David Crabill
@david
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That sentence actually refers to licensing requirements from a health or ag dept, which you don’t need. You always need to abide by any local or general business requirements, which could be explained better on the site. Here’s some info about that: http://forrager.com/faq/#starting
Rebecca, in that case I assume that relish and sauerkraut are also never allowed? Are there any other non-refrigerated, non-meat items that are always prohibited?
Using alcohol in baked goods is completely dependent on where you live. A few states specifically allow it, and even in the ones that do, special licensing is often necessary for selling a product with significant amounts of alcohol in it. Even though rum cake is baked, it usually still has an alcoholic content remaining, especially if it’s moist. Typically these alcoholic amounts are insignificant, but it is good to be aware of and do research about. Your health dept will most likely be the one to regulate sales of goods with alcohol.
You should call Heath at the ag dept at 804-786-1164, and he should be able to clear up most of your questions. You can probably make buttercream frosting, but I’m not sure about that, since sometimes depts disallow it. I don’t think you need any licensing from the ag dept, but you still need to call your local authorities to determine if you need a business license or other local permits. I know it can be really confusing at first, but you just need to call govt officials to get definite answers.
I have heard that CO requires all of it’s CFOs to be sole proprietorships, and if so, it is the only state to do so.
If that’s not true, then you probably already have a lot of what you need to get started. You’ll need to check again with your local depts to see if any food-specific permits are required, as well as make sure your business is abiding by zoning requirements.
Even if you have to be a sole proprietorship, you might be able to start a partnership that’s separate from your LLC and do this from your home kitchen.
If you can legally operate from home, you still need to make labels with all the ingredients listed. However, with event cakes, the cake doesn’t need to be boxed and the label can be given to the buyer separately.
No — drinks are not allowed under the cottage food laws. http://forrager.com/faq/#commercial
For one, some states allow homemade extract to be sold under their cottage food law. But the concept of “sell the bottle” or “sell the plate” isn’t going to fly with any ag/health dept. If that’s all you’re selling, then you don’t need to put anything in it. Even though your operation is small, you are engaging in commerce so it is a business, and your business needs to follow the same rules as other food businesses.
Typically the answer would be no, but someone did say that their ag dept allowed them to do it: http://forrager.com/law/south-carolina/#comment-51505
If the retail location is a food establishment, then I’m almost certain that you can’t sell there, even though you own it.
As far as I know, having a pet anywhere in your home prohibits you from being able to sell homemade food. Your dog can never enter the house. I believe the ruling is that pets cannot be “in the building” of any business that manufactures food for sale.
You should be using your home’s kitchen… if you wanted to build or use a separate kitchen on your property, then I think you’d need to make that a commercial kitchen, which would be pretty complicated/expensive: http://forrager.com/faq/#commercial
You probably can’t sell pet treats: http://forrager.com/faq/#pet-food
Usually cottage food businesses use standard home appliances (some states prohibit commercial equipment), but it doesn’t look like Oregon has rules about that.
Most products can be measured with a basic scale, which may have to be tested by a state dept.
For some types of products, you might be able to bypass some restrictions with the Farm Direct Bill: http://forrager.com/law/oregon-farm-direct/
You’ll need to speak your ag dept to get exact details about everything.
It sounds like your pretzels would fall under the “baked good” category in the law (please note that this site only gives a summary of the law; see the resources section for the law itself). You should be able to sell them as a cottage food operation. Sorry if it was confusing, but “Pretzels” is listed as a category in the “Snacks” section: http://forrager.com/law/illinois/
