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Get Out Of Your Kitchen!

Do you wonder if your homemade food item would sell well? Are your sales lower than you would like? Learn about one of the common food startup mistakes that can prevent your business from taking off.

Is A Cookie Business A Good Idea?

Store-bought cookies are pathetic and everyone raves about yours. Your friends keeps saying that you need to sell them, but are they right? Why do some food businesses succeed, and others fail?

Stop Worrying About Your Sales Limit

People often wonder if the cottage food laws are too limiting. Should they use it to start their homemade food business? Is it worth their time?

Cottage Food Operator Self-assessment

Do you have what it takes to be a CFO, a cottage food operator? More than an idea, recipe or home kitchen filled with appliances, becoming a small food business owner will require a level of knowledge, skill and talent, each addressed below.

Status of the Cottage Food Industry

I recently received a few questions from Sid, a student at the University of Tampa who’s doing some research on the cottage food industry. The questions are high-level enough that I realized they’d make a good blog post, so I’m sharing my answers here.

Why Health Departments Hate Cottage Food Laws

Cottage food operations often get frustrated by health departments, who can be slow, uncommunicative, and sometimes downright unfriendly. Do health departments really dislike the cottage food industry as much as people think they do?

Hot Trends for a Cottage Food Operation

From Buy Local to Small Business Saturdays, from slow food to fancy food, from farm-to-fork to handmade artisan breads, more people than ever are demanding real food made by real people — not by machines in factories, the same way they make cars and computers.

Food Freedom Is No Longer A Myth

Yes, food freedom is real. The term has become increasingly popular: you may have heard it around the dinner table, at farmers markets, or even at a food freedom fest. This catchphrase of locavore culture has become so common that, until recently, you may have thought it to be a real thing. Proponents of food… [read more]

Feasibility Study: Testing the Market

While you may have a great-tasting product, you still have to test it in the marketplace. It’s one thing if everyone you know loves your muffins — especially, if they’re free. It’s something completely different to see if customers will buy them at two dollars a pop. This process of testing the market for your products is often called a feasibility study; it may take the following route:

Book Review: Homemade For Sale

This page includes affiliate links, so we may get a small commission when you make a purchase John Ivanko and Lisa Kivirist know the difference between Corporate America and a homemade business. Although they started their careers in marketing, today, they run an eco-farm in rural Wisconsin, where you can buy a jar of their Pucker… [read more]