Insurance

What the exposure actually is

Food liability is the exposure people think about and rarely the one that bites. A shelf-stable high-acid product made to a published method is a low-risk thing to sell, and the realistic claims are more mundane: a stall that damages something, a jar broken in transit, a buyer who needs you covered before they will take an order at all.

Small, and not zero. A correctly made high-acid fruit preserve is a safe product, which is exactly why cottage food laws permit it. The exposure is in the batch that was not correctly made: a seal that failed, a product that was below concentration, or a low-acid ingredient that should not have been in there.

What a market or a buyer will ask for

This is usually the reason you end up buying a policy, rather than your own assessment of risk. Markets and wholesale buyers have a figure they require and they will not negotiate it, so it is worth knowing the number before booking a stall rather than the week before.

• Many farmers markets require liability cover as a condition of a stall.
• Wholesale accounts generally require it, with the retailer named.
• Both will ask for a certificate rather than your word.

What reduces it

Several things lower both the real risk and the premium, and they are all things worth doing anyway. Documentation is the one that does the most work: a batch log, a dated note of what your state told you, and a record of the readings you took turn an argument into a file. None of that costs anything and all of it is easier to keep than to reconstruct.

Records. A lot code that points at a batch sheet with the stop reading on it is the difference between recalling one day's production and recalling everything. That is on writing down what the batch read.

References