Selling from home

How to Sell Candy From Home (2026): Cottage Food Rules, Packaging and Pre-Orders

You already make the fudge people ask about every December, or the brittle, or the pretzel rods dipped for a baby shower. Somebody offered to pay you for a box. Now you want to know three things: whether you can sell it from your kitchen, what has to be on the label, and how to take orders without running your whole business out of DMs. Here is the straight version of all three.

Can you sell candy from your kitchen?

In many states, yes. The rule you are looking for is a cottage food law. It lets you make certain foods at home and sell them straight to the person eating them, usually with a label and either no permit or a simple registration. Candy, chocolate, fudge, toffee and brittle appear on those lists in many states. The lists are not the same from one state to the next, and the only list that counts is yours.

Those lists usually turn on one question: does this candy keep at room temperature, or does it need the fridge? A chocolate-dipped strawberry, a cream center, or anything you would keep cold at home is the kind of item that raises it. Your state page says which side of that line each candy lands on. Read it there, not here. A blog post, this one included, is not the law.

Freeze-dried candy is the new one, and not every state list names it. If yours does not, call the office that runs your state cottage food program and ask before you buy a freeze dryer. Five minutes on the phone beats buying a machine that costs thousands and finding out you cannot use it.

You do not need a permit to set up your page. Put your boxes, prices and pickup days on Chefry today and sort out the paperwork at your own pace. Chefry does not issue, check or police anyone's permit. Your licensing and your food safety are yours, the same as any business.

What goes on the label?

The label is the part of the law a customer or an inspector will actually look at. Pull the exact list from your state page. Expect some version of:

• The name of the candy.
• Your name and the address of the kitchen it was made in.
• Every ingredient, from the largest amount down. Butter is not just butter if it has salt in it.
• The allergens it contains, such as milk, nuts, soy, wheat or eggs, listed the way your state asks.
• The net weight.
• A line saying it was made in a home kitchen not inspected by the health department. Your state gives you the exact wording.

Write the ingredient list for each recipe once, keep it in your notes app, and print on plain address labels at home. A box of brittle should get the same label in March as it did in December.

How do you pack and price a box?

Chocolate hates heat. Brittle and hard candy go sticky in humid air. Fudge dries out if it is not sealed. None of that is a reason not to sell. It is a reason to plan the handoff. Local pickup with a window you choose solves most of it, because the box goes from your counter to their car. In summer, keep chocolate in a cooler until the customer is in front of you. Put parchment between layers of anything dipped. Seal brittle airtight.

Sell by the box, not the piece. A box of twelve pretzel rods is one order, one label, one pickup. A single rod is the same amount of your time for a fraction of the money.

Price the box on paper before you post it. Add up the sugar, butter, chocolate, the box and the label, then add your time at a rate you would accept from an employer. Say a box costs you $6 in ingredients and packaging and takes you twenty minutes. List it at $20 on Chefry and you keep $20, so you can see right there whether those twenty minutes got paid for. If not, raise the price. The customer is comparing you to a candy shop, not to free.

Pre-orders, so you only make what sold

Candy sells in waves: Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, graduations, Halloween, Christmas. The wave is where DMs break. Somebody orders three boxes in a comment, somebody else sends a Venmo screenshot with no name on it, and on pickup day two people show up for the same box. Taking the orders on a page fixes that, and it is what your Chefry menu is built for.

• You set the pickup days and the windows. One Saturday a month, or every evening the week before Christmas, 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM.
• You set an order cutoff before each pickup day, so you know the count before you buy the chocolate.
• You set a stock count per box. When the last one sells, the box shows sold out on its own.
• Customers pay by card when they order. Nobody is chasing a payment at the door.
• People who save your page get told when you add a box or bring one back in stock.
• The photos you upload at signup are read into a first menu.

Your page also works as the link in your bio, so the people who find you on Instagram land on a menu with a checkout instead of a message box. Keep selling everywhere you already sell. Nothing here is exclusive. The short version of what Chefry does for candy makers is on the sell candy online page.

What it costs

Nothing to list, and 0% commission on your menu orders, for every chef. The price you put on a box is what the order is worth to you. Payouts go to your own bank account through Stripe, and they are instant, so Saturday's boxes can pay for Sunday's chocolate.

Questions candy makers ask first