The Forrager Podcast for Cottage Food Businesses

Updated: 06 May 2025 • 140 episodes
forrager.com

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!

Show episodes

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 influencer Get full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/140

59 min
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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 popularity Get full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/139

58 min
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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 business Get full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/138

59 min
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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 balance Get full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/137

54 min
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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 entrepreneurs Get full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/136

59 min
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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 school Get full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/135

59 min
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