Existing law, the Sherman Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Law, prohibits the manufacture, sale, delivery, holding, or offer for sale of adulterated foods. Existing law provides specified standards for the transportation of food, including, among others, the requirement for all food to be transported so as to be pure and free from adulteration and spoilage, and the requirement for potentially hazardous food to be maintained at the required holding temperatures. A person who violates the Sherman Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Law is guilty of a misdemeanor, except as otherwise provided, and may be subject to a civil penalty, as specified.

This bill would define a food delivery platform as a business engaged in the service of online food ordering and delivery from a grocery establishment, a retail store with a grocery department, or a grocery warehouse to a consumer, and would require a food delivery platform, at its own expense, to ensure, among other things, that its food delivery drivers have training relating to maintaining potentially hazardous foods at required temperatures. The bill would require a food delivery platform to maintain minimum liability insurance, as specified, that covers liabilities arising from a food delivery driver’s use of a vehicle in connection with the food delivery platform’s online-enabled application or platform. The bill would require the food delivery platform, at its sole expense, to ensure compliance with laws regulating the adulteration of food. The bill would require the State Department of Public Health to enforce these provisions, and would impose a civil penalty of no more than $25,000 $5,000 against a food delivery platform that violates the requirements imposed by this bill. bill, and would authorize the department to enter into interagency agreements with counties to implement the provisions of this bill.

Existing law requires a client employer, as defined, to share with a labor contractor all civil legal responsibility and civil liability for all workers supplied by that labor contractor for the payment of wages. Existing law also prohibits a client employer from shifting to the labor contractor legal duties or liabilities under workplace safety provisions with respect to workers provided by the labor contractor.

This bill would require a grocery establishment, a retail store with a grocery department, or a grocery warehouse that uses a food delivery platform to share all civil legal responsibility and civil liability for payment of wages to a food delivery driver supplied by the food delivery platform. The This bill would provide that a contract or other arrangement between a food delivery platform and a food delivery driver that would require the food delivery driver to pay a penalty imposed on the food delivery platform is void as against public policy.