denise o. mercado

Yes, fudge is definitely a shelf stable food! I sell it with my business and it never needs refrigeration. You don’t need to take the food handlers course to sell it in OK.

I don’t think the method of canning matters so much. The main thing is making sure that the pH is at 4.6 or below. There are 3 methods for ensuring the pH, and you must use one of them. There are some other requirements for acidified foods, like including the batch number and date on the label. I’d recommend reading through all of the info on the…[Read more]

There is still the $1k limit if your county allows home kitchen operations and you’re selling outside of a farmers market. But as you mentioned, the law is changing and this limit is going away in 2022. If it were me, I’d probably fly under the radar for the next couple of months instead of going through the time and expense of setting up a…[Read more]

Yes, hot sauces would be considered an acidified food, and as long as yours stays below a 4.6 pH, then you should be able to sell it with VA’s basic exemption. No inspection needed, but you may need a general business license. You can ask around at the farmers market to see if vendors needed anything else to sell from home, or the farmers market…[Read more]

The bill, AB 1144, passed. CFOs can ship their products within CA starting in 2022.

I’m not an expert on this, but if expense is a primary concern, I don’t see how pre-printing is going to match the cost of doing it at home. Commercially printing is convenient and gives you more options, but I haven’t heard anyone say it’s inexpensive.

You cannot make fillings that require refrigeration, and fillings with butter are not automatically allowed. But you can make fillings that contain butter IF you get the recipe approved, or if you use a pre-approved recipe. Here’s more info: https://portal.ct.gov/DCP/Food-and-Standards-Division/Cottage-Food/Buttercream-Frostings

I don’t know a ton about it, but from what I have gathered from talking to people:

• It’s not typically practical to offer free shipping
• It might be more lucrative to split it into two fees. For instance, a shipping fee and a separate handling fees. Experiments have showed that customers are willing to pay more when the fees are split.
• For many…

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