David Crabill
@david
active 23 hours, 53 minutes agoForum Replies Created
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Teresa, I’d be happy to help. It is possible to rent commercial kitchens but first of all, what state do you live in?
I’m assuming you’re talking about people that are selling homemade goods and are not licensed. But even if the are licensed as a cottage food operation and are breaking the law, my advice would be the same.
In general, a good place to start is to talk to the person. Many people don’t know that it’s illegal to sell homemade food. Also by talking to them, you may learn their reasons for not getting licensed. It’s very common for people to run these illegal businesses, especially when they are only selling to family and friends and are just advertising through a Facebook page or something. When the individual moves on to sell at a farmers market or a similar venue, that’s where licensing becomes more important.
If the person is knowingly breaking the law, and especially if they are posing a health concern, you can contact your local health department to report them. Bear in mind that many health departments are so overloaded that they can’t even get around to regulating licensed facilities, so they may choose to turn a blind eye to the complaint if it’s not posing a health risk.
I’d say you’d start with familiarizing yourself with the law, and then getting your training. Then you should contact your planning division to see if there are any other requirements.
First of all, Kentucky’s laws are quite limited in that they are only usable by farmers. If you’re a farmer, then you can advertise your candies on Facebook, but you cannot do transactions over the internet.
Actually none of these items would be allowed — sorry.
No, delivery is not allowed. The sale must take place at a farmers market, food stand on a farm, or other ag-related event.
Probably the only way would be to propose an amendment in the next legislative session.
The cottage food law won’t work for you… you need a commercial license and you need to make your bars in a commercial kitchen. You can talk to your health dept about how to get started.
It is a strange restricted they’ve added to the law, and I don’t know exactly how the health dept interprets it, but this is how I interpret it:
- You cannot put any kind of fresh fruit in baked goods, so banana bread or an apple pie from fresh apples would not be allowed.
- You can use canned fruit, so a cherry pie with canned cherries would be fine.
- You can use packaged frozen fruit.
- You can use dehydrated fruit if you are not the one dehydrating it.
- If you do use fruit, it must be baked into the product — it cannot go on top.
Basically, you cannot be the one handling the fruit to prepare it. You cannot be cutting apples or peeling bananas. The fruit prep must take place in an inspected facility, so if you buy the fruit already prepared in the form that you need it, that’s okay.
I’m not really sure why they did this. All I can think is that they want the fruit to be coming from an approved source and they have safety concerns. It really doesn’t make sense to me and there isn’t any other state that has this rule.
Technically, yes you do.
