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Homemade for Sale: How to Set Up and Market a Food Business from Your Home Kitchen - Lisa Kivirist & John D. Ivanko - 10/22/2015 - 7:00pm

Homemade for Sale: How to Set Up and Market a Food Business from Your Home Kitchen

The Bubbler

From pies to preserves, wedding cakes to granola, pickles to decorated cookies, fledgling food entrepreneurs now have the freedom to earn, producing non-hazardous foods in their home kitchen. Finally, “homemade” and “fresh from the oven” on the package means exactly what it reads. Homemade for Sale provides a clear roadmap as the first authoritative guide to go from idea and recipe to final product.
 
Widely known as “cottage food legislation,” over 42 states and various Canadian provinces currently have varying forms of laws that encourage home-cooks to create and sell to the public specific, “non-hazardous” food items, often defined as those that are high-acid, like pickles, or low moisture, like breads.
 
Key topics covered in Homemade for Sale include:

• Product development and testing

• Organizing your kitchen

• Marketing and developing your niche

• Packaging and labeling

• Advertising and public relations

• Structuring your business

• Bookkeeping for your enterprise

• Managing liability, risk and government regulations

• Scaling up or staying small
 
From “Buy Local” to “Small Business Saturdays,” from slow food to fancy food, from farm-to-fork to hand-made artisan breads, more people than ever are demanding real food made with real ingredients by real people – not by machines in factories, the same way they make cars or computers. Homemade for Sale gets readers started, organized and cooking for their customers, creating items that by their very nature are small batch, fresh, unique and specialized.

Lisa Kivirist & John D. Ivanko

Lisa Kivirist & John D. Ivanko

As a pioneer in the cottage food industry, covering the national movement for publications as well as championing for the passage of a “Cookie Bill” in Wisconsin, Lisa Kivirist is on the cusp of the latest trends. Lisa and her husband and co-author-and-photographer, John Ivanko, are food-loving entrepreneurs.  As authors of thirteen books, national speakers and recognized spokespeople for the national sustainable agriculture movement, Lisa and John are regular presenters at numerous national conferences and library, university and community events. They’re co-authors of Farmstead Chef, ECOpreneuring and Rural Renaissance. John is also the co-author of several award-winning children’s multicultural photobooks, including To Be a Kid, Be My Neighbor and To Be an Artist.
 
Lisa and John's work has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, Conde Nast Traveler, MSNBC and on various radio programs across the country, including Martha Stewart Radio, the Sirius Satellite Network and Good Food on KCRW. As freelance journalists, they’re contributors to Mother Earth News, Urban Farm, Mother Earth Living, Hobby Farms and Natural Awakenings, and blog for Hobbyfarms.com and MotherEarthNews.com.
 
Lisa is a distinguished Kellogg Food and Society Policy Fellow and a national advocate and leader for women in sustainable agriculture. She initiated and directs the Rural Women’s Project of the Midwest Organic Sustainable Education Service, an award-winning initiative providing resources and networking for women farmers and food-based entrepreneurs. She writes a column for Women, Food and Agriculture (WFAN) entitled “Female Fare,” connecting women in agriculture to national policy issues.
 
Lisa and John are innkeepers of the award-winning Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast, completely powered by the wind and sun. Their B&B features local, seasonal vegetarian cuisine prepared with ingredients harvested from the Inn’s organic gardens. Lisa and John share their organic farm in Browntown, Wisconsin, with their son, a 10kW Bergey wind turbine, and millions of ladybugs.

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Homemade for Sale