Selling Food on Instagram

Plenty of people can make some delicious dishes. If you’re one of them, you might wonder what it would take to sell some of your best dishes and make a little money from them. There are a lot of ways to go about starting such a business, and all of them will involve investment in online communication. In fact, social media might prove to be an essential part of your food business.

It turns out that selling food on Instagram is a real thing. You can sell home-cooked meals to people who are interested in buying your cooking. It’s a newer business model, and it is exploding in popularity. The overall concept is easy. Fire up your kitchen, and you can use Instagram for selling food from home.

In practice, things are a bit more complicated. If selling homemade food online sounds compelling, you’ll have to learn about your state and local commercial food regulations. Most likely, you’ll be attached to cottage food laws (more on that in the next section).

You also need a sustainable business model. You can’t just read a quick article about how to start selling food on Instagram. You have to map out your costs, sourcing and distribution. Sure, you can sell a batch of cookies every now and then as a side hustle. But, if you want to make this a living, you need to do your homework. The first thing to learn is the rules and regulations that will govern your new business.

Is Selling Food on Instagram Legal?

If you want to know how to sell food from home legally, you have to look into state laws. In every state, it is legal to use Instagram to market your food business. That said, there are always rules in place, and they vary by state. There may be additional local rules as well.

For the most part, you have to learn about cottage food laws. This is a term given to the regulations that govern selling food from home. So, if you’re wondering, “is selling home cooked food illegal,” the answer depends. There is a legal way to do it, but you can’t just fire up your oven and assume that everything will work out just fine.

For most states, cottage food laws tell you when selling food on Facebook is illegal, and it largely depends on the type of food you sell. Many home kitchens can produce baked goods, pickled goods, jars and jams without a special license (although some states require a license even for these goods). These are food items that represent a particularly low risk for food-borne illnesses.

If you do find that you need a permit for your home kitchen, you’ll need to go through the proper channels in your state.

Do I Need a License to Sell Food on Instagram?

This leads to the obvious question: do I need a license to sell homemade food? As we already covered, that answer depends on the type of food and the state where you want to operate. For the most part, selling home cooked food to the public does require licensing, and the penalty for selling food without a permit will start with heavy fines. If someone suffers ill effects from an unlicensed food business, penalties can even include jail time.

For the most part, if you want to sell anything with meat or dairy, you will need the appropriate commercial food license. This means that you will have to go through a checklist to ensure that your kitchen is safe (pets are usually prohibited, as an example). You will likely have to have your workplace or components of the home formally inspected. This can include water inspections, sewage inspections, kitchen appliance inspections and a lot more.

When everything is approved and you are licensed, you can sell food that you make in your kitchen. You can use Instagram to find customers, and you can push the venture as far as you are willing to take it. It's time to optimize your profile, build a website, and start making sales!