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Straight answers for starting your home food business — then the exact label rules for your state, one click away.
How to start a cottage food business: what the law is, your state's program, allowed foods, where you can sell, labeling and sales limits.
What a cottage food label needs: product name, your name and address, ingredients, allergens, net weight and the home-kitchen disclaimer — by state.
Cottage food laws let you sell shelf-stable foods like breads, cookies, candy and jams from home. What's usually allowed, what's excluded, by state.
Can you sell cottage food online, at farmers markets, or ship it across state lines? An honest, plain-English guide to what your state actually allows.
Many states cap how much you can earn selling homemade food; some don't. Why caps exist, what happens if you exceed one, how to find your limit.
Some states require a cottage food permit or license, some a simple registration, some no application at all. How to tell which model your state uses.
How to declare allergens on a homemade-food label: the 9 major allergens, the Contains statement, cross-contact, and your state's wording rule.
Home pickup, farmers markets, roadside stands, events — most cottage food laws allow these. Online sales, shipping and wholesale vary by state.
A practical pricing guide for cottage food sellers: add up ingredients, packaging, labels and your time, then set markups for markets, direct and wholesale.
Do you need a commercial kitchen to sell homemade food? For most cottage food, no — you use your home kitchen. The real rules, and why they vary by state.
Selling homemade cottage food at farmers markets: the required label, home-kitchen disclosure, market rules, booth fees and sampling, state by state.
Some states require a food handler's card or food-safety course to sell cottage food, some don't. How to find out what yours requires.
Cottage food law lets you sell homemade food from your own kitchen, within limits. The signs you've outgrown it, and what a commercial kitchen involves.
The business side of selling homemade food: LLC or not, self-employment and income tax, sales tax, and simple record-keeping. Not legal advice.
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