How to start sell food from home in Connecticut

Posted by Damian Roberti on

How to start selling food from home in Connecticut! Can you make a side business selling food from home? YES YES and OH YES you can. In these times you are probably looking to figure a new source of income, and if you love cooking and baking well than read on!

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One of the most profitable food business ideas in 2020 is a homebased food business. Or as it's known cottage food business in this video, I will give you all the information you need to know to get your food business, your home bakery or candy business started in the state of Connecticut. And we're going to do it right now.

 

 

Right. So in the state of Connecticut, it can definitely be a hugely profitable business idea if you start from home and for the biggest reason as well, it's from home because that's the minimal investment right off the bat. When I had started my retail bakery, of course, one of the biggest expenses that we had at that time was actually the rent. So using your home as a small business to begin is absolutely genius in a multitude of other tax benefits are crazy. So you definitely want to check with your accountant when you start your Homebase food business in Connecticut, I'm going to give you the six steps. We're going to run through these steps. And I'm going to give you a good foundation for you to understand what you can do at home. And then down below in the description or additional resources and links to Connecticut, the state website, and some other websites as well to help you get started.

 

Okay, now, number one, right off the bat. If you start any type of business, a lot of states don't require this, but I highly recommend this only because you want to, you want to create a business entity and protect yourself from any personal liability that you may have. So a lot of times, one of the best ways to form our businesses, to create an LLC. And if you're not sure exactly how to do that again, I created a whole bunch of links down below. That'll give you some direction and help you find the websites to help you get this up and running. This started so create your business. An LLC are always a good way to get started. There's a C corporation. There's, S-corp, there's other different types of entities, but, uh, we actually started ours. To be honest with you, we, we did it as well as an LLC.

And the other thing you want to make sure you get when you're preparing food products is that you need liability, general food liability insurance, and that's going to protect you. Uh, if anybody happens to get sick or there's any illness or anything in that potentially could happen, you want to separate your business from, from your personal liability. You don't want to go at this and create food and take it to a festival or a farmer's market. As somebody gets sick, you will be held liable for that. So you definitely want to have some type of protection. Okay? Now let's dive into some other great info. So where can you sell? Where can you sell food products in Connecticut? Now the great thing about Connecticut actually is that you can do this. You can sell products at local events. Farmer's markets, roadside stands. Even from home.

You can actually have people come to your home and purchase and pick up the product and believe it or not, you can sell online, but here's a little trick, a little catch to that. When you sell a product online in Connecticut, you have to either deliver it yourself or have them come and pick it up. So you could create a website. You could do that. And if you don't know how to create a website as well, also check out the links down again in the description. I'll give you everything that you need to get out, to get this up and running, okay? To help you guys out. So creating an online website is great, but you just have to deliver it in person. Now, the only, only thing that you can't do is sell outside your state. So if you sell a food product from home in Connecticut, you can't sell it to someone in Arizona and ship it.

That's something you can't do. But if you sell it locally and someone buys on your website, you can definitely deliver it to them or have them come and pick it up. Now, there are some prohibited places that you can't sell to like a retail store, unfortunate. You can't create a product and sell it to retail store and have them turn around and sell it to a, to a customer that comes in the store. Okay? Restaurants also, you can't do it wholesale. So wholesale, you can't do. And restaurants are out of the question when you're doing it from home. Now, one of the really cool things, by the way, that when you start a home-based food business, you get an opportunity to see what it's like to run a business. Instead of just jumping wholeheartedly into a commercial kitchen, investing in a commercial kitchen and starting this big production.

 

If you're not familiar with it, starting at home first is a great idea. So we've got step one business entity makes sure your legal, make sure you got your permits and make sure you get all of that necessary and incorporate yourself step two, where to sell. We've covered that step three. So what types of foods can you actually make now? It's pretty long actually, uh, anything from cakes to scones and cookies, breads, biscuits, muffins, uh, baked candies, chocolates, even fudge cotton candy. These are some hugely popular products that cost very little to make and have a huge margin, have a big profit margin that you could sell it. A lot of events. Now also run, run quick, quick tip down in the description, check out the link I put to a website that shows you all kinds of festivals based on the state you're in.

 

So you can literally go to Connecticut, type it in, and you can pull up all kinds of events by the way, really great resource. So dry goods stuff like coffee, beans and dried fruits and herbs and mixes and pasta noodles, um, preserves like jams and jellies. Marmalades pies, danishes, a big list of snacks, snacks. I always recommend when you first start out, if you don't know a lot about food, uh, caramel, corn, really profitable popcorn, hugely powerful, profitable, uh, kettlecorn extremely profitable business, nuts and seeds, marshmallows and popcorn balls and chocolate covered items like pretzels and those types of things you're allowed to. It's a hugely profitable item. So these are great ways to get some revenue started and up and running. Now there's a handful of prohibited foods. So low acid, canned foods, pickles, and catch ups, salsas, and juices. And jerkies a lot of people ask about meat.

Jerkies from home. You can't do that only because it would be considered a potentially hazardous product. And if you don't do it correctly, sometimes bacteria, the pH levels could be off of people could get sick. Now, step number four restriction. So what are some of the limitations or restrictions that you can in a home based food business in Connecticut? Number one, art at the bat is how much you can sell. There is a sales limit of $25,000 per year, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't get up and running. And like I said, get some experience. Don't worry about the amount that you can sell the first year or two, get some experience doing this. So then you can transition into a commercial business and do this professionally. Um, so now inside the home, what are some of the restrictions? Well, for instance, you can't have children, children playing in the area where you're creating your food product.

You want to make sure you keep it clean, keep it orderly. You can't have a lot of commotion and stuff with kids playing and that type of stuff. You can't have commercial equipment. Okay. So like a big gigantic mixer in the middle of your kitchen, not going to happen. Okay. So you want to also restrict pets and domestic activity. That means basically you don't want to be cooking dinner while you're trying to prepare other stuff on the stove for the farmer's market. Make sure you're doing one singular thing at a time and you're keeping it clean and separated. Now, step five. You also want to check, as I mentioned before about being, um, incorporated, but you need to have food business insurance. This type of policy is a general liability policy. That's going to cover your food production and make sure you're protected. Okay? Cause you don't want to do this on your own as a personal hobby or something on the side where you could potentially be liable.

Also, this may sound odd, but commercial car insurance or commercial auto insurance policy. The reason why I say this is that if you're using your vehicle to go out and do a lot of this business activity, uh, going to farmer's markets or festivals or events or local, wherever it may be, you're using your car. Make sure you have the right insurance policy for that. Because during the time that you're using that, that's actually a vehicle for business purposes. So go to Google type in commercial auto insurance policy or commercial auto insurance quote, that way you'll pull up specific sites that will give you that type of policy that you need. Okay. Make sure you cover yourself. And then lastly, we're going to also cover, and again, down in the description, I'll give you some other additional resources. Just click on that, to go to some, uh, Connecticut, the state of Connecticut websites that that'll give you more additional information.

Step six is going to be your labels, logos branding. You want to create a brand, make sure that you understand that too. If you don't have a logo, check out the link down in the description, you can actually get a logo made for you. I use actually myself fiverr.com. I've used that for, I think about 12 or 13 different times. Now we've actually had a lot of logos created. They can create a logo based on your needs. So you can communicate with a graphic designer. You can find somebody within your budget and then you could get that, that logo or the label made for you. Okay? Now there are some other licenses that you need to definitely have. So before you start your business, you definitely have to apply for a license. Um, and I believe Connecticut. It's the 28th, February 28th of each year is the date.

Okay. Now that license fee is it's about $50, a 50 to a hundred bucks. Okay. Now you can either, you can do that either in mail or mail order, you can send that in or you can do it online as well. Now, before you get your license, your home will definitely have to have, its will be inspected, have to have an inspection, okay. To make sure it's compliant with, uh, the state of Connecticut. So you do have that as well. And a food handlers course. Now the online course, I think is like about 20 bucks. Um, and it has just takes a few hours for you to do that. Okay. So with that being said, if you've got questions about creating a home-based food business and Connecticut, let me know, uh, and again, check out the extra resources down below to help you guys get started as quick as you can. Okay. We'll see on the next video. So if you're looking to start your own food business, check out these videos for more resources, profitable food, business ideas, how to start a food truck business, learn all about care, cottage, food laws to create a home business for selling food and how to start a catering business from home. These and many more small food business ideas are all at your fingertips. When you subscribe to marketing food online,

 

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