Is It Illegal To Get Cost Reimb????
Business By cakemama2010 Updated 8 Sep 2010 , 3:48am by BarbieAnnPlaysWithHerFOOD
Late to the conversation, but this caught my eye. In Kansas processing and making are two different things. I cannot with the license I have, make my fruit butters sealed in jars for sale unless I have an additional processing license.
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I guess I've never said I was going to go into the kitchen and process a batch of sugar cookies, but I have said I need to process a batch of apple butter...
Perhaps it would have been better if I clarified that in this context, "process" means "make". I didn't write the law, and I'm definitely not a lawyer, so I don't know why they chose that word. I do know that the words "process" or "home processor" appear in several different states' cottage food laws, so it's not out of the ordinary to see it in this context. However, I agree with you, I don't refer to baking as processing. "I think I'll go process a cake" isn't something that's ever come out of my mouth. 
kellym---it's what keeps all these attorneys in business! Ahhh.. for the simpler days! 
I live in Florida as well. IT IS NOT ILLEGAL TO BE REIMBURSED FOR INGREDIENTS as long as you can provide a reciept for all goods purchased and do not mark up prices on anything. This is per State code from the Department of Agriculture.
That seems odd...does that law specifically apply to home baking? Can you link to the relevant section of the FL State code?
I called and spoke with Sandra in the Florida Department of Agriculture. You're welcome to call and ask her for the logic in the legal code. I'm only repeating what I was told was safe and legal by those in enforce it.
Just a piece of advice...I'd get this in writing to be sure that you have a leg to stand on. If it isn't written in the food code or the business laws for the state or wherever it would be, taking the word of an employee is kind of risky. You can call the VA dept of agriculture three times and get three different answers to thing depending on who answers the phone, so watch out.
I therefore propose an idea to loophole the law. A loophole is what attorney's and politicians do to commit illegal acts. If you give a cake away to someone that you have made it is completely legal is that correct ? If so then you are not in the cake or baking business, even if you do this from home. I therefore suggest that when you bake you give it to someone else at no cost. The transaction is therefore complete. Now if that person decides to sell the cake to someone else and the person selling the cake has not prepared it for sale then that person is simply selling the cake and that is all. the chain is therefore broken on baking for profit or sale. This would be a legitimate way to get around this issue and I promise you it is being done all the time. You have to consider these issues with the end in mind. How many cases have been brought to prosecution for selling a cake from a home in Florida. (Case law research here) So if one person bakes and takes the cake to another location and that person is the subject of a "cake sting", can you imagine funds being allocated for that ? Where is the evidence that person baked the cake for sale ? There is none. That person simply had a cake and sold it. If you went to publix, bought a prepackaged cake, reboxed it and labeled it would you be guilty of baking for profit ? I am not an attorney nor am I giving any legal advice.
If you give a cake away to someone that you have made it is completely legal is that correct ? If so then you are not in the cake or baking business, even if you do this from home. I therefore suggest that when you bake you give it to someone else at no cost. The transaction is therefore complete. Now if that person decides to sell the cake to someone else and the person selling the cake has not prepared it for sale then that person is simply selling the cake and that is all. the chain is therefore broken on baking for profit or sale. This would be a legitimate way to get around this issue and I promise you it is being done all the time.
Let's say person A gives a cake to person B for free and person B sells it to person C for $100. Person C gets a cake, person B gets $100, and person A gets $0. How is this a better deal for person A?
You have to consider these issues with the end in mind. How many cases have been brought to prosecution for selling a cake from a home in Florida.
People aren't "prosecuted" for violating these statutes, but they are shut down and can be fined by the health department as well as the IRS if they owe back taxes. They are also unable to get business liability insurance without a licensed business, which can be far more damaging in the case of an adverse event.
So if one person bakes and takes the cake to another location and that person is the subject of a "cake sting", can you imagine funds being allocated for that ? Where is the evidence that person baked the cake for sale ? There is none.
But there is a money trail back to the original baker, otherwise there's no motive to participate in this scheme.
If you went to publix, bought a prepackaged cake, reboxed it and labeled it would you be guilty of baking for profit ?
That would probably be classified as either a value-added reseller or a catering business, both of which typically require licensing. And the fact that you "processed" the cake by repackaging it means that you are still exposing yourself to liability since you are part of the cake's chain of custody in a commercial transaction.
so i have a dumb question. (maybe )... I live in Wa. state.
I made a cake recently for a friend.. i was baking, and ran out of cake flour at 10:30 at night - she lives right down the road and brought me some cake flour so i could finish her cake.
( i bake at night often, when the kids are in bed.. and stores are closed late at night where i live anyhow )
next day , she got the cake from me and i got $0.
because i accepted a half empty box of cake flour from her , to finish her cake, is this concidered illegal in Wa. state?
Heres another one... I made a rather elaborate cake for a friend's party and got $0.
a few weeks later she gave me a card that said "thanks for the cake, it was very special and made my whole day..and everyone loved it at her party", and gave me a gift card for a cake decorating site for 25.00 as a thank you. that way i could buy some supplies to further fund my "art"... (and replenish some luster dusts that got used up for her cake. )
is THIS illegal? these are in fact friends & aquaintances... but still ,i have had to turn people down because the cake they want is too costly for me to make for them and I am not "supossed " to asked / accept $ for them. then they ask if they can compensate me in some other way and I am always kinda worried... like, should i? or shouldnt i? it brings me back to many memories I have had at luncheons or get togethers, or parties or potlucks ...where a person that was suppossed to bring a dish was too busy to cook or just had no cooking skills, brought me a sack from the grocery store and i would make the dish with those grocery items while they set up the balloons or streamers at the venue -then come pick up the finished dish.... then the guests would arrive for the event and it was never anything anyone thought about as far as breaking any laws...i think it is sad if our kindness of donating our time and our gift of artistic ability isnt enough -we have for fork out the materials cost as well even though the person wanting the end product is finacially able to compensate for ingrediants and supplies cost-just unable to make the cake themselves for whatever reason. Is it that much different than an elderly woman , that i barely know, buying a can of paint with her own money and then me painting her living room for free labor because she physically is unable to ? yet cannot afford to hire a pro painter?, only the cost of the actual can of paint..?
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