I Spent RMB 2,000 Opening a Bakery Workshop in America
To make sure my family had access to quality carbohydrates, I had spent several years learning to bake sourdough with wild yeast. During those years, I often gave friends loaves of sourdough or brought them along to potlucks, and always received a great deal of praise.
I particularly remember last Thanksgiving, when I was invited to dinner at the home of my American farmer friend Nancy. At the table, a man could not stop praising my sourdough: ‘I have to hold myself back, or I’ll eat every last loaf in one sitting!’
That gave my confidence in my baking a tremendous boost. I spent time researching the regulations in Texas, where I live, and set about preparing to open my little workshop.
I. Opening a Bakery Workshop for Under RMB 2,000
Cottage food laws differ from state to state. California, known for its high taxes and strict regulations, requires a special permit to operate a food business, and the type of permit depends on the scope of operation and the sales revenue ceiling.
For example, a Class A permit allows direct sales to consumers with an annual revenue cap of $80,000 (approximately RMB 565,000). To sell food to third parties such as supermarkets or restaurants, one must apply for a Class B permit, with an annual revenue cap of $160,000 (approximately RMB 1.131 million).
The most lenient cottage food law belongs to Wyoming — a vast, sparsely populated state steeped in cowboy culture. There, homemade foods can be sold without any permit at all, there are no restrictions on third-party retail, and the annual sales ceiling is as high as $250,000 (approximately RMB 1.767 million).
The cottage food law here in Texas is also fairly relaxed — no permit required. Baked goods can be sold to consumers as long as they contain no meat, and the packaging includes a list of ingredients and allergens, along with the baker’s home address and contact details. There is an annual revenue cap of $60,000, but for a home bakery, that is more than ample.
I then spent over $200 (approximately RMB 1,414) on a printer that could produce food labels and on label paper, a large stack of kraft paper bags for wrapping my sourdough, and some time designing a logo and a menu. And just like that, my home bakery was officially open for business.
All in all, selling homemade food in the United States is not difficult.
II. Rebuilding Local Food Systems
All of my baked goods are leavened with wild yeast. After a long, natural fermentation, the rich and diverse microbial cultures produce deep, mellow flavours while also reducing the antinutrients and gluten content in the flour, making the nutrients easier for the body to absorb and utilise.
There are several reasons behind opening this bakery. As a housewife whose primary occupation is caring for my family, the bakery provides me with additional income. As someone who cares deeply about where food comes from and its quality, my long-term goal is to build a localised organic food exchange network. Running this organic sourdough bakery — providing the local community with high-quality artisan bread and improving the food environment — fits squarely within that goal.
Since my bakery opened, it has kept finding new local customers in ways I never anticipated.
Susan chimed in beside him: ‘I’d like one too! Your bread is absolutely wonderful. I’ve never liked the bread they sell in supermarkets, but I could eat yours every single day.’
So now I bring two loaves every time I visit the farm. At checkout, Susan simply deducts the price of the bread from my bill for meat, eggs, dairy and vegetables. This kind of exchange feels more like a simple, old-fashioned barter, and it fills me with real joy and contentment. It is exactly the kind of fair food exchange I long to build and pursue.
III. “This Food Has Not Been Inspected by Health Authorities”
“This food was prepared in a home kitchen and has not been inspected or examined by health authorities.”
The law requires cottage food operators to print this statement on their packaging, a reflection of a longstanding tug-of-war among the American public between food safety and personal freedom: if we demand absolute food safety, it means food production must become entirely industrialised and assembly-line; if we safeguard freedom while ignoring safety, there will inevitably be those who exploit the gaps.
Placing this statement on a food label is an act of balancing art: with the label in place, both parties enter the transaction informed and willing, a de facto contract is formed between buyer and seller, and there is no need for a regulatory body to intervene in a free exchange between community members. If the idea of food that has not undergone official inspection unsettles you, simply head next door to a fully licensed supermarket or commercial bakery.
The people who grow and prepare food are wage workers at the bottom of a capital chain, earning the minimum wage; the owners of large food factories are speculators bent on cutting costs and maximising profit. More regulation and ever-more “standardised”, assembly-line food production only raise the barriers of entry for small producers. Whether viewed from the perspective of safety or nutrition, the result is inevitably worse food.
A few years ago I came across a domestic news story about a farmer in Chongqing who had been making and selling steamed pork with rice flour at home. The local court ordered her to refund the full purchase price and pay the buyer ten times in compensation. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the majority of readers expressed sympathy for the farmer.
Perhaps more and more people are beginning to realise that our modern food safety concerns are the by-product of urbanisation and technology.
As consumers, we grow ever more distant from the sources of food production and preparation. The rural and small-community ways of life that once sustained humanity have faded from the stage of history. The people who grow our food no longer know the people who eat it; the people who eat it need no longer know who grew it. Distance from our food has not bred admiration — it has bred a cascade of food safety problems.
IV. What Kind of Food Law Do We Need?
If a bakery could not start out as a micro-bakery but were instead required to meet commercial kitchen standards from the very beginning, it would demand an investment of at least tens of thousands of dollars: the kitchen would have to comply with the health department’s requirements for the number of sinks, a large commercial oven would have to be purchased, and if there were a storefront, infrastructure such as restrooms and parking spaces for customers would also need to be provided…
If food law only allowed “proper”, large commercial bakeries to exist, one can easily imagine how difficult it would be for a small, food-loving entrepreneur like her to get started.
Joel Salatin, often hailed as the “father of American organic agriculture”, wrote a book called Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal. As an organic smallholding owner, Salatin is fiercely opposed to the US government interfering in free exchanges among the people.
In the book he asks: ‘If I want to buy a homemade cake from my neighbour, baked in her own kitchen, and I trust her, why can the government say no? It is perfectly legal for me to buy a mass-produced, cheap cake from Walmart, but illegal to buy a fresh cake made from natural ingredients in my neighbour’s kitchen. What sort of world is that?’
America’s cottage food laws embody not only the people’s pursuit of food sovereignty, but a serious civic political stance: do community members have the right to take responsibility for their own choices, for their own health, to accept a degree of risk in exchange for personal rights and freedom — or must they rely on vast public institutions to regulate everything, tax everything, and manage every aspect of life?
All the food in the world was originally a “no brand, no standard, no licence” product. Our obsession with what is “proper” and “regulated” is, in truth, a consequence of technological progress and the relentless degradation of our food environment. We always hope to solve problems with more regulation and more technology, yet we forget that what we often need is simply to step back and rebuild the food exchanges we once had:
Most of people’s food comes from nearby — it is localised; those who grow food and those who eat it know and trust one another;
Food is precious nourishment for the human body, not a weapon of finance and war;
Food is not a tool for a few people to grow rich and build public companies, but a path by which farmers and small-scale producers can earn a life of dignity through honest labour.
A world that offers ordinary people no channel through which to sell homemade food strikes me as an absurdity in the vein of Kafka’s The Trial. We must not wait until food production and preparation can take place only on factory assembly lines before realising it is too late.
Editor: Ze’en