Hi there,

Finally, both Illinois & California now have improvements to their cottage food laws that were long overdue!

Of course, I'm personally excited about CA's new law, given that the reason I started that bill was so that I could ship my fudge.


About Illinois' New Law

But truthfully, Illinois' bill (SB 2007) was the more important of the two. Similar to Wisconsin & Minnesota, Illinois cottage food initiatives have faced massive resistance from health officials.

I'm not sure exactly what allowed them to break through this time (the obvious pressures of the pandemic?), but whatever it was, it worked!

FINALLY, citizens in Illinois can sell at venues other than farmers markets! You read that right... up until this year, they could only sell at farmers markets.

This made it impractical to start certain types of businesses from home, like custom cake or cookie businesses, so they created another law in 2014 for "home kitchen operations".

But that law was plagued with red tape and was literally unusable by many, and very restrictive to those who could use it. Illinois' new law effectively replaces the home kitchen operation law -- no need for that anymore!

Now producers in IL can sell directly anywhere in the state, including being able to ship non-perishable items in-state. Illinois still doesn't allow indirect sales, through stores and such.

Despite greatly expanding their law, they somehow managed to maintain the very extensive allowed foods list, which includes many types of perishable food items. Illinois has a more extensive list than any other state's cottage food law, although it's not as extensive as some food freedom laws.

As a trade-off, they did add some requirements for those who want to sell riskier types of canned and baked goods, and they also add a paid registration process (formerly registration was free).

Overall, this was a massive improvement for Illinois, and I would expect many more legal home food businesses to crop up in the coming years!

Read more about Illinois' Cottage Food Law


About California's New Law

California used to be a pioneer* in the cottage food realm, being one of the first big states to adopt a cottage food law. However, its law hadn't been updated in 8 years!

Although the process for passing the bill (AB 1144) was fairly complex, it was a pretty simple bill overall. Once it got into the legislative process, legislators seemed to easily understand why it was important, especially in times like these.

It never made sense to me why CA didn't allow shipping. After all, it allows Class B producers to sell indirectly to retailers, and those retailers in-turn can ship the cottage food products. This loophole was mentioned by Sonia Chang on Episode 7 of the podcast. As I said, it made no sense!

Fortunately that's fixed now. As of the beginning of this year, ALL cottage food operations (CFOs) in CA can ship within the state. It also allows delivery through third-parties (e.g. Postmates, Doordash, etc).

This bill also increased the sales limit. Previously it was $50k for all CFOs, and now it's $75k for Class A CFOs, and $150k for Class B CFOS.

Finally, this bill addressed a restriction on intercounty sales. It only affected Class B CFOs that wanted to sell indirectly outside their county, but CA was the only state to have such an odd restriction. 

Anyway, I'm hoping that this will lead to many more sales for the over 5k CFOs in California!

Read more about California's Cottage Food Law


I'm already hearing good things about initiatives underway to improve states' laws further in 2022. More to come on that later!

Until next week,
David


* Although CA hasn't updated its cottage food law in many years, it's worth noting that it did pioneer the micro-restaurant movement, which has seen a huge amount of growth ever since the pandemic started.