MN cottage food laws restrict small businesses, limit tasty treats

Two Minnesota women are challenging a series of state regulations on where and how baked goods and other so-called "cottage foods" - food products produced at home and offered for sale. Under the provisions of the law, such foods can only be sold at farmer's markets and events like county fairs, but may not be sold from the home, from a food stand or other business like a local grocery store.

Producers of cottage foods in Minnesota are also not allowed to take orders for online sales.

"If you have a recipe and an oven, you should be able to start a business," said Katelynn McBride, the lead attorney on the case for the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm representing the two women: Jane Astramecki and Mara Heck.

The case is part of a national effort by the law firm to fight what it sees as intrusive governmental regulations on how Americans produce, market, procure and consume food. Similar law suits were launched this week in Oregon and Florida.

In Minnesota, the state Department of Health did not return requests for comment on the lawsuit.

But both plaintiffs know how difficult the cottage food law can be.

Astramecki, who operates Jane Dough Bakery out of her Farmington home while also taking care of six children, is one of the two plaintiffs in the case. She sells cookies, cakes and other baked goods at two local farmer's markets.

When she is asked for special orders by regulars who stop by her booth at the market, she has to tell them "no." Fulfilling one of those orders would break the state law, even though she could bake the exact same cake and sell it to the exact same customer if the transaction took place at the famer's market.

And even those legal sales at farmers markets are limited. The state says an individual cannot make more than $5,000 in sales each year, or else they face fines and penalties, possibly even including jail time.

"Minnesota home bakers ought to be able to sell however many treats they want, from wherever they want to whomever they want," Astramecki said in a statement.

Heck has won ribbons at the Minnesota state fair for her homemade cakes. A resident of Minnetrista, Heck said she would like to turn her talent for baking into a full-time business, but she is unable to do so because of the state's restrictive laws on cottage foods.

The annual limit of $5,000 would amount to less than $100 per week, and that's before expenses and the cost of supplies are taken into consideration, making it impossible for individuals to run a successful cottage foods business in the state, the lawsuit argues.

And enforcement can be brutal.

The Institute for Justice says the state Department of Health has ordered a home bakery in Winona to shut down after pictures of cupcakes were featured in a local business magazine. On another occasion, a home bakery was ordered closed after a nearby upscale bakery filed a complaint with the state Department of Health.

Most states have restrictions on where and how homemade foods can be sold, but Minnesota's laws are among the most restrictive in the nation, and only Wisconsin has a similar dollar limit on sales, according to CottageFoods.org, an online community of cottage food producers across the country.

The restriction was written into Minnesota state law in 2004 when the cottage foods law was adopted. That measure exempted home-produced foods from some state licensing requirements, but it created the odd rule that allows cookies, pickles, fruits and other cottage foods to be sold in certain venues but not in others. The same law established the $5,000 annual limit for gross receipts by sellers of cottage foods.

Efforts to change the law through the legislative process have so far been unsuccessful. A bill introduced in 2013 to raise the sales limit to $50,000 and allow sales from the home failed to make it through the Legislature.