Cottage Oven

Where are you located?

Most cottage-food laws do not allow selling across state lines.

Even within state lines, they often don’t allow shipping. You may deliver personally or customers may come to you (at your home or at an accepted venue such as a farmers market), but you may not ship (e. g. UPS, USPS, FedEx, etc.).

Even considering all of the above, many states do not allow sauces, salsas or condiments as cottage-food items. Instead, a commercial kitchen and food license are necessary.

Again, it all depends upon the state in which you live, but very few – if any – would permit out-of-state sales and shipping of a BBQ sauce under cottage-food law.

Desiree,

Being an LLC doesn’t change anything with regard to actual cottage-food law – just the way some aspects of the business may operate. For example, because of the way the name of the LLC is registered, you won’t have to go through the separate process of registering a fictitious name. None of that has anything to do with the products you make and how you sell them under cottage-food law.

Also, be sure to read the cottage-food guidance PDF file from freshfromflorida.com to learn what you you can and cannot do. There are no licenses or permits other than the county (and, in some cases, municipal) “occupational license” (nowadays called “business tax receipt”) which just allows you to run the business but has nothing to do with cottage-food law, in particular.

Any other requirements for permits, food-handling or food-management certification, etc. may be imposed by specific markets (if at all) but are not part of Florida’s cottage-food law.