David Crabill

I do not think that you can sell them, but you should double check with the ag dept. To sell them (at a roadside stand or elsewhere), I think you need to prepare them in a commercial kitchen. http://forrager.com/faq/#commercial

I have heard that you can have a dog if you can prevent your pet from EVER accessing the kitchen area, as well as any area/path that will be used to transport food/supplies to the kitchen. You should discuss this with the ag dept.

Correct, you cannot sell online as a CFO. To sell online, you need to go the commercial route. http://forrager.com/faq/#commercial

Angela, I’m sure your mom’s pimento cheese mix is amazing. However, I’m going to be straight up with you… if you or a family member is not willing to market the product, then it’s probably not going to get off the ground. Making amazing products is fairly easy; selling them is very hard — it took me years to learn this. Even Coca Cola still invests billions into marketing their well-known product.

It would be unreasonable for me to expect that anyone could profit from an idea or recipe alone. Many people have ideas, but it’s the person who implements the idea that profits from it. If you are not willing to implement the business idea, then I’d say that realistically, the best chance of it taking off would be by you giving it away. But even then, it’s unlikely that anyone else would turn it into a business — most people are only interested in promoting their own ideas.

Carole, my understanding is that a health dept cannot regulate a cottage food operation. It is possible, I suppose, that a city hall could prevent your business, even though the health dept cannot.

If they say no, I’d recommend making sure that they’re aware of the cottage food law — many govt depts are not. Also, it might help to communicate with other cottage food operations, a few of which have listed themselves on Forrager. You can also contact other health depts to learn how they deal with cottage food operations.