A guide to
Work from a legal product list to a small, costed menu and a first selling day.
Start here
From the first read of your state's rules to your first market Saturday, in eight steps: choosing products that qualify, registration and training, labels, pricing, sales channels, bookkeeping, and a realistic plan for the first 90 days.
· 13 min read
Cottage food is a legal category, not a cooking style: food made in a home kitchen, sold directly to the person who eats it, and in most states limited to foods that stay safe at room temperature. Here is where that line comes from, how states move it, and what falls outside it almost everywhere.
· 9 min read
Home bakers routinely leave their own labor and the market fee out of the price. This is the cost-based method extension economists teach, worked through on a hypothetical batch of cookies so you can see every number move.
· 12 min read
Cottage food laws disagree about almost everything except the label. Here are the six elements nearly every state asks for, the exact disclaimer wording six states use, and how to build a label that survives a refrigerator and still reads as a brand.
· 10 min read
How markets are organized and why it changes what they ask of you, how to read a rulebook before you apply, what fees, insurance, and sales tax involve, what to bring, how the first morning runs, and how to judge the numbers after a month.
· 14 min read
The USDA directory alone lists more than 7,000 farmers markets. Here is where to look, what a listing cannot tell you, and how two visits as a shopper and one conversation with the manager reveal whether a market actually needs what you make.
· 8 min read
You can probably make twenty things well. A market needs three or four you can make every week, that hold up on a folding table, that your state allows, and that nobody else in the tent row is already selling. Here is a set of filters for getting from twenty to four.
· 11 min read
A cottage food exemption lets you cook at home because what you sell is low-risk and sold face to face. Here are the five kinds of kitchen a small food business can legally use, what each one costs and lets you sell, and the signals that you have outgrown the one you have.
· 8 min read
A sales cap is the edge of your state's cottage food exemption. Here is what the number actually measures, why lawmakers write one in, how far apart the states are, and how to keep a running total that never surprises you.
· 8 min read
Taking orders online, delivering across town, and mailing a box are three different acts under cottage food law. Here is which states allow each one, what the agencies actually say, and the label, payment, and tax details that follow.
· 10 min read
Your name goes on every label, sign, and search a customer will ever run. Here is how to choose one people can say and spell, run the SBA and USPTO checks before you print, and build a two-color, one-mark look you can keep for years without paying a designer.
· 10 min read
A cottage food exemption skips the inspection, not the science. Here is what an inspector would look at in your kitchen if one ever came: hands, household traffic, allergens, temperature, water activity and pH, cleaning versus sanitizing, and the training some states require.
· 11 min read
