10/27/2026
Taking a moment to shift gears away from jam fun to a more serious topic.
I am pushing hard for Cottage Food Law reform in Washington State. If you have the will and the energy, please reach out to your representatives about this hyper local issue. You can help out your crazy jam lady friend and all of the other cottage food bakers who bring amazing products to our markets.
This article spells out the problems with our Cottage Food Law the way it is currently structured. You’ll get some insight into how I got started, as well.
Feel free to share with your networks to spread the word on this effort, if you’re so inclined.
Thank you for all of your support.
You Shouldn’t Need the State’s Permission to Sell Jam
Casi Myers makes jam in her own kitchen, from fruit she picks and forages on her husband’s family farm or buys from local growers, and sells it to people who freely choose to buy it. No one is coerced. No one is harmed. Every jar is a voluntary exchange between consenting adults.
In Washington, that simple act requires a government permit, a home inspection, and the state’s approval of every recipe and every label. Even then, the state still dictates how much she may earn, whom she may sell to, and how much sugar goes in the jar.
Casi started making jam in 2020 because her kids were going through a jar a week. Today she sells more than 70 varieties at farmers markets. Store owners and café managers ask to carry it so often that she has lost count. She turns every one of them down, because Chapter 69.22 RCW says she must.
Under that law, a cottage food producer may sell only face to face. She can’t sell to grocery stores, coffee shops or restaurants, and she can’t ship a jar, not even across town. Her gross sales are capped at $35,000 a year. Earn a dollar more and the state orders her to stop or move into a licensed commercial facility, a cost no micro-business can carry. In other words, the government has decided in advance how successful a small business is allowed to become.
And $35,000 is gross sales, not income. Out of it come fruit, sugar, jars, lids, labels, market fees, permits and mileage. California’s legislative analysts estimated that cottage producers typically keep about 30 percent of revenue in a good year, and many keep far less. At a 10 percent margin, a Washington producer who hits the cap takes home $3,500 for a year’s work. Even at 30 percent, it’s $10,500. That isn’t a living. It’s a hobby the state won’t let grow up.
The results are what you’d expect. When markets close in September, Casi’s sales stop. Store shelves would let her reach customers year-round. “I might actually turn a profit if I could sell in stores,” she told me. The law doesn’t protect her customers. It keeps her small.
Getting permission is its own lesson in bureaucracy. Casi spent two months assembling her application, then waited eight to ten more weeks for approval. The state rejected her pepper jams outright. She later learned from another vendor that pepper powder would pass, and paid $105 to resubmit. Customers ask her for low-sugar jam, which can be made safely with specially formulated pectin and recipes tested by Ball, Sure-Jell and university extension programs. But the statute defines jam by a federal standard frozen as it stood in 2011, so she must add more sugar than those tested recipes call for. Officials in Olympia, not the cook or her customers, decide what goes in the jar.
The law even requires that every cottage producer open her private home to state inspectors. A family’s home is not a government facility, and the price of selling cookies shouldn’t be giving up your privacy.
What is all this protecting us from? Not illness. These are shelf-stable foods: jams, breads, cookies, candy. The Institute for Justice filed public records requests with the states and found not one confirmed foodborne illness from food sold under any state’s cottage food law. Casi says a Department of Agriculture staff member told her the agency hasn’t received any safety complaints against licensed cottage producers. The Institute for Justice grades Washington’s law a D overall, and an F for regulatory burden.
If not safety, then what? In 2023 the Legislature considered raising the cap to $50,000 and indexing it to inflation. The Senate Agriculture Committee cut it to $35,000. According to the Inlander’s coverage, an unnamed state senator said he wanted the cap kept low partly to limit any unfair advantage home producers might have over traditional businesses.
That says it plainly. The cap isn’t about protecting consumers. It’s about protecting competitors. This is cronyism: using the force of law to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. When a home cook sells good jam at a fair price, that isn’t an unfair advantage. It’s competition, and consumers are the ones who win.
Even California makes the case. Hardly a free-market paradise, it raised its caps in 2021 to $75,000 for direct sellers and $150,000 for producers who also sell through stores and restaurants, with both indexed to inflation every year. It allowed mail and delivery statewide, and it lets direct sellers self-certify, with inspections only after a complaint. That bill passed 76–0 and 39–0, with no registered opposition and a negligible fiscal cost. Oregon raised its cap to $50,000 and allowed shipping in 2023, and Texas went to $150,000 in 2025. Wyoming goes furthest: its food freedom law lets people make and sell almost anything they please from their home kitchens.
Some in Olympia say reform would cost too much. Freedom is cheap. Repealing a rule costs less than enforcing it.
Rep. Engell is drafting a bill for the coming session, and lawmakers should go as far as they can:
abolish the sales cap outright, or at minimum raise it dramatically and index it to inflation
let producers sell to any store, café or restaurant willing to buy
allow shipping and delivery
trust safety-tested recipes
replace the permission-slip system with simple self-certification and honest labeling
The home-kitchen label Washington already requires tells buyers everything they need to make their own choice.
The principle is simple. Your labor is yours. Your kitchen is yours. What you make, and whom you sell it to, should be a matter between you and your customer, not you, your customer and the state. Washington trusts Casi to feed her own children. It should trust adults to decide for themselves whether to buy her jam.
