Makinson Street is a real street in Australia where our nonni lived and nobody sold anything. We built a marketplace for permitted home cooks because that kind of street stopped being normal — and food is the shortest way back.
We started Makinson Street because the best food we've ever eaten was cooked in a family kitchen or a neighbor's, and there was no honest way to buy it. California's home kitchen law made it legal; we built the place where it could happen — permitted makers, real allergen labels, reviews only from people who actually picked up the food, and a 3% commission instead of the 15–30% delivery apps take.
Makinson Street is in Australia, where we grew up, and it's where our nonni lived. Sunday afternoons meant a pot that had been going since morning and too many people around a table built for six. Most of what we understand about feeding people we learned in that kitchen.
A few doors up were paesani — same region back home, half a world away from it. Their Italian biscuits were famous in the neighborhood, and they'd turn up with a tin of them without being asked. The cassatelle di Agira they made side by side with our nonna were our father's favorite thing on earth. Nobody was selling anything. That was just how the street worked.
Somewhere along the way, that stopped being normal. Most people can't name the family two doors down, let alone taste what they cook on a Sunday. Food is the shortest way back. Not a food court. A street.
Every neighborhood has them: the auntie whose biryani people drive across town for, the guy whose Sunday sauce gets requested at every potluck. The talent exists. What doesn't exist is a shelf to put it on — a catering business needs capital, a lease, a brand, a website. Most home cooks have the skill and none of the storefront.
The dish that needs twenty small steps and a grandmother's hand never scaled to a restaurant line. So when the person who makes it stops making it, it's gone. Not archived, not adapted — gone. A market for home cooking is, among other things, a way to keep those dishes in circulation while the people who know them are still cooking.
Open any delivery app in any city and it's the same forty logos. Meanwhile the apps take 15–30% from the restaurants, add fees to your order, and keep the customer relationship for themselves. That model can't work for a home cook selling 60 plates a week — the math simply doesn't close.
In 2019 California's AB 626 created the Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operation — a permitted, inspected home kitchen that can legally sell meals. It's the most complete home-cooking law in the country, and as of 2026 most of the Bay Area and Los Angeles have opted in. It also defined the kind of platform we are: an intermediary that lists, takes orders, and handles payment, but doesn't deliver and doesn't cook. We wrote a plain-English guide to it.
We're small and Bay Area–rooted, with makers coming online in Los Angeles. We run lean on purpose — a single small server, no venture money telling us to take 30%. If you cook, we'd like to meet you. If you eat, see what's on this week. And if you grew up on a street like ours, you already know what we're trying to build.
Every maker on Makinson Street is registered the way their state requires. Browse by neighborhood, dish, or dietary need.
It's a real street in Australia where the founders' grandparents lived — a street where neighbors cooked for each other and nobody sold anything. The marketplace is named after it.
A small, founder-run team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The platform is bootstrapped and deliberately lean, which is how it sustains a 3% commission.
Anywhere permitted home cooks are active — today, primarily the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, where California's MEHKO law lets home kitchens sell meals legally.