The Forrager Podcast for Cottage Food Businesses

Learn how to start a food business from your home kitchen by hearing stories from cottage food entrepreneurs about how they grew their businesses from the ground up. Does everyone ask for your recipes, or say "You should sell that"? Have you dreamed of starting a brick-and-mortar bakery, or simply want a fun hobby that brings in some extra dough? On this podcast, David interviews a wide range of entrepreneurs across America who legally sell their homemade food via their state's cottage food law. Each episode reveals strategies for marketing and selling your food products successfully from home, online, at farmers markets/events, and in stores. Learn what steps you should (or shouldn't) take, and get your cottage food business off to the right start!

Lauri Lee & Bob Stafford with Lauri Lee’s

Lauri Lee & Bob Stafford of Surprise, AZ share the strategies they’ve used to scale their business by becoming a major presence at markets, adding wholesale accounts, switching to a copacker, and moreGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/148

08-26
59:59

Soralla Gonzalez with Delicious Healthy Bakes

Soralla Gonzalez of Tampa Bay, FL shares how she has overcome struggles to find customers by being resilient, implementing marketing strategies, failing fast, and staying focused on her true passionGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/147

08-12
59:57

Stacey Kimball with Bluebird Confections

Stacey Kimball of Caldwell, ID shares how she went from cottage food to commercial kitchen to her own storefront by building relationships with her community and focusing on slow and consistent growthGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/146

07-29
59:30

Amanda Sharp with The Little Bakery

Amanda Sharp of McCalla, AL shares how she fulfilled her lifelong dream of building a successful bakery, despite overcoming health challenges and facing a curveball that almost wiped out her salesGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/145

07-15
58:54

Annie Wang with Little Moon Bakehouse

Annie Wang of Oakland, CA shares how she turned multiple passions into a very successful hyper-niched and eco-friendly bakery by starting small, scaling up, and completing a massive rebrandGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/144

07-01
57:19

Ana Delgado with Apple & Jars

Ana Delgado of Wingdale, NY shares her incredible cottage food business journey that includes starting over twice, overcoming a midlife crisis, and dealing with burnout on her unlikely path to successGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/143

06-17
59:27

Georgi DeCosta with Georgi’s Goodies

Georgi DeCosta of Kaneohe, HI shares how she used baking to help overcome depression, and turned her baking therapy into a legitimate cottage food business that has given her a new purpose in lifeGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/142

06-03
54:17

Rita Magalde with Sheer Ambrosia

Rita Magalde runs Sheer Ambrosia in Salt Lake City, UT and shares her roller coaster baking business journey of 17 years that includes big risks, life changes, surprises, failures and successesGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/141

05-20
59:58

Michelle Chesser with Home Sweet Home Bakery

Michelle Chesser of Millersville, MO started her home bakery 16 years ago from humble beginnings and built it into a "monster" that changed her family's life and led her to become an online influencerGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/140

05-06
59:59

Chris Martin with bakernobakery

Chris Martin of Charlottesville, VA shares how she used her experience working at 3-star Michelin restaurants to build a successful cottage food bakery, and then reinvented it despite its popularityGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/139

04-22
58:50

Davia Delgado with Raven Cakes Bakery

Davia Delgado of Trenton, NJ has experienced incredibly fast growth in her cottage food bakery, and shares how she achieved many $2k and $3k sales days within her first year of businessGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/138

04-08
59:38

Elena-Maria Hert with European Baked Delights

Elena-Maria Hert of Billings, MT shares how she persisted to create a successful cottage food bakery, despite struggling to acquire customers, source ingredients, and achieve work/life balanceGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/137

03-25
54:50

Allyson Grant with The Better Baker Club

Allyson Grant of Baldwin City, KS shares her wild journey from starting a home bakery to growing a chain of cupcake stores, appearing on the Food Network, and coaching cottage food entrepreneursGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/136

03-11
59:58

Rachel Laukala with Cakepops by Rachel

Rachel Laukala of Ravensdale, WA shares how she built a very successful cottage food bakery selling only cake pops, amassed over 100k followers on Instagram, and started an online cake pop schoolGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/135

02-25
59:56

Meggen Wilson with Pine & Palm Kitchen

Meggen Wilson of Whitefish, MT shares how she converted her cottage food business into an ecommerce brand, and covers many topics including licensing, branding, copacking, ecommerce, SEO, email & moreGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/134

02-11
59:50

Matt Rosen with Sergeant Shortbread

Matt Rosen of Eden Prairie, MN shares his unlikely journey from non-baker to bakery owner, including a major rebrand, a fortuitous commercial facility, and a business decision that tripled his salesGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/133

01-28
59:28

Delaney Peters with Delaney’s Sourdough

Delaney Peters of Wasilla, AK shares how her cottage food bakery became a massive success within its first year, despite having modest business ambitions and also being a stay-at-home mom of an infantGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/132

01-14
59:59

Maci Reed with Bake-a-Reed

Maci Reed of Dover, NH shares how she rapidly built a successful cottage food bakery by focusing on helping others and fostering community, and eventually sold over 1,000 baked goods in a single dayGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/131

12-31
58:09

Denise Golia with Dee’s Little Sweets

Denise Golia of North Providence, RI shares how she started a very successful bakery by niching way down, despite being limited by a personal injury and not being able to start from her home kitchenGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/130

12-17
53:46

Jondell Lafont-Garcia with Fluff Marshmallow Co.

Jondell Lafont-Garcia of Pflugerville, TX is one of the foremost experts in the homemade marshmallow trend and shares how she built her cottage food business despite facing a major personal challengeGet full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/129

12-03
59:59

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