Jeanetta

The regular cottage food law, which only allows sales at farmers markets, probably is allowed in Cook County. The law for home kitchen operations, which allows sales from home, probably isn’t. I don’t know for sure, and you will need to call their health dept.

Because of the licensing requirements that some venues have, they wouldn’t be able to serve your homemade cake and there wouldn’t be a way to get around it, aside from using a different venue. Sometimes venues will allow a homemade cake, but they’re doing so illegally. The language in the law literally states that food establishments cannot serve…[Read more]

The law only allows baked goods, jams, jellies, and dried herbs, so by definition, everything outside of those categories is not allowed. A fully-baked chocolate cake would be allowed. It’s not a matter of whether or not a chocolate bar is safe… it’s just that the law was written in a very conservative way. They probably wrote it in that way…[Read more]

Sorry! I just saw your earlier post in the Illinois forum so I’m deleting this one.

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:…[Read more]

As long as they’re baked (not fried), you should be able to do this as a cottage food operation: http://forrager.com/law/illinois/

If you only plan on selling them at farmers markets, then you might be able to do that with the cottage food law. Otherwise, I think the only way to do that is with a commercial license. http://forrager.com/faq/#commercial

I really don’t know. My guess is that the added processing would require you to make it in a commercial kitchen. I doubt you’ll be able to find specific info about creamed honey online — you should just talk to the dept.

Typically any sweet fruit jelly is allowed. It should have a significant amount of sugar in it… low sugar preserves would likely not be allowed. Pepper jellies would not be allowed.

You need whatever the farmers market requires. I don’t know how to get a sales tax identification number, but I’d suggest you call the department of revenue.

Here’s some info about insurance: http://forrager.com/faq/#insurance