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California Food Handler Card

Get your certificate immediately when you pass!

  • ANSI-Accredited Food Handler Training
  • Train and Test in Under 2 Hours
  • Free Test Retake — Just in Case You Need It
START NOW | $15

California Food Handler Training


Learn how to handle, prepare, and serve food safely, no matter your work setting.

Learn about important food safety principles:

  • identify how food becomes unsafe and leads to foodborne illnesses
  • identify when and which symptoms and illnesses must be reported
  • recognize proper hand hygiene techniques and good personal grooming habits to prevent food and food-contact surface contamination
  • recognize best practices to keep food safe throughout its flow by using time and temperature controls
  • describe how to maintain a clean environment and prevent cross-contact

California requires a food handler card within 30 days of hire — regardless of your age, years of experience, or employment status — if you are involved in food preparation, storage, or handling.

This includes:

  • wait staff
  • chefs and cooks
  • bartenders
  • hosts/hostesses that handle food
  • bussers
  • managers, unless certified as food safety managers
  • food warehouse stockers
  • dishwashers

Conversely, you aren’t required to earn a California food handler card if you work at the following places:

  • grocery stores, and grocery store delis, bakeries, meat and produce departments all under one owner
  • retail stores where a majority of sales are from a pharmacy
  • convenience stores
  • commissaries
  • certified farmers’ markets
  • health care facilities, including hospital employees
  • school cafeterias
  • temporary food facilities, such as food booths at a community event
  • bed and breakfast facilities
  • correctional or residential facilities
  • elderly nutrition programs

Regardless of these exemptions, however, your employer may still require that you earn a food handler card.

What Our Learners Think

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I felt it was a very simple, easy, and straight to the point course, and I really enjoyed it.
Danielle J.
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Enjoyed this experience. Easy material.
Sage W.
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Love the illustrations — kept my attention. And I suffer from ADHD so this made learning easy and fun!
Pamela B.
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Very engaging and more interesting than other courses I have taken.
Mariah L.
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It worked well for me, so I’d be happy to recommend it to others.
Abby S.
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It was clear and understandable. I really liked it.
Icarus M.

FAQs

To earn your California food handlers card, simply watch the videos, and pass the test.

You can learn and test and two hours or less.

California requires a food handler card within 30 days of hire — regardless of your age, years of experience, or employment status — if you are involved in food preparation, storage, or handling.

This includes:

  • wait staff
  • chefs and cooks
  • bartenders
  • hosts/hostesses that handle food
  • bussers
  • managers, unless certified as food safety managers
  • food warehouse stockers
  • dishwashers

Conversely, you aren’t required to earn a California food handler card if you work at the following places:

  • grocery stores, and grocery store delis, bakeries, meat and produce departments all under one owner
  • retail stores where a majority of sales are from a pharmacy
  • convenience stores
  • commissaries
  • certified farmers’ markets
  • health care facilities, including hospital employees
  • school cafeterias
  • temporary food facilities, such as food booths at a community event
  • bed and breakfast facilities
  • correctional or residential facilities
  • elderly nutrition programs

Regardless of these exemptions, however, your employer may still require that you earn a food handler card.

Your FoodSafePal food handler card will be valid throughout California, except Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties.

Your California food handler card is valid for three years from the date you earn it.

The cost to earn your California food handler card with FoodSafePal is $15.

The test consists of 40 multiple-choice questions, and you need to answer at least 28 of them (70%) to pass.

If you don’t pass the first time, you’re allowed one free retake.

Let’s Get Started!

Easily Earn your California Food Handler Card

START NOW | $15
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