James McKenna

At least in San Diego and Orange County, you can use online calculators or laboratory testing for determining your nutritional value if you’d like to include a label. We’ve found there are easy to make/print nutritional labels at http://www.onlinelabels.com

In San Diego, anything that the product may come into contact with should be food-safe (i.e. bags, but not the boxes containing them or external labels).

In San Diego, most markets welcome CFOs. We’ve recently encountered a manager who will not allow CFOs into any of her 3 markets. The reason given was that it would increase their insurance costs. We are currently exploring whether or not that’s true. Any info you have would be appreciated. We’ve been told that CERTIFIED farmer’s markets do not…[Read more]

If you’re just using a teaspoon or two of vanilla extract in a cookie recipe, then you don’t need to worry about it. But if it’s a significant amount of alcohol, then you need to talk to your health dept to learn about what permits are necessary.

You won’t be able to use the cottage food law and make your ice pops at home. You should probably double check to make sure that that Berkeley business is actually legal. http://forrager.com/faq/#commercial

It should be true, but there are some counties with weird ordinances. You can check with your local ag dept, but usually you don’t need a license from them to sell produce. You may need a business license or something else from other depts in your county, though.

I think the main reason is that they just don’t need to. Farmers markets are so popular that most of them have an abundance of sellers lining up. Some have a year-long waiting list. There are also some markets that only focus on produce, which is understandable.

Farmers markets that accept CFOs are usually ones that simply like the idea of…[Read more]