They call it a cottage baker license around where I live (for baking at least). I got it in 2025 to sell some loaves and ended up having the most busy year of work so I sold zero.

Your kitchen doesn't need to be certified.

Google Cottage Food Regulations, along with your state, and you'll see the rules for cooking food for sale in your home kitchen. The rules are constantly evolving, especially during Covid, when people weren't working, and needed to make money selling at farmers markets and such. But the rules generally aren't that complicated, which is nice for a government thing, for a change.

Usually it can't be stuff with meat or dairy that has to be kept hot or cold. Baked goods like breads/ cakes/ cookies, candies, jarred stuff like jellies, etc. Basically think room temperature/shelf stable.

There are also rules about labeling, font size, specific disclaimers, etc.

Looking at this, the brownies and bread would be legal in my state, but serving hot soup, especially with meat in it, would be more of a restaurant item, and would be prohibited as a cottage food offering.

I used to own an ice cream shop, and we tapped into the Cottage Food laws a bit. We made our own caramel and fudge (oh yeah, every bit as delicious as you're thinking), and brownies and cookie dough (meh) but we didn't have a stove at the store, so we made them at home. We didn't sell them to the public, we just used them in our ice cream.

That's another issue with Cottage Foods. The cook can sell them themselves, but they can't wholesale it to someone else, and at the time, they couldn't sell it online. Again, the rules are constantly evolving, and every state is different, so YMMV. For instance, another poster mentioned getting a Cottage Food license, but that isn't necessary in my state. You could bake a bunch of brownies, and sell them at your lemonade stand in front of your house today.

In all my limited experience in the Cottage Food world, not once did any authority, food safety inspector, etc. ever ask a word about it. They have these rules, but I'm not sure who would be in charge of enforcing them, and I doubt they even know, so you're pretty much free to do whatever you want - until someone gets sick. Then you're screwed.

So stick to the rules, avoid meat, and you'll be fine.

Ghost kitchens/fb marketplace food/etc are libertarian tech bros flouting government regulation regarding food safety by being like “oh well I don’t actually sell the food” and they 100% get away with it even though stopping the facilitation would be stupidly easy.

They’re testing the waters imo. How long until you can get unlicensed and untrained mental health care, physical health care, etc?

I genuinely wonder what the rate of food poisoning looks like with the rise of shit like doordash and uber eats