What I'm Reading: "Homemade for Sale" Cottage Food Business Primer

You know all those small-batch products you're seeing at farmer's markets: pickles, jams, pretzels, vinegars, and other items you wish you had time to make yourself but are glad others are making for you? Well, their makers are worth supporting for a number of reasons. The first and most obvious is that if you shop selectively, you're getting delicious, high-quality, homemade products straight from the hands of the person who made it. Another is that if you believe in the value and transparency of local food systems, this is a first step in capitalizing yours. Reward a quality cottage food business and you're helping the next generation of makers establish a foothold in the local economy.

If you want to be the next Jeni Britton Bauer (Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream) or Beth Linskey (Beth's Farm Kitchen), here's a great book to help you get started: Homemade for Sale: How to Set Up and Market a Food Business From Your Home Kitchen, by wife-and-husband team and back-to-the-land gurus Lisa Kivirist  and John D, Ivanko. 

This user-friendly guide explains that the explosion of culinary entrepreneurs we're seeing at the greenmarkets and online (just check out mouth.com, or go down the list of winners of the annual Good Food Awards) owes a lot to changes in state laws governing small-scale, independent home-based food businesses. Over 42 states have recently established such laws, making it easier than ever before to launch a business out of your kitchen.

Homemade for Sale covers everything from navigating your state's cottage food laws to product development, design, packaging and pricing; navigating zoning, licensing and legal hurdles; managing the books, and for those who want to, scaling up. Interspersed are profiles of successful "cookiepreneurs" and "profitable picklers," as Kivirist and Ivanko dub members of the kitchen entrepreneur movement, as well as tips gleaned from the couple's own experience of starting and running their carbon-negative inn, Serendipity Bed & Breakfast, and their farm in southwestern Wisconsin.

Helpful tips include advice on making sure your baked good is a "non-hazardous" one (meaning low moisture and shelf-stable to prevent mold and harmful bacteria growth); offering samples of your product (check venue rules and local health department regulations first), and a word of warning to Canadians (where selling food made in your home kitchen is outlawed for all but farmers).

The promotion, advertising and public relations chapter offers plenty of helpful links to web design and social media sites, and to free directories on which you can list your business (forrager.com, etsy.com, localharvest.org and agrilicious.org, to name a few).

Read this book and you, too, will feel that you can play a part in changing our food systems for the better and changing the way America eats.

Craft Food and Drink in Columbus, Ohio

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  New Yorkers and their urban counterparts on the West Coast think they have the market cornered on small-batch foods made by artisanal savants. But the truth is that superior handmade eats are being dreamed up by entrepreneurs in every corner of the country.
  
  
  
  In Columbus, Ohio, for example, where I spent a few days not too long ago, here’s what you can buy under one big roof:  a mango habanero Bavarian pretzel, bubble tea, goat cheese made in Cleveland, a Vietnamese bánh mi sandwich, and cherry lambic sorbet. Granted, this is one special roof, belonging to the not-for-profit North Market,  a 19^th century wooden structure packed with 35 different vendors. Outside the downtown structure, an outdoor farmer’s market takes place every Saturday featuring the handiwork of 22 different farmers. It reminded me of Toronto's great St. Lawrence Market.
  
  

  

  Quiver Full Family Farm Buckeye popcorn.

  Rick Harrison Wolfe, who came on as North Market’s executive director earlier this year, was surprised at how developed the locavore movements was here: “I couldn’t believe how into it people are and how much they care” about where their food comes from, he notes. Part of it that may be due to the fact that if you drive 45 minutes from Columbus in any direction “you’ll hit a farm."
  
  

  

  Doug Denny's The Fish Guy's shop.

  
  
  Although North Market, which began in 1876, is the oldest farmer’s market in the city, the boom in the local foods movement has led to a mini-tsunami of markets. Up until probably ten years ago, North Market was the only game in town, says Wolfe. “Now," he adds, "just about every enclave has some sort of farmer’s market. There’s a full schedule for farmers."
  
  Increasing diversity—in the form of large influxes of Somali, Vietnamese and Latinos—has added color and excitement to the once white-bread food culture of the city, too.
  
  

  

  Mike Kast''s Curds & Whey.

  
  
  Wolfe, who returned to his Ohio roots after a career in the fashion industry and a stint as a food truck owner, has also been impressed with a revitalized restaurant and drinks scene. “I’ve been back for almost three years,” he notes, “and during that time at least a dozen super-interesting things have popped up close to downtown, some in neighborhoods that are being revitalized because of these restaurants.”
  
  

  

  Ohio residents receiving food assistance can shop at the market.

  

  Old-school Ohio pizza at Rubino's.

  
  One place he likes is Chris Crader and Bethany Lovell’s Harvest Pizzeria and craft cocktail bar Curio in the city’s German Village. While the traditional Ohio pizza (see photo above) sports a crust as thin and crispy as a cracker and cut into party squares, Harvest makes a thick-crust, chewier pizza showered with local meats and produce, many of the latter produced at the owners’ small farm.
  
  For more on the local craft foods movement, check out the Columbus Experience.
  
  

  

  Local favorite Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams

  
  
  The North Market is just one part of this scene, and one that Wolfe plans to grow selectively. With a finite amount of space in which to expand, he’s in the position of sifting through hundreds of applicants and selecting the best of the best upcoming food businesses, making the market an incubator for start-ups. “From this point on, it has to be about what do our guests need, what don’t we have?” explains Wolfe. If it’s not in that stack [of applicants], then I need to seek it out.” 
  
  
  North Market
• 59 Spruce St.
• Columbus, OH 43215
• 614-463-9664
• Website: http://www.northmarket.com

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