David Crabill

Hi Susan, here’s the tutorial: https://forrager.com/learn/website/

In general, I think an LLC is overkill for most cottage food businesses. You can read more here: https://forrager.com/faq/#llc

Nunuz, I think it’s important to know that most of this kind of info can’t be found online. You need to contact your health dept, the planning division, etc and wait for them to get back to you. It usually takes quite a bit of patience.

However, generally speaking, in addition to the CFO permit you will likely need a business license, and yes there may be other things you need from the planning office or other depts, like a home occupation permit, a fire inspection, etc. Hopefully you will only have to get a business license, but usually when you get your CFO permit, the health dept will know what other permits you will likely need, or at least can guide you to the right depts to contact.

Also, to clarify @adams.emerson’s response, a Class B permit would only be if you want to sell wholesale. A Class A registration will allow you to sell directly anywhere in the state, including shipping.

When processed correctly, hot sauce is perfectly safe. But if best canning practices are not followed, canned goods could potentially be deadly. That’s why homemade acid and acidified foods like hot sauce are not allowed in many states, although the risk is quite low.
Instead, the ag/health dept will require you to use a commercial kitchen and go through training specifically for canned goods.
As far as how to bottle hot sauce, you would just use the manual canning/sterilization technique in a commercial kitchen.
I would never recommend someone use a copacker until their business has reached the point that they’re already doing near the volumes that they require.

Here is some info about that: https://forrager.com/faq/#repackaging
Basically, yes you can do this with unwrapped candy. You mentioned “variety”… the variety resulting from combining candies should be enough of a change for you to not worry about copyright. And I’d also consider how branded the product is in the first place. If it’s a generic brand, I wouldn’t worry about it. But if it’s a branded product with lots of marketing dollars spent to brand it, then I wouldn’t resell it in its exact form. For instance, I use Guittard chocolate in my business, and I could get a wholesale account with them. But I wouldn’t buy their chocolate wholesale and then resell it in a smaller package. I hope that makes sense!