Fifteen years ago, I started selling cookies out of my home kitchen with zero idea what I was doing. I didn’t know my state’s cottage food law existed (though, at a much more limited capacity at the time) I priced my first orders by “feeling it out”, and I found out the hard way that “I’ll figure out the business stuff later” is how you end up working sixty hours a week to make $8/hour in California.
I did eventually figure it out through lots of trial, error, loss of sleep, spreadsheets I built half-assedly, and now 15+ years running Borderlands Bakery, teaching bakers all over the world, and building My Custom Bakes in 2021 specifically because nothing out there was built for cottage bakers at the time. Most business advice is written for restaurants or commercial kitchens. Cottage food is different: revenue caps, kitchen restrictions, state-by-state rules that change what you’re even allowed to sell.
This is the guide I wish someone had handed me on day one, if I really needed a shortcut. There are tons of gems in this post- make sure you bookmark it, work through it at your own pace, and come back when you hit the next stage, and I’ll promise you that I’ll keep it updated, too.
Step 0: Find out what you’re legally allowed to do
Before you price a single cookie for sale to “real” customers, you need to know your state’s rules. Cottage food law governs what you can sell, how much revenue you’re allowed to make before you need a commercial license, which sales channels are legal (farmers markets, online, local delivery, retail), and what has to be on your label. Every state is different, sometimes even the county/local geography, and some (“food freedom” states) barely regulate you at all. However, some can be very strict.
Use the Cottage Food Law Checker. Look up your state and get your permitted products, revenue cap, allowed sales channels, permit/training requirements, and required label disclaimer, all in one place, sourced from Forrager and kept current.
Not sure where to even start? The Cottage Baker Starter Guide asks a few quick questions: your state, what you want to sell, how you want to sell it. Then, it hands you back a personalized step-by-step roadmap, including whether your state has food freedom coverage.
I know how confusing navigating these laws can be. I’ve spent years working on it from the other side too, initially as a cottage food producer advocating for the use of meringue powder in royal icing, and more recently in my role as President of the Board for the National Cottage Food Alliance, the 510(c)6 trade organization bringing cottage food operators together and advocating for improved cottage food laws nationwide.
Don’t skip this step! I’ve seen bakers build a whole business plan around a product their state doesn’t allow them to sell from home, like cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing… Check first, and if you’re SET on selling those cinnamon rolls, there are cottage law friendly alternatives you can consider.
Step 1: Build the recipe like it’s a business, not a hobby
Once you know what’s legal, nail down your actual recipe: measured, written down, and repeatable. This sounds obvious, but I can’t tell you how many bakers I’ve worked with who can’t tell you exactly how much butter is in their own sugar cookie. That’s fine for your kitchen. It’s not fine once you’re pricing and scaling for orders, where consistency is going to be a key reason why people keep coming back for your goodies 🙂
Use the Recipe Builder to write your recipe with ingredients by weight or volume, numbered directions, and a batch multiplier so you can scale from a test batch to a full order without doing math in your head. Add your ingredient costs while you’re at it- the tool exports straight into the Pricing Calculator and Label Generator, so you’re not retyping the same list three times.
Step 2: Price it properly — before you take a single order
This is where most cottage bakers lose money without realizing it. “I’ll just charge what the bakery down the street charges” isn’t pricing, it’s guessing, and it usually means you’re paying yourself next to nothing for your time.
Selling cookies, bars, or simple bakes? Use the Baked Goods Pricing Calculator. Enter your ingredient costs, labor rate, overhead, and packaging, and it hands you a recommended price with a full cost breakdown PLUS a margin slider so you can see what happens to your price with different profit margins & hourly rates. If you built your recipe in the Recipe Builder, it imports directly.
Making custom cakes or cupcakes? Pricing gets more complex once you’re into tiers, fillings, and decoration, so there’s a dedicated path:
- Buttercream Calculator: tells you exactly how much buttercream to make, by shape, height, layers, and piping style, with a 15% buffer built in so you’re not short mid-decorate.
- Cake Pricing Calculator: prices a custom or tiered cake tier by tier, factoring in decoration complexity (naked to full sculpted 3D), sugar work add-ons like gumpaste flowers or hand-painting, consultation and tasting fees, and delivery, then gives you an itemized quote you can hand straight to a customer.
Making royal icing cookies?
- Royal Icing Calculator — helps you decide how much icing per color you need to make based on the set you’re decorating. BONUS: it also helps you calculate icing you need for classes, if that’s something you offer 😉
Delivering orders? Don’t eat the cost of gas and your time. The Delivery Pricing Calculator factors in distance, time, vehicle costs, and a minimum fee so delivery actually pays you instead of quietly costing you money on every order.
Step 3: Make your label legal
Cottage food labeling isn’t optional, and it’s not the same as a regular product label. Most states require specific disclaimer language, allergen declarations, and sometimes your permit number, and it varies by state. This is pretty serious – worth getting right!
Use the Cottage Food Label Generator. It pulls your state’s exact required disclaimer and allergen fields automatically, and it’s updated monthly as laws change, THOUGH we always recommend you do a sanity check against your local regulations directly because laws frequently change, and we’re also not perfect. If you built your recipe in the Recipe Builder, your ingredient list imports straight in.
Step 4: Plan your production week like a pro
You know your law, your recipe, your price, and your label. Now you need to actually get the orders made without losing your mind on at 3AM on a random Wednesday.
If you’re taking decorated cookie orders, one of the most common places bakers guess wrong is icing volume — too little and you’re mixing another batch mid-order, too much and you’re wasting product. The Royal Icing Calculator lets you add every design in the order, set complexity per design, name your colors, and get a per-color amount with a 15% buffer — and it sends straight into the Recipe Builder so it’s part of your production record, not a sticky note.
(If you’re running your bake week with MCB, the Production Planner tool takes this further: block your week by day and task, prep through delivery, and export the whole thing to your google or apple calendar.)
Step 5: Show up and sell
This is the part people picture when they imagine “having a bakery”, and it’s also where the wheels most often come off, because there’s a lot to remember and no one to hand you a checklist. So here’s one.
Farmers market or vendor event? The Market Day Packing Checklist covers products, packaging, signage, display, payments, food safety, tools, and admin in one interactive list. Check off as you pack, print a fresh copy every time.
Roadside stand, driveway table, or porch pop-up? That’s a different setup than a market booth, so it gets its own list: the Farmstand & Porch Pop-Up Checklist walks through set-up, running an open day, and closing down, with toggles for an attended stand versus a self-serve honor system, cash box, or QR checkout PLUS food safety guidance specific to unattended stands.
Not sure how much to bring, or if the event is even worth your time? The Event Inventory Calculator takes your expected foot traffic (or your sales history from a past event) and gives you a per-product packing list along with a break-even read on whether the event pencils out financially.
Booked for a wedding, shower, or party dessert bar? The Dessert Bar Calculator takes your guest count and desserts, factors in how popular each item will likely be, and gives you a full baking list with quantities, buffers, and a per-person breakdown you can hand straight to the client.
Step 6: Treat it like an actual business
Somewhere around your first few months of consistent orders, “the cookie thing I do on weekends” starts turning into a real small business, and that’s worth planning for on purpose, not by accident.
Use the Cottage Food Business Plan Builder: A 42 guided questions across seven sections (overview, target market, pricing, marketing, operations, financials, goals), built specifically around how a cottage food business actually runs, not a generic template that assumes you have a storefront and employees. Download the finished plan as an editable Word document when you’re done.
Step 7: Get found, and get booked ahead of time
Baking great cookies doesn’t matter if no one knows you exist. Marketing for a cottage bakery is mostly about being visible at the right moment: before Halloween, before Mother’s Day, before the school bake sale rush, and about actually reaching out to the people most likely to buy from you.
Plan your year: the 2026 and 2027 Treat Makers’ Marketing Calendars map every national holiday, food celebration, and awareness month, each with a baking opportunity tip attached. Filter by category, pick the ones relevant to you, and export to your calendar so you’re never caught planning a Halloween menu on October 28th.
Find your first customers: most cottage bakers only ever think to post on their own Instagram, then wonder why sales are slow. There’s a whole channel-by-channel guide: Facebook groups, Nextdoor, real estate agents, salons, coffee shops, farmers markets, Google Business Profile — with word-for-word scripts for reaching out to each one. THIS BLOG POST gives you boots-on-the-ground marketing strategies & specific ideas of who/where to market to, and exactly how to do it.
Once people want to hear from you regularly, you need somewhere to send that email — that’s where a simple email platform earns its keep. Our readers get a locked-in rate through our partner link via BRZY.
You don’t have to build this alone
Every tool above is free, and you can use every one of them without ever touching MCB. Once the order start rolling in, the gap the tools don’t fill is the one that significantly eats into your time and energy: the custom order forms, the back-and-forth over DMs/texts, the spreadsheet you’re keeping to track who paid and who didn’t.. plus, having to chase down those people.
That’s what My Custom Bakes is for. A real home for your bakery where customers can find you, order, and pay, without a single DM or Google Form. It’s the same platform I built to reduce all the back-forth communication, quoting/deposit workflow nightmares, and custom order confusion, because I needed it for my own bakery first.
If you want to talk it through with other bakers who’ve been exactly where you are, our free Facebook community is open to everyone, no MCB account required.
Quick answers
What’s the difference between the Baked Goods Pricing Calculator and the Cake Pricing Calculator? The Pricing Calculator handles cookies, bars, and simple bakes with one flat cost-plus-margin structure. The Cake Pricing Calculator is built for custom and tiered cake work, where you need per-tier buttercream, decoration complexity, and add-ons factored in separately — use it once cakes stop being “simple.”
Do I need a business plan before I start selling? No — sell your first orders, learn what people actually want to buy, then use the Business Plan Builder once you have real numbers to plug in. A plan built on guesses is less useful than one built on your first three months of sales.
My state has food freedom law — do I still need to check the Cottage Food Law Checker? Yes. Food freedom states are more permissive, but there are still usually rules around sales channels, labeling, or products that require a permit. Don’t assume “unregulated” means “no rules.”
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