"The first case said that the government can’t ban the sales of perfectly safe homemade baked goods. And so, since we already had that victory regarding baked goods, it definitely made things easier the second time around.... People shouldn’t need to buy or rent a commercial kitchen in order to sell fudge or candies...."
Said Justin Pearson of the Institute for Justice, which brought the 2 cases discussed in "Wisconsin residents can sell more than baked goods from home, judge rules" (Wisconsin State Journal).
Pearson asserted "the 49 other states... have better cottage food laws than Wisconsin."
I'd never noticed the expression "cottage food," though of course I know "cottage industry." "Cottage" makes the particular home sound unusually cozy and quaint. If you look back into the history of the word "cottage," you'll see that that originally it meant a small home for a poor laborer. The oldest use of "cottage industry," according to the OED, came from was in the Freeman's Journal (Dublin) in 1849: "Do you wish to make your labourers comfortable? Teach their children the use of the loom, and every kind of cottage industry."
That's "Children On A Path Outside A Thatched Cottage, West Horsley, Surrey" (late 1800s) by Helen Allingham. I found that at the Wikipedia article "Cottagecore." Did you know that some kids today romanticize the cottage and the styles and activities they imagine in and around it?
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Secretly, we all long for a starched apron, a freshly scrubbed face, and a mobcap.
My wife is one of these “cottage bakers.” Traditionally she used word of mouth and both FB and Insta to market, she did well for selling to people celebrating birthdays and graduations. Last summer I helped her as she took her first foray into selling at a local farmers market. She did cookies, muffins, scones, cupcakes, and cake pops which were surprisingly popular.
We spent a lot of time talking about what she couldn’t do under the then current law, and then watching this case. You can be sure some of the previously “prohibited” items will be on the table for sale next summer. They are pretty innocuous items…
We also spent time walking the market and looking at the other vendors and getting to know them. Chatting with one vendor encouraged me enough to try canning tomatoes for the first time. It turned out to be easier than I thought.
We see opportunity to sell things others are not. In particular, I think there is one massively underdeveloped selling opportunity, and I have a plan that this ruling will now accommodate.
We don’t make a ton of money, but it’s steady money and over time she’s gotten enough to pay for accommodations on a planned trip to England she has set with her college daughters. We both would like a commercial kitchen. Maybe that funding will be coming in future years.
Overall, it’s made me think about establishing our own business and we have several ideas. To be sure it’s hard work, and not every weekend was equally lucrative, but those markets were 100% more fulfilling than the corporate life I am stuck in.
Kinda' the same way many of us in the late 60's fantasized about communal living hippie style. At least until we grew up.
Before factories, before steam engines, before assembly lines, and before industrialization this was the norm. People made everything from food to buttons to clothes to lace to knives to tools in cottages in small villages. The Swiss watchmakers were cottage-based back when they made working class rather than luxury items -- each builder would specialize on one part and integrators/stores would piece outsourced items together.
Romanticized? Well, it's coming back with the rise of remote work, home 3D printers, and home CNC machines. Anyone can produce high quality and consistent items with small manufacturing hardware. It's completely logical for low demand, slow to make, niche items. This may return with a vengeance because people hate to commute and the Greens are aggressively trying to eliminate all fossil fuel-driven activities such as commuting.
Will anyone miss gigantic factory cities? I may choose to take my vacations in Gary Indiana but I'm a freak.
I think Enigmas observation is spot on. That market is more than vegetables and cookies. We saw those niche craft items and the Vendors using technology well. It basic economics, and now we have marvelous technology to do it with. It’s made me think of what I could develop and it allows me to be creative in a way that I can’t in my normal job.
I knew my wife was onto something when a woman from the local bakery placed an order with her for 4th of July themed cookies. She admitted that cookies were not her game in the bakery business and that my wife’s were among the best she’s had. We still chat with her from time to time when we see her around town.
At the end of the market we’d trade what we had left and usually my wife got some fresh flowers or produce in return. Restaurants do the same thing with each other at the end of the night.
I don’t desire to live some hippie lifestyle, but there has got to be a better way than the oppression of making your life in corporate America where you can live and die by the HR fad of the week.
I yearn for the day where I can say, “I understand that I didn’t use your pronoun. Please understand I also didn’t intentionally offend you. Now, do you want these chocolate chip cookies or not?”
i'm 60 years old (61 next june); I've made it til today without EVER hearing the phrase Cocoa Bomb.
I don't see how they'd even work.. I understand what causes flour to explode, but i can NOT see it with cocoa powder.
You'd need a LOT. But still..
It's COOL that Wisconsin has FINALLY Read the 2nd amendment; looking forward to what's next?
Japan specialized in home industries back in '44.. How'd THAT work for them?
As kids my sister and I could sit still together long enough to watch Hodgepodge Lodge. Correct or not I will forever associate that show with ‘cottage industry’.
Actually, if the green crowd has their way, this scene from the 1880's is what the 2080's will look like, minus the children of course.
Muslims use kitchens to make real bombs, you know, the kind that kill other people simply because they're not Muslims. And these Muslims are just following the sacred canons found in their "holy" books.
Sippican Cottage
Looong time Althouse commenters will understand.
The reason Wisconsin's laws are so restrictive is that Assembly Speaker Robin Vos owns a commercial food business and refuses to allow the Assembly to vote on any attempts to liberalize them.
The reason that Wisconsin's laws are so restrictive is that Assembly Speaker Robin Vos owns a commercial food business and refuses to allow a vote on any attempts to liberalize them.
Big fan here of Cottage sourdough breads. Have one locally that blows the doors off the competition. Greatest toast in this galaxy. I'm going to try sweet pickles ala Tony Packo's next year for sure. I make Hello Dollies from an old 1950s recipe that are stellar gifts. Retirement is play time.
Jane Austen's family, the father a pastor with some education, was always pinched financially, and lived in a cottage. They had just enough contact with richer and more aristocratic people that their relative poverty may have pinched even more. This comes up in Austen's novels, and at one point a kind of patronizing person says something like: how I dream of living in a cottage! I think a nicely turned out cottage is perhaps the ideal home!
I needed to qualify for a membership at Restaurant Depot, a wholesale house, to be able to purchase items for my workplace when Sysco (famously) was out-of-stock and did not have a substitute. Also, I would buy fresh seafood there as well as other items for my personal use. But most of the statuses required to obtain a membership came with the need to apply and pay for (several different types of) business licenses. So I applied for a Florida Resale Certificate for Sales Tax (reporting) as a Cottage industry for sale of certain homemade goods. I have no plans to do any of that and every month I simply report no sales because there aren't any.
Even as a Certified Food Protection Manager and contract trainer of Prevention of Foodborne Illnesses for hundreds of restaurants, bars, hotels and the like, I see no need to rent or have access to an inspected commercial food preparation kitchen to prepare most baked goods (as well as other items that you see at Farmer's Markets).
Glad to see this progress in Wisconsin.
BTW, Happy and SAFE New Year's to Ann and Meade, ALL the commenters and their loved ones. I also train Florida's Responsible Vendor class (for service of beverage alcohol). I note, in my presentations, that I check the local Palm Beach County booking blotter once a day (to see if any of my friends are on it). On a given day, the average number of DUI arrests make up about 20% of those charges. Last year, for Jan 1, 80% of those arrested were for suspicion of DUI. I bet most of them thought they were okay to drive or at least that they could make it home without being stopped.
Please be safe especially if you plan to be on the roads after midnight tonight.
Isn't that a painting of the home of Margaret Thatcher?
And cheese!. Don't forget the cheese.
Is there an exception in the law for elves baking in tree trunks?
Cottage life has been romanticized for literally centuries. That painting you included is part of the trend.
Cocoa Bomb sounds insurrection-ish.
Hey..who was it that put those "pipe bombs" outside DNC?
Bah. Old news.
Wince,
Elves are more into edibles.
My Oma was born and raised in a structure not too different from that one, complete with thatch roof, built in 1817. It was still there in 1978.
Marcus,
Aren't there weird restrictions on restaurants regarding food sourcing? I remember talking to restauramt owner in WI who lamented inability to go to local grocery store when they ran out of something.
Ok, so one of Robed Kings and Queen decided to strike down a law because they didn't like it.
I don't care one way or the other. Its just that some lawyer in a robe shouldn't be doing it. want to sell baked goods? Talk to your representative.
Who cooks and bakes in the Meade-Althouse............house? Does Ann bake Christmas cookies?
Anyway. Happy New Year! You two. Thank you for having me in your playground.
Has Prof posted about "cottaging"? Seems like a natural.
As for food regs, everyone knows about German beer purity laws, but few know the story of Hitler and his fresh buns.
No, seriously. Let me see if I can recall or locate the details. He was a stickler for a fresh sugarbun in the morning.
And Stalin introduced ice cream to the Soviet masses.
“Kinda' the same way many of us in the late 60's fantasized about communal living hippie style. At least until we grew up.”
Yea, the best thing about hippie culture was the “Sharon, share alike” universal sex thing. All the hippie girls had to get it on with all the guys even if they were dirty or nerds. Like Fetchin Gretchen on the Kesey Bus. I think this is what killed hippie culture, because the cool guys refused to let their hippie girl harem be passed around. But I was 10 at the time, so I don’t really know.
Walter: on food sourcing: it must be from an approved vendor, not fish from sportsfishermen nor boxes of tomatoes off the back of a truck. That being said, supermarket food is okay as long as it is transported safely (within temperature ranges). After all, they are also inspected though by a different agency.
In regards to alcohol, if you mess up your order or a supplier is out of something you need, or the demand for a certain beer at your event is higher and you need more, you cannot go to the local Costco or Total Wine & More. You MUST buy from the approved vendor and you must have an invoice from them for every bottle in your establishment. Interesting fact: at least in FL, if you don't have a beer & wine license for your little cafe, you cannot have "normal" wine in your kitchen to cook with. You must buy cooking wine, which has salt added to it to make it not quite drinkable. Because it is not meant to be drank, you do not have to be 21 to buy it in the local market.
Marcus B. THEOLDMAN
Yea, the best thing about hippie culture was the “Sharon, share alike” universal sex thing. All the hippie girls had to get it on with all the guys even if they were dirty or nerds. Like Fetchin Gretchen on the Kesey Bus. I think this is what killed hippie culture, because the cool guys refused to let their hippie girl harem be passed around. But I was 10 at the time, so I don’t really know.
Magic Mushrooms
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