Unpacking Our 5-Question Quiz

In this article, we explain the context behind each question and its possible responses. This is not a replacement to taking our quiz, rather it’s a complimentary resource to validate your quiz result. If after completing both exercises you’re still not certain, you can always schedule a call. We understand that every situation is different! For a complimentary 30-minute call, we ask that you first fill out our Discovery Form here.

1. Are you willing to sell your food product through farmers markets, retail locations within your local region, and/or online?

If your go-to-market plan begins at this level, your product volumes are generally supported by home and rented kitchen facilities. These environments require that you know how to produce your product from start to finish, and may demand that you know it well enough to teach others (if you find you need to hire help). While the specifics vary by state and license class, the ability to sell a product using a Cottage Food license can permit sale in any of these environments — farmers markets, retail locations within your local region, and online.

2. Is your product approved by your state’s Cottage Food Act? In other words, is your product an approved option on your state’s Cottage Food List?

If you don’t yet know if your food product is on your state’s Cottage Food list, conduct a quick search for “cottage food list” followed by the state your business is located in (e.g., cottage food list California). If your product is on this list, and you favor a lean and fast go-to-market launch, you will likely produce in a home or rented kitchen facility. If your product is NOT on this list, you won’t be able to produce it at home, but you could still produce it in a small, rented kitchen facility (as opposed to going straight to a contract manufacturer). Exceptions that may cause you to go straight to a contract manufacturer include: (A) if you have selected a food product that doesn’t start at a benchtop level of development when scaling (e.g., most puffed snacks and cereal and some pastas), or (B) if you’re producing a high-risk food in terms of food safety. To assess level of risk, you will want to seek more than one opinion from a food safety professional with a background in microbiology and quality control — and ideally food manufacturing experience. They can shed light on the types of microorganisms your food will come into contact with, and the effectiveness of kill steps outside manufacturing environments (among other considerations). It may also be of benefit to look into what other like-companies and potential competitors do. Just keep in mind that it’s not uncommon for small companies to conduct their production in a less-than-responsible way, or phrased another way, with a high level of risk to their liability and the safety of their customers.

3. What is the shelf life of your product?

In other words, upon placement in finished, tamper-evident packaging, how long is your food product both safe to eat and representative of ideal taste standards? If you are selling your product into a grocery retail environment, even if hyper local and small, you will need to aim for a minimum 30-day shelf life. You may be able to get away with this amount of time or less if you’re able to self-distribute immediately after production. However, you won’t be able to sustain your business with a shelf life of 30 days or less when you work with b2b food distributors, especially if they cross state lines to fulfill your customer orders. I’ve worked with companies that offered as few as 45-days shelf life, but spoiled products at the store level were a frequent experience — creating negative customer experiences that risked never getting a second chance. Buyers generally want a shelf life of 180 days or more — though this will vary by food product type and retailer. If your product is less than your buyer’s requirements, you will want to hire a food product developer (more specifically with a food science background) before launching with them. Solutions may look like the addition of additives that enhance shelf life (e.g., preservatives or acidifiers), reformulation, and changes in processing, equipment needs, or manufacturing facility. As a result, your product’s packaging has a high risk of experiencing change, as well as your costs, and then there’s the time you will need to submit your products for laboratory testing, and the time to reassess if your results are undesirable.

4. Does your food product have a nutrient or health related claim?

For example, are you claiming each serving contains a certain amount of carbohydrates, added sugar, protein, or fat, and do you plan to market that feature? Are you interested in using words like “high or low in…” or “good source of…”? I wouldn’t recommend doing this yourself. This requires multilayered expertise that can source the pertinent information from the FDA’s Code of Federal Regulations, can vet ingredients for compliance and identify the specifications that matter, as well as perform the correct calculations to apply it in a formulation. I’ve trained food scientists at established food CPG companies on how to do this correctly for protein, added sugar, and dietary fiber claims — as well as corrected their work! This just goes to say, there’s a lot of room for error if you don’t firmly understand what you’re doing.

5. Do you have cooking or baking experience?

For example, do you regularly prepare meals for yourself or others? Are you willing or able to follow a recipe or learn how to? If you have enough familiarity to prepare or cook your own meals, chances are you can take on a bigger portion of this work yourself. From here, you will have to learn the basics of using the correct type of food scale, perform basic mathematics (mostly addition, division, and multiplication), and have an appreciation for keen observations. I believe that anyone who reads this and says, “yeah, that’s me” or “I can do that,” should trust their ability to learn the fundamentals — they’re the same things any expert would have to do if tasked with creating your product. The only time where this is not recommended — even if you can do it — is if you HATE preparing or cooking/baking food (in which case, you may be in the wrong industry), or have selected a food product that doesn’t start at a benchtop level of development when scaling (e.g., most puffed snacks and cereal and some pastas).

If you haven't already —

Just 5 questions can tell you if you need a food product developer. I created this quiz to help food startups cut through the noise. It will tell you whether you need to hire a developer now, if you can tackle this yourself with the right guidance, or if you're somewhere in between — plus next steps and free resources. It takes around 2 minutes to complete — and while it may not be 100% accurate for every situation, I bet it helps you get to your answer faster!

TAKE THE QUIZ

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About the Author

MJ Kinney is a food scientist and the Founder and Lead Product Developer of FareScience. Over the past decade, she has specialized in better-for-you and plant-based product development for commercial settings. Her years of experience span the B2B, B2C, and nonprofit sectors throughout the food industry, and her work continuously seeks synergies between ingredient innovations and applications in scalable, novel products.