David Crabill

I don’t think the method of canning matters so much. The main thing is making sure that the pH is at 4.6 or below. There are 3 methods for ensuring the pH, and you must use one of them. There are some other requirements for acidified foods, like including the batch number and date on the label. I’d recommend reading through all of the info on the Arkansas law page, especially the Allowed Foods section: https://forrager.com/law/arkansas/#food

Yes, hot sauces would be considered an acidified food, and as long as yours stays below a 4.6 pH, then you should be able to sell it with VA’s basic exemption. No inspection needed, but you may need a general business license. You can ask around at the farmers market to see if vendors needed anything else to sell from home, or the farmers market manager might know. You don’t need to get a permit from the ag dept.

I’m not an expert on this, but if expense is a primary concern, I don’t see how pre-printing is going to match the cost of doing it at home. Commercially printing is convenient and gives you more options, but I haven’t heard anyone say it’s inexpensive.

I don’t know a ton about it, but from what I have gathered from talking to people:

• It’s not typically practical to offer free shipping
• It might be more lucrative to split it into two fees. For instance, a shipping fee and a separate handling fees. Experiments have showed that customers are willing to pay more when the fees are split.
• For many items, customers are not willing to pay the full cost that it takes to ship the items. Consider increasing the price of your products on your website relative to what you’d charge at a farmers market. In other words, partially build the shipping cost into the product prices.
• Some products simply aren’t practical to ship. Particularly heat-sensitive and/or fragile and/or larger products.
• People often think that shipping will revolutionize their business. Often it ends up being a small percentage of sales, and many of the people I’ve talked to, talk about eliminating the shipping option altogether. Some already have. The more tradition methods of distributing food — through local markets and stores — tend to be the most effective and lucrative.

All that being said, I am personally interested in tested out shipping for my fudge business, and even initiated CA’s cottage food bill this year to try to enable it in my state. Hopefully that will pass and then I will get to experiment. I have some ideas I’d like to try out and if they work, you can be sure I’ll be sharing them through Forrager!

I’d recommend checking with your local ag dept. Because it’s generally low-risk, sometimes there are special rules that allow someone to sell home-brewed coffee, or even coffee that’s brewed on-site (like at a market). This likely would not fall under the regulations for PA’s limited food establishments. If the ag dept requires a permit to do this, it may be more simple than the one for a full food establishment.