corner green grocers and the like.  Meanwhile the stuff we don't want, the formula chain stores and fast food restaurants proliferate in Emeryville.
What's needed is a legal contract that developers can't wriggle out of.  They're the ones who should be responsible for bringing us our locally serving retail.

This is Emeryville:
East Bay Bridge Mall
Low slung suburban style, baking asphalt.
Before the Planning Department came up
with the 'bonus point system', left to their 
own devices, this is what developers 
felt comfortable building
in Emeryville.

So it is probable there are hidden reasons why residents must go on waiting to get the kind of retail they want to see.  More on that later.
For now, let's take it as a given that people should get the town they want (as long as the law is obeyed).  It should be simply a matter of creating municipal policy for us getting what we want.  We'll chalk up this strange Emeryville disconnect to some kind of miscommunication for now.

As the City Council argues for how to attract and retain these small businesses we want by use of the Planning Department's 'bonus point system' as they have been of late,  now would be a good time to consider new more effective ways to go about this.

Historically in Emeryville, City Hall offered essentially nothing by way of intervention in the development of the town in attempt to steer developers to deliver any specific kind of retail.   What we got as a result is what the developers wanted to produce.  That hands off model brought to Emeryville the 1990's suburban style malls, notable at East Bay Bridge Center and the Powell Street Plaza; decidedly not what residents say they want.

This is Emeryville:
Powell Street Plaza 
The heart of Emeryville, regional shopping center.
Lots of parking and lots of formula chain retail.
1990's, this is what developers wanted to build but 
not what Emeryville residents wanted.

Later, as Emeryville land became more valuable, the Council directed the Planning Department to be more interventionist and the current 'bonus system' was invented.  This new system, still hands off in its demeanor, gives developers more rights to build denser and taller (and more profitable) projects that would normally be allowed so long as they include certain things the Council says they want.  In the case of their small business desires, especially in the retail field, the Council designed a fee idea where developers could pay into a small business fund at City Hall if they choose to get their bonus points.  City Hall then dispersed these fund monies to small businesses in the form of the Facade Improvement Program, the Paint Program and such.  The bonus system may have made Emeryville's small businesses look better but it has had little effect in achieving the desired results for attracting locally serving non formula retail as we have seen and as the Tattler has chronicled.

Now, the Council is looking to upgrade the bonus system by giving developers 10 bonus points to developers for every 1% of project construction valuation up to a maximum of 50%.  The idea is to funnel more money into City Hall's small business fund.
We think this idea is fundamentally flawed and it will not deliver the kinds of small business residents say they want.

This is Emeryville:
Bay Street Mall, Anytown USA
Emeryville's 'bonus point system' brings this
kind of development; the Gap and Old Navy.
Denser and more urban but still nothing but
major formula chain stores.
Emeryville residents don't go here.
We're still waiting for our locally serving retail.

The Tattler has long urged the City Council to take up this cause and in their defense, they did try an experimental approach with the Promenade Project on San Pablo Avenue back some years ago.  That shopping center was slated to become just another strip mall with formula fast food except Councilman John Fricke proposed the City directly intervene in the rental process in the newly built mall and offer reduced rent to desirable businesses by subsidy from the taxpayers.  That is how Arizmendi Bakery was able to afford the rent there.  Now, incidentally, Arizmendi is a success and making it on their own, the City subsidies having long since ended.
But the problem with the City subsidies is that City Hall is ill suited to getting into the commercial landlord business.  It's better to let the private sector do that.

Clearly, the way to get the type of retail and other small business we want is to get the developers, the ones with the expertise and the money, to do it.  Up until now, it's all been by verbal agreement.  And that's where the breakdown occurs.  The developers invariably tell the City they also want these locally serving non formula business renting the street front stores associated with their (usually residential) development proposals.  The developers tell us they also want what Emeryville residents want before their project is approved.  They assure the Council they'll work in good faith to secure leases for locally serving retail for their projects.
We all know how that's been working out.
The business that end up signing leases in the new store fronts are formula retail chains and fast food (because of the high rents associated with new construction).  Perhaps even worse, the store fronts sit empty for years because the (residential) developer isn't interested in playing commercial landlord, the store fronts having been provided by them as a condition for approval from the City.

This Could Be Emeryville:
Locally Serving Non Formula Retail
The only way Emeryville can get this is if the City
gets it in writing from the developers
before it approves the project.

The only realistic way to deliver locally serving non formula retail and other small business that Emeryville residents want is simply to require developers to guarantee in writing this will happen.  The resultant low rent receipts can be written off by the developer as a cost of doing business in Emeryville.  Like everything else, it needs to be in the form of a written contract, not a verbal agreement that has no force of law.  Rather than relying on some arcane or byzantine point system that isn't delivering the goods, Emeryville simply has to start demanding developers deliver what they say they will when it comes to small locally serving retail.

East Bay Express: Emeryville Small Business Victorious in Minimum Wage Debate

"Most of the Business Owners Got What They Wanted"

The East Bay Express reports on Emeryville's minimum wage debate.  They conclude the small business community was successful in driving their agenda in the policy that emerged from Tuesday's City Council meeting as the Council seeks to raise the minimum wage for all workers.

From today's East Bay Express:

Emeryville Business Owners, Workers Weigh in On Proposed $14.42 Minimum Wage

By Darwin Bondgraham

Last night, at a special study session meeting of the Emeryville City Council, dozens of business owners and workers spoke about the city’s proposed minimum wage increase. No business owner spoke out against raising the minimum wage. But almost all of them voiced concerns about the pace of the increase, and whether or not Emeryville should adopt what would be the highest municipal minimum wage in the nation. Some business owners asked for special exemptions for their businesses.

After hearing from the public, the council decided to draft an ordinance that starting on July 1 will increase Emeryville’s minimum wage to $14.42 an hour for large businesses and $12.25 an hour for small businesses. Small businesses are defined as companies with fewer than 55 employees.

The draft ordinance will adjust the large employer wage upward each year to account for inflation. And the small employer $12.25 wage will be increased by a dollar each year until 2019 when it converges with the large employer minimum wage, creating a single minimum wage for all employers.

The Emeryville City Council will vote on the minimum wage next month.

Business owners and workers on both sides of the issue helped the council craft the proposal.

....Ultimately most of the business owners who spoke got what they wanted; a lower phased-in minimum wage increase. Large retailers, janitorial companies, and restaurant chains, of which there are many in Emeryville, will see an immediate increase to $14.42, however.

“The study session proved we had basically reached a consensus,” Emeryville Mayor Ruth Atkin said in an interview. “I expect this will be the version of the ordinance that ultimately goes through two readings and becomes law.”

Read the rest of the East Bay Express story HERE.