Compliance & Legislation
SB 68 applies to chains operating under the same name with substantially similar menus. That describes almost every franchise system in the US. But the law says nothing about how compliance responsibility is divided.
By Dylan McDonnell, Founder & CEO, Foodini | May 2026 | 8 min read
A regional franchise system with 28 locations in six states, four of them in California. The franchisor has national brand standards, a centralised menu, and a corporate team. The four California franchisees operate their locations independently. On July 1, 2026, SB 68 takes effect. The law applies to the chain. It does not specify whether the franchisor, the franchisees, or both are responsible for compliance.
Which of them is non-compliant if they haven't acted? Who gets the inspection violation? Who gets sued when a guest has a reaction?
The answer to all three: potentially all of them.
SB 68 is explicit that it applies to both franchisors and their franchisees doing business in California. The 20-location threshold is counted at the brand level, not the franchisee level. A franchisee operating a single California location under a brand with 22 national locations is subject to SB 68 — because the brand has 20+ locations, not because the individual franchisee does.
A franchisee who assumes SB 68 compliance is the franchisor's responsibility may be non-compliant from day one while waiting for guidance that isn't coming. The law does not distinguish between corporate and franchised locations. The inspector doesn't care whose job compliance was supposed to be.
The franchisor controls the recipe; the franchisee controls the display. In most franchise systems, the franchisor owns standard recipes and brand guidelines. The franchisee controls their physical menus, digital implementations, POS configuration, and delivery platform listings. SB 68 requires allergen disclosure on all of those surfaces.
The franchisor has the data; the franchisee has the deployment obligation. A franchisor who has identified allergens for every standard menu item has the underlying data. Getting that data onto a franchisee's physical menu, POS, Olo configuration, DoorDash listing, and in-store QR code is an operational deployment problem that sits at the franchisee level.
The franchisee modifies the menu; the franchisor doesn't know. Many franchise systems allow franchisees to add local items or make approved modifications. If a franchisee adds a local special not in the central allergen database, and that item contains an undisclosed allergen, the failure is the franchisee's — but if the brand's name is above the door, the reputational damage is the franchisor's.
A franchisor whose franchisees are non-compliant faces:
If a franchise system has not assigned explicit ownership of SB 68 allergen compliance — who owns the data, who owns deployment, who verifies franchisee compliance, and what the process is when something changes — that conversation must happen before July 1.
The gap between "the franchisor did their part" and "the franchisee got it implemented" is where non-compliance lives. The franchise system that closes that gap explicitly, with documentation and clear accountability at both levels, is the one that passes the first round of inspections without exposure.
SB 68 impacts both franchisors and their franchisees doing business in California. The law doesn't offer a safe harbour based on the franchise structure.
Foodini works with franchise systems to build centrally managed allergen data and deploy it to every franchisee location and every menu surface — so compliance is a system, not a conversation about whose responsibility it is.
See how Foodini supports franchise allergen compliance →