Kehinde “Empress” Koyejo is the owner of Choc’late Mama Cookie Co. in Emeryville, Calif.
Avé-Ameenah Long/Keep It Diasporic Photography
Kehinde Koyejo, known to most as Empress, has always loved cookies — especially her mother’s home-baked ones. So when she found out she could no longer enjoy the treats she grew up eating without adverse health reactions, she took matters into her own hands. Choc’late Mama Cookie Co. is the culmination of that effort. Koyejo has been selling her plant-based, gluten-free and grain-free treats at pop-ups and markets across the Bay Area for nearly a decade.
So when Koyejo signed a lease to open a live-work business in Emeryville last year, it was a longtime dream come true. At the Emery, a new mixed-use apartment complex built on the site of a former Sherwin-Williams paint factory at 4510 Hubbard St., she could have it all: an apartment for her to live in with her 10-year-old daughter, plus a storefront for her cookie business.
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“It really was attractive to me because I wasn’t at a point where I could actually take on an exorbitant amount of money a month to take care of my business, and then pay a separate rent for my living,” she said. “The live-work was a sustainable model.”
Emeryville is a hub for live-work spaces, with a history of artists moving into old warehouse spaces to both live in and paint, sculpt, write and do other creative work. The Emery’s other live-work spaces include a barber shop and an eyewear business. According to Koyejo, management at the building told her they were excited for someone to open selling cookies and coffee in the building (SFGATE reached out to the Emery for comment but did not hear back in time for publication). The city approved her business license, stating her intention to sell cookies, pre-packaged food, hot and cold drinks.
But then, shortly after she moved in, the unit flooded. She moved into a different unit, this time on the ground floor, with a patio. On Aug. 4, 2025, she opened Choc’late Mama Cookie Co. for business, selling her prepackaged cookies, bottled coffee from Aftermath Coffee, and clothing, welcoming the community to gather in the wellness-focused space. At first, it was a success — her cookies, which had gained a loyal following over the years at pop-ups, quickly gained many new fans.
Kehinde “Empress” Koyejo’s live-work cookie business is located at 4310 Hubbard St. in Emeryville, Calif.
Image via Google Streetview
Then, the complaints began. On Oct. 14, Brooks Jessup, who runs a design business with his wife in a live-work unit next door to Koyejo’s, called the police. In the police report, he alleged threats and harassment from the crowd at Choc’late Mama Cookie Co. He told the police officer that he felt the crowd was purposefully antagonizing him in response to his recent complaint to the building’s management about noise from the business.
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Soon after, Koyejo also received a visit from Alameda County’s Environmental Health Department.
“While on-site, they observed that Empress was selling cookies, wraps, and coffee,” without the proper health permit, health department spokesperson Jerico De Guzman told SFGATE in an emailed statement.
The Environmental Health Department instructed her to apply for either a cottage food operation (CFO) or microenterprise home kitchen operation (MEHKO) permit, which both allow home-based cooks to sell small volumes of food while adhering to sanitation standards and avoiding high-risk ingredients.
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Neither permit felt like a fit for her live-work business, Koyejo said. A MEHKO limits sales to just 30 meals per day, and gross annual sales cannot exceed $50,000. It also prohibits signs. A CFO has similarly strict limitations on sales, what can be sold and how it is packaged.
“I cannot run a successful business if I have those types of restrictions with sales and marketing,” she said. “Those are the biggest parts of your business.”
Koyejo said that she didn’t initially think she needed an Alameda County health permit because she made her cookies off-site at a commissary kitchen in San Francisco up until the end of 2025. However, in this case she would have needed two permits: one in Alameda County to sell cookies out of her Emeryville live-work unit, and another in San Francisco to manufacture the cookies there. According to government officials, she had neither.
Choc’late Mama Cookie Co. is a gluten-free, plant-based cookie business in Emeryville, Calif.
Avé-Ameenah Long/Keep It Diasporic Photography
The SF Department of Public Health told SFGATE that it did not have any record of a health permit for Choc’late Mama Cookie Co. A representative of SF commissary kitchen the Eclectic Cookery who declined to share their name confirmed that Koyejo had operated there in association with another business. However, “a SFDPH permitted caterer must be in possession of its own business license and food permit and may not operate under another business’s permit,” SFDPH wrote in an emailed statement.
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On Oct. 21, Jessup, who also volunteers on the Emeryville Housing Committee, went before the Emeryville City Council to urge it to reexamine the city’s live-work program and what uses were permitted. He told the council, “Using these units for restaurants is inherently incompatible with using them for art. Restaurants tend to be boisterous and noisy and often spill out of the unit into the surrounding space. But artists need tranquility in which to ideate, design, and make their art. So, while I fully agree that we should try to activate our streetscapes, I don’t believe this should come at the expense of our valued artist community.”
A week later, Jessup and three other neighbors filed a formal complaint with the city of Emeryville alleging numerous violations from Choc’late Mama Cookie Co., namely that she was operating an illegal restaurant.
“The concerns were shared across households and focused on disruptive outdoor activity, use of shared space, and noise levels that interfered with our ability to live and work in our homes, both on a daily basis and during large-scale popup events that often forced us to flee,” Jessup told SFGATE via email.
Kehinde “Empress” Koyejo sells cookies to a customer at Choc’late Mama Cookie Co. in Emeryville, Calif.
Avé-Ameenah Long/Keep It Diasporic Photography
While Jessup wrote that complaining to the city was a last resort after making “many good faith efforts to resolve the situation,” Koyejo said that neither he nor the other complaining neighbors ever attempted to speak with her directly.
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The feud between the neighbors only continued to escalate. Koyejo filed for a civil harassment restraining order against Jessup, which Alameda County Superior Court denied at a hearing on March 25.
Emeryville City Manager LaTanya Bellow said that under the city’s regulations for live-work units, the grab-and-go cookie business that Koyejo originally applied for would have been allowed — assuming she was also adhering to Alameda County’s health permit requirements. But “eating and drinking establishments” are explicitly not allowed in live-work units.
“I guess it has expanded, according to her neighbors, within the unit to more of a social kind of event,” Bellow said.
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Koyejo said that she has never prepared food in her space, and that accusations of her operating as a full-scale restaurant are untrue. “I’m here operating doing exactly what I said I was doing,” she said. “But somehow, some way they keep on referring to me as a restaurant, which is not accurate. I am a cookie shop.”
She mentioned hosting a few food and drink pop-ups in the space, but said, “I am allowed to have pop-ups. However, a pop-up don’t have anything to do with my business, my core business of what I’m selling.”
The exterior of Choc’late Mama Cookie Co. in Emeryville, Calif., before owner Kehinde “Empress” Koyejo was instructed to remove signage and outdoor seating.
Image via Yelp user Sabrina S.
To complicate things further, hosting pop-ups would require yet another permit. Retail storefronts hosting food and drink pop-ups are required to have a host facility permit, which Bellow said Choc’late Mama Cookie Co. does not have.
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Following the neighbor’s complaint, Koyejo was also told by the Emery to remove her outdoor seating, she said, despite building management initially allowing her to use the patio space for her cookie shop, according to an email she provided to SFGATE. The city also instructed her to remove her signage, she said.
With complaints persisting, and Koyejo still having not obtained a permit, the Alameda County Environmental Health Department issued her a notice of violation on Nov. 26 instructing her to stop selling food immediately. In a Dec. 15 letter, the city of Emeryville gave her 10 days to come into full compliance by acquiring a valid health permit, removing outdoor furniture and business activity from outside the premises, and removing unapproved signage.
At the start of the holiday season — the busiest time of year — Choc’late Mama Cookie Co. was forced to shut its doors.
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According to Emeryville City Council Member Kalimah Priforce, what’s happening with Choc’late Mama Cookie Co. is larger than one business owner.
“It’s a bigger issue in Emeryville and the history of Emeryville, which is that Emeryville has sided with big businesses and corporations, and not with the small businesses that I believe are the heart and soul of Emeryville,” he said.
FILE: Traffic passes through downtown Emeryville, Calif.
MattGush/Getty Images/iStockphoto
The city of Emeryville is changing, he said — live-work units that were traditionally focused on visual artists are now expanding to include other forms of art, like food, and the city’s code doesn’t reflect that. Koyejo recently published a letter in the Emeryville Tattler urging the city to update its regulatory frameworks to allow business models like hers to operate.
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“The city is resistant to change the code because they feel that if they change the code for one person, then bats will start flying throughout the city, there’ll be lava that’ll be flowing,” Priforce said.
Since enforcement actions by the city and county are largely complaint-based, Priforce also argues there’s a racial bias against business owners like Koyejo, an Afro-Indigenous woman. He said that when speaking with the complaining neighbors, “Every time I narrowed it down to what the actual issue is, it’s noise and it’s the visibility of people coming in and out … I believe there is some sort of racial tinge to this that offends their senses.”
In an email to SFGATE, Jessup said this was not the case.
“The tenants who raised concerns include individuals from diverse backgrounds, including minority and immigrant residents,” Jessup wrote. “The concerns themselves were based on shared quality-of-life impacts — not on the identity of the business owner.”
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Months later, Koyejo is making the best of her situation. She’s expanded her business to a “community hub” called Coco Mama Boutique, where she hosts events. She also recently obtained her MEHKO permit, allowing her to resume cookie sales of “30 meals per day or 60 individual meals per week,” according to the Health Department.
But she still believes that the city and the county need to reexamine the regulations around live-work units, because there isn’t a box that she fits into. Live-work units represent the future of small businesses, she said, and she finds it unfair that the onus was on her to navigate unclear rules.
“I’m in debt up to my ears,” she said. “I have had to run my business and my life off of my credit cards because the business plan that told me I would make my money, and the business that was making me money before the complaints, could no longer operate.”
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She would leave the Emery if she could, but financially, she can’t — she is now facing housing insecurity for herself and her daughter. She is currently raising money via GoFundMe to support her housing and business, as well as for legal consultation. Recently, she shared that she is looking for investors to help her acquire the long-vacant Hooper’s Chocolates building in Oakland.
Many community members do want to see Koyejo and her cookie business thrive, even speaking out in her support at City Council meetings. Charles Orlando, another resident of the Emery, praised Choc’late Mama Cookie Co. in the Nov. 4 meeting for providing a space for connection and for fostering “a welcoming, personalized atmosphere.”
At the March 17 City Council meeting, one of her customers, Cathy Leonard, said, “It’s a business that serves a lot of people who have gluten intolerance. That’s what she does. She invested her money in this business, her time as a single mother, and now she’s being asked, what? To leave the space? These rules need to be clear for small businesses.”
However, the city’s stance is that while it supports small businesses — including Koyejo’s, whom Emeryville Community Development Department staff met with more than 15 separate times, according to a letter from its director Chadrick Smalley to the council — Choc’late Mama Cookie Co.’s permitting and zoning issues go beyond their jurisdiction.
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“We can’t override the landlord and what the business is zoned for, and we can’t override the county,” Bellow said. “If there’s anything else that we can do to be supportive, we will.”
But for Koyejo, the support she’s received hasn’t been enough to make up for the lack of alignment between the city, county and property management — a disconnect she said created a trap for any small business owner.
“There needs to be more of an understanding between all of these institutions so that people like myself are not just coming in here and being taken advantage of,” Koyejo said. “We are having to bear the brunt of all of the breakdowns.”
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