To sell cookies at a farmers market, start with your state's cottage food rules, which decide whether you can bake at home, which cookies are allowed and what goes on the label. Then bake the day before, wrap and label every cookie, bring about 1½ times what you expect to sell, and price the single cookie and the gift box so the box is the better buy. In the example below, a cookie maker near Salt Lake City sells big chocolate chip cookies, decorated sugar cookies and half-dozen boxes at a Saturday market through September, takes $2,741 over four Saturdays, and keeps $1,480 after the cookies' cost, card fees and the stall. Below is the rules, what to bake, wrapping, prices, the four Saturdays, and a free market day planner.
The short version
- Check your state's cottage food rules first: registration, a food handler's permit, which cookies are allowed.
- Cookies with cream cheese frosting, custard or fresh fruit often aren't cottage foods.
- Label every package: name, ingredients, net weight, allergens, your business and contact.
- Bake the day before, wrap each cookie, and bring about 1½ times what you expect to sell.
- Price the box below the cookies in it, so it's the easy upgrade.
- Ask the market about samples; some states need a separate sampling permit.
- TaroStack costs every batch, counts what came home on a phone, and lists what to bake. More below.
The rules: cottage food
Utah lets a person produce cottage food in a home kitchen after registering with the state agriculture department, holding a valid food handler's permit, and labeling each product as the department's rules say (Utah Code 4-5-501). Cottage foods have to be shelf-stable: Utah's list allows cookies with non-TCS inclusions like nuts, dried fruit and chocolate, and fillings like frosting, caramel or chocolate, but not cream cheese frosting, custards, egg-based buttercreams or fresh fruit garnishes. The label lists the name of the food, all ingredients, the net quantity, allergens, the business's name and contact, and "Home Produced", and products may be sold only within Utah, direct to consumers or to stores (UDAF). The same department has a permit for food sampling at temporary events and markets. Other states draw the lines differently, some with sales caps or no store sales, so read yours before you bake for a market. This is general information, not legal advice. How cottage food records work is in cottage food record keeping.
What to bake and bring
Granite Peak Cookie Co., a made-up cookie maker in Sandy, Utah, I use in these examples, brings for an ordinary Saturday:
| Cookie | Price | Cost, with the card fee | Bring | Expect to sell | Sell-through |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chocolate chip cookie, large, wrapped | $4.00 | $1.56 | 96 | 70 | 73% |
| Decorated sugar cookie | $7.00 | $3.01 | 36 | 24 | 67% |
| Half-dozen gift box | $22.00 | $9.20 | 12 | 8 | 67% |
| All three | 144 | 102 | 71% |
Four batches of 24 chocolate chip cookies, baked Friday, is a morning's baking and a full table on Saturday. Bring fewer extras than a candle maker would, because cookies don't keep for next month: the ones that come home are next week's samples, the family's, or a loss. The decorated cookies take five minutes each to pipe, so they're made to a number, not to a hope. What a cookie business takes to start is in how to start a cookie business.
Wrapping and display
Each cookie in its own clear bag, sealed and labeled, keeps it fresh in the sun, keeps hands off it and carries the label your state asks for. Keep the stock in a closed bin in the shade; chocolate softens on a warm September afternoon. Markets often ask that food on the table be covered or wrapped, so a stack of wrapped cookies on a tiered stand is both the display and the rule. How to keep cookies counted from bake to sale is in bakery inventory spreadsheet.
Prices and the box
$4 for a big chocolate chip cookie, $7 for a decorated one, and $22 for a half-dozen box, which would be $24 as singles. The box costs 80 cents and gives away $2 of price, and it still leaves $12.80 against $14.64 for six singles, because people who'd buy one cookie buy six as a gift. The market is also a pickup point: preordered dozens collected at the stall save a delivery.
Four Saturdays
| Saturday | Chocolate chip | Decorated | Boxes | Sales | Cookies and card fees | Stall | Left |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 5 | 70 | 24 | 8 | $624 | $255.04 | $35 | $333.96 |
| September 12 | 82 | 30 | 10 | $758 | $310.22 | $35 | $412.78 |
| September 19 | 58 | 20 | 6 | $504 | $205.88 | $35 | $263.12 |
| September 26 | 90 | 33 | 12 | $855 | $350.13 | $35 | $469.87 |
| The month | 300 | 107 | 36 | $2,741 | $1,121.27 | $140 | $1,479.73 |
The 300 chocolate chip cookies leave $732, the 107 decorated cookies $427 and the 36 boxes $461: the boxes earn nearly as much as the decorated cookies from a third as many sales. An ordinary Saturday leaves about $334 for seven hours with the setup and the drive, about $48 an hour; the baking is paid in the cookies' cost. The slow Saturday, September 19, was the weekend of a big event across town. What the rest of a market costs is in cost to sell at a farmers market.
After each market
Write down what sold of each cookie, what came home and the weather, every Saturday. Four weeks of that tells you how many to bake, which flavors to drop, and how many decorated cookies to pipe for the holiday markets. A sheet for it is in farmers market sales tracker.
Get the planner
Download the cookie market day planner. Two sheets: market day, with your cookies, prices, what each costs you, what you'll bring and what you expect to sell, where sales, what's left after the stall and what's left for each hour fill in; and season, one line for each market with what sold, where sales, costs, the stall and what's left fill in from the first sheet. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
Six flavors, decorated cookies for a wedding order, preordered dozens, two cafés and a Saturday market, baked from the same butter and chocolate. A planner says how many to bring; it can't say whether there's butter for Friday's bake after the café order, what each flavor really cost this month, or how many cookies were given away or thrown out.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs every batch, counts what came home on a phone, and lists what to bake.
Batches and their cost. A batch of cookies takes its butter, flour and chocolate off stock at what they cost, with the labor minutes, so each flavor's cost comes from what was really used. "What could I make right now" says how many batches the butter and chocolate on the shelf allow.
What came home. Counting works on a phone with no signal, in the car after the market. Cookies given as samples, eaten or thrown out are adjustments with their reasons, so waste shows by reason and item.
Lots on the label. Each batch gets a lot of its own, so the date and batch on a package lead back to the butter and flour lots that went in. How lot numbers work is in what is lot tracking.
| The job | Notebook | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Butter for Friday's bake | Check the fridge | What could I make right now |
| What a cookie cost this month | Last year's number | Each batch, at what it used |
| Samples and leftovers | Not written down | Adjustments with reasons |
| What went into Saturday's batch | Memory | Lots on the batch |
Recipes, batches, counts and lots are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.