Cautions on Selling Candy, Cookies, and Alcohol in Your Craft Business

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Around Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Christmas, I see craft businesses selling baskets or product bundles that include candy, cookies, and alcohol. If you remember, I love product bundles (see my article How to Make More Money Selling Personalized Christmas Elves from Christmas) as a way to make your products stand out and increase your cart totals – but crafters have to be careful what is bundled together.

While we are talking food and drinks, I’ve also seen many Silhouette and Cricut users making stencils with their machines and using them to decorate homemade cookies and pies.

Let’s take a look at some cautions related to selling candy, cookies, and alcohol in your craft business.

Cautions on Selling Candy, Cookies, and Alcohol in Your Craft Business

Selling Candy in Your Craft Business

In most cases, there are no problems with including candy to create bundles in your home business. Be sure that your candy meets the requirements below.

• The candy you sell packaged with your products should be store bought.
• The expiration/best by date should be current, not expired, and the expiration date should be clearly visible.
• The candy should be sold sealed in the manufacturer package.
• I’d opt for candy where the packaging isn’t easily altered. For example, let’s look at foil wrapped chocolates like Hershey’s Kisses. It’s easy to upwrap the candy, tamper with it, and rewrap it. If you want to include something like this, leave it sealed in the manufacturer bag to increase customer confidence.
• You should offer your products without the candy option. Put simply, the world is a crazy place. Some consumers are more cautious than others and won’t buy candy from a home business. (Myself included.) You could be missing sales if you don’t offer a consumable free option.

Selling Alcohol in Your Craft Business

• Your product bundles should not include alcohol for sale, unless you have a permit from your state/county/city.
• Selling alcohol without a permit has steep legal ramifications in all states.
• If your product bundle is related to alcohol, here’s a few options:
  • Use alcohol in your photos but clearly note in your item description that the alcohol is not included with the product purchase.
  • Offer your bundle with non alcoholic beer or wine or sparkling cider.
  • Include a gift card to a local liquor store with your product.

Selling Homemade Food in Your Craft Business

If you’d like to use your Silhouette or Cricut to decorate homemade cookies (or other foods), you need to do some homework about requirements in your state, county, and city. The best website around the web for this is Forrager.

On the Forrager website, click on the state where you live and will be selling your homemade goods. 

Forrager will then give you details about what’s allowed, not allowed, and where to get more information. Here’s an example of my home state, Florida. 

Tell me: Do you sell candy, food, or alcohol in your craft business?