Jess

You should be able to do this from home with PA’s cottage food law, but if you want or need to rent a commercial kitchen, then you need to contact the ag dept to determine what’s required. You should also contact the farmers market manager to learn about additional requirements they may have.

You’re not going to be able to merge a CFO with a commercial operation. Since your friend has a commercial kitchen, I’d recommend skipping the cottage food law and getting certified as a regular food operation. But it’s sometimes a good idea to deal with the limitations of the cottage food law for the short term until you prove your business concept.

It depends, but I think in most cases, it’s a good idea. Or put the prices on your website and link to that from Facebook. It’s not always possible to have fixed prices on certain items, but if you have specific rates, you might as well be transparent about that. For the price-sensitive customer, they’ll appreciate it, and for others, it will (at…[Read more]

The major differences are that the basic law lets you only sell $20K of product at a few select venues, and it’s much easier to get going with that one. I tried to cover the differences in-depth on the law pages:
http://forrager.com/law/new-hampshire/
http://forrager.com/law/new-hampshire-homestead/

Regarding the filters, I’m not sure what you’re…[Read more]

No it does not. http://forrager.com/faq/#commercial

I don’t know exactly why, but it seems to affect all populous states. CA and TX have had to go through major efforts to get their laws to be reasonable. CA would probably be the same as WA, or worse, if it weren’t for the major desires and pressures from its citizens for local food. CA is usually on the front end of trends when it comes to the…[Read more]

Yes, you need a license and you need to use a commercial kitchen. http://forrager.com/faq/#commercial

I have heard of CFOs use 44529 or 311811.

Geani, probably the best thing would be to create two labels for the different types of cupcakes. If you are selling a package that contains both kinds, then I think it’s okay for you to merge them into one label, but not as useful for the consumer. From what I’ve seen in the grocery store, usually the ingredient lists are separated when a package…[Read more]

Alex, it depends on where you live, but many states will not allow ganache, since it contains cream.

I’m not sure about buttercream. Florida’s ag dept has said that it prohibits “milk & dairy products”, but they might allow milk and/or butter in a frosting.

Sorry, I’m not sure about the requirements for honey in Utah; I’d suggest you contact the ag dept.

Actually the ag dept’s stance on sampling recently changed, and this element got overlooked when I updated that law page a couple weeks ago. Sorry about that!

You can offer samples as long as they are prepackaged in your home kitchen. They don’t need to have individual labels, but you do need to have a fully-labeled product on-hand to show the…[Read more]

I don’t know of anyone who has compiled a list of counties, but perhaps some health dept has one. Try calling up Cook County and seeing if they know more. If you can’t find a list, it’s possible that one doesn’t exist. If you spend the time to create one by contacting every county’s health dept, I’d be happy to incorporate it into the law page so…[Read more]