Hi there,

As I've written about before, the pandemic greatly affected (and expanded) our burgeoning cottage food industry.

And now, we have real empirical proof of that! As in... hard, cold, undeniable data. :)

Today I am sharing with you not one, not two, but THREE research studies that were conducted last year.

They shed a lot more light on how things have changed in our industry in the past two years.


1. 2021 Cottage Food Operator Assessment

This was a survey of over 900 cottage food producers!

It was done in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Stout, the nonprofit Renewing The Countryside, and Lisa Kivirist & John Ivanko (the authors of Homemade for Sale).

This survey was also conducted in tandem with Lisa & John's national cottage food conference last April.

Overall, I'd say the survey results seem mostly on-target with what I'd expect, and I found it particularly helpful to have the data organized into insightful trends.

However, I do think there was some bias introduced due to the influence of the conference itself.

In particular, I think the conference especially attracted new and aspiring cottage food entrepreneurs, and we can see that reflected in some of the data.

For instance, it's hard for me to believe that "undecorated cookies" generate the most profit per item of any type of cottage food. More likely, that result is due to the fact that undecorated cookies are the most popular (and possibly the only) item that new cottage food entrepreneurs start selling.

Anyway, there are a ton of interesting results in there, and you'll definitely want to check this survey out!


2. Cottage Foods & Home Kitchens: 2021 State Policy Trends

As you've heard from me before, last year was a landmark year for the cottage food industry.

Never before have we seen so many initiatives to improve the laws for selling homemade food!

As a result, Harvard's Food Law & Policy Clinic did a full investigation into all that happened last year, and aggregated it into a very well-summarized report.

In fact, they found a number of 2021 bills that I never even heard about! Most of which did not pass, but a couple did. Most notably, I missed West Virginia's HB 2633, which, at first glance, looks like it allows perishable food sales in some instances.

Anyway, I was really impressed how they condensed a ton of info and bills down to into some very interesting insights.

You will definitely learn a lot by reading this report!


3. Work Entrepreneur From Home: How Home-Based Businesses Provide Flexibility and Opportunity — and How Cities Can Get Out of Their Way

Last but certainly not least, the Institute for Justice conducted a major study of almost 2,000 home business owners.

Of the three resources here, this one easily has the most data and findings. It's incredibly well-written and presented in an easy-to-digest form.

However, it's not focused on just cottage food businesses. They surveyed all types of home-based business owners (including dozens of cottage food entrepreneurs).

The purpose of the study was to better understand how work has shifted more to home-based businesses since the pandemic, and what barriers are still standing in the way of that shift.

Although this report has a much broader scope, I think you'll find it fascinating. Most of the insights are fully applicable to the cottage food industry, and this should serve as a good tool to help improve cottage food laws even further in the future.

You'll want to watch this video summary of the research, and also, at the very least I think you should read the Executive Summary at the beginning of the report.


Alright, that should keep you plenty busy for the next week, until you hear from me again! Happy learning. :)

David


P.S. I just have to say... it's pretty crazy that we have two major research studies focused on the cottage food industry in a single year. And clearly IJ's study is highly correlated as well. In the past, we maybe got one major study every two or three years.

P.P.S. Speaking of previous research, in case you haven't seen it yet, much of the best data in the past has come from the latter two organizations. Harvard's Food Law & Policy Clinic created the first major research paper on cottage food laws back in 2013. Then in 2017, Jennifer McDonald from the Institute for Justice wrote Flour Power (she also wrote #3 above), which was the first ever survey of cottage food operators across the country. Then in 2018, Harvard's FLPC again published an updated (and much expanded) paper on cottage food laws.