Selling it

Your kitchen, or a licensed space

Updated October 2026

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The three routes The scheduling problem is the real one Cost per jar, not cost per month The co-packer question nobody asks early The route can change as the volume does References

If the product sits outside cottage food, the home kitchen is not an option and the real question is which licensed space, and at what cost per jar.

The three routes

License a space of your own. Highest fixed cost, full control of the calendar, and the only route where the room is available the day the cucumbers arrive.
Rent a shared or commissary kitchen. Low fixed cost, and you are booking time against other people in a season when everyone wants the same weeks.
Use a co-packer. Somebody else makes it to your specification. Lowest operational burden, highest minimum order, and the least control over the thing with your name on it.

The scheduling problem is the real one

Every route except the first collides with the picking window. A shared kitchen is cheap in February and contested in August, and a co-packer runs to their schedule rather than to the day your grower picked. This craft compresses its production into a few weeks, which makes calendar access worth more here than in a business that can make product year round.

Cost per jar, not cost per month

Compare them at the volume you will actually make in the first season, not at the volume you hope for. A commissary at an hourly rate is cheap until the trimming takes longer than planned, and a co-packer minimum that looks reasonable annually can be more jars than you can sell.

The co-packer question nobody asks early

Whose process is it. If they make it to their own filed process you are buying their product with your label on it, and moving elsewhere later means establishing your own anyway. Ask at the start rather than at the point you want to leave.

The route can change as the volume does

Most makers who last do not stay on one of these. A first season in a commissary proves the product and the demand without committing capital, and the move to a licensed space of your own follows once the calendar conflict gets expensive enough to price. Planning that sequence deliberately is cheaper than discovering it, because the equipment you buy for a shared kitchen and the equipment you buy for your own room are not the same list, and buying twice is avoidable.

References

21 CFR 114, Acidified Foods, including the 114.3 definitions and the exclusion list. Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21. law.cornell.edu

Michigan State University Extension. Cottage food law: which preserved products are covered. canr.msu.edu

Written from federal regulation and published extension guidance, not from a laboratory. An acidified food is a federal category with a filed process behind it, and your state enforces it. Anything here is a starting point for a conversation with your state department of agriculture and a process authority, not a determination that you comply.