Carla Reed

Your homeowners insurance will almost certainly not cover your business. http://forrager.com/faq/#insurance

I’d prefer to answer your questions on the site so others can benefit from the info. If you have questions beyond that, you should call your health dept.

You need a commercial license and can’t produce at home: http://forrager.com/faq/#commercial

I haven’t seen any rules published by the Ohio ag dept, but generally, you should be individually packaging your samples in your home kitchen, and they should be opened by the consumer. That’s the way a number of other states do it, and you can’t go wrong with that. If you contact the ag dept, maybe their standards would be a bit more lenient…[Read more]

This would probably be fine, especially if you use water instead of milk. Since there’s a very small amount of milk, it’s possible that the sugars in the cookie dough would stabilize it and even that would be okay. The butter shouldn’t be a problem. Obviously you’d need to check with the ag dept. Technically, you should even be able to use…[Read more]

The list of allowed foods that matters is here, under questions 2 & 3: http://www.agri.ohio.gov/foodsafety/docs/CottageFoodOperation-factsheet.pdf

Ohio’s law used to be more limited and then they passed an amendment that expanded the list of allowed foods. It appears that only foods that are on the list are allowed. I don’t think there’s a reason…[Read more]

Under Ohio’s cottage food law, you can’t sell online or use a commercial kitchen. You need to get a commercial license: http://forrager.com/faq/#commercial

You can make all of the things you described, as long as they don’t require refrigeration. You need to be incorporating fruits like blueberries or bananas into the batter (garnishing with fruits isn’t allowed).

Collette, I’m not exactly sure what your question is. Are you wondering if your home kitchen can be a commercial kitchen, or if you can legally operate under the cottage food law with your home kitchen?

I can tell you that you can’t become commercially licensed from your home kitchen, and you will have to accept the restrictions of the cottage…[Read more]