David Crabill
@david
active 4 days, 8 hours agoForum Replies Created
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Unfortunately that would not be allowed. If you want customers to be able to enjoy your baked goods with iced tea, the easiest way is to buy bottles from the store and resell them at your booth. Check with your market manager to see if there’s a reseller’s permit required to do so. To sell your own iced tea, you’d need to make it in a commercial kitchen.
You can sell granola with a cottage food business or a domestic kitchen. The domestic kitchen is a bit harder to implement. I’d recommend you start with a cottage food business, which does not require you to get a permit from the health or ag dept. You might need to get a business license from your local area, but it should be very simple to start. When your business is established and you want to put your granola on store shelves, then you can expand to a domestic kitchen license.
Katherine, most people get a DBA (doing business as), which is the name that you would use when applying for your business license. Usually that happens through your local area. As long as someone else in your area isn’t using the name, you should be able to use it. It would be possible for multiple businesses in Iowa to have the same name. If you register it as an LLC, which I really don’t think is necessary, then it would likely need to be unique and not be the same name as any other corporation in Iowa.
Thanks so much for sharing this info, Lana!
Maybe. It depends on where you live and what the zoning laws for your area are. Here’s some more info: https://forrager.com/starting-cottage-food-operation-zoning/
They are separate, so you can make $40k total. And please note that the $20k for farm direct is only for acidified foods, like pickles and salsas. There is no limit for other things you sell under the farm direct bill.
So glad you found the answer! I was going to say that it was really something that needed to be answered by the department itself.
Did you see anywhere that indicates that they would not be allowed? I would think they’d be fine to use, as long as the resulting product is nonperishable.
Elizabeth, the last lesson in my free mini course covers some of this. But basically, yes you need to pay income taxes at tax time. No matter how much you make, you have to report it as income. I personally use TurboTax to file my taxes, but most tax software will be able to handle business income.
The rules get fuzzy when it comes to things with alcohol and items with health benefits. It would probably be best to directly contact the health dept about this.
