Sherry Hargus Hurst

The map links to the law page for NY: http://forrager.com/law/new-york/

That page gives a fairly detailed overview of the law and should answer many of your questions. You cannot start an online business from your home kitchen, and if you wanted to start a CFO, you would need to get registered by the ag dept. To start an online food business,…[Read more]

Lauren, I’m sorry you had so many problems! I sent you an email about this.

I’m pretty sure you need to make tonics in a commercial kitchen. http://forrager.com/faq/#commercial

Unless you are buying and reselling commercially made a pre-packaged fondant toppers, I don’t think this would be allowed. I’m pretty sure you need to use a commercial kitchen. http://forrager.com/faq/#commercial

It’s a unique setup, for sure. I don’t think I’ve heard of anything quite that elaborate, though I do know CFOs who pool money to buy ingredients wholesale from existing suppliers.

I can’t claim to know anything more than UT’s ag dept, so you’ll have to wait for responses from them, but I will say that a number of states are fine with flours and…[Read more]

My recommendation is to simply not put nutrition info on labels, and this is what the vast majority of CFOs do. Most small businesses are automatically exempt from needing to include a nutrition facts panel.

Using a nutrition facts calculator is a good way to estimate the nutrition info in an item, but it will always be an approximation until you…[Read more]

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

You cannot do that type of business from home. Instead, you need to use a commercial kitchen. http://forrager.com/faq/#commercial

Yes, you need a cottage food license.

Correct, it’s almost always illegal for someone to operate a restaurant in their neighborhood, even a small one. When these services get large enough, they have to answer to regulators. One Bay Area service like this (Josephine) recently got shut down by the health dept because they were growing very quickly.

Self-employment tax includes social security tax. That’s the tax you pay in your quarterly estimated tax payments as a business. If you earn under a certain amount, you don’t need to pay quarterly.

I think you need to get a business license from your county or town. The process for getting one would probably be different for each area. You can set yourself up as a sole-proprietorship, and you’d need to get a DBA (doing business as) if you want to operate under a fictitious name (not your personal name).