To those who sell food out of your own homes, how do you do it?

I do not know how licenses work for food products in the US, but in Europe, we do need a license and health inspections etc.

For selling your baked goods etc, facebook might work. You can also try to collaborate with other local businesses. For selling at coffee shops, they will probably want to buy at wholesale prices. If you can work for those prices, you'll have considerably larger quantities.
If you don't want to sell at wholesale prices, try collaborating with businesses that don't typically sell your kind of products. If you have a newspaper shop, they get a lot of traffic in the early morning, with customers that might need a quick breakfast. Book shops, other small shops. You can try to deliver to offices.

It's common sense that you need a VAT identity to collaborate with / sell to businesses.
But in my opinion, anyone that wants to run any type of business should do it the proper way, otherwise you'd just be working under the table so to speak, and taking away revenue from businesses by competing unfairly. Other business owners pay taxes etc, not doing so gives you a way to work for lower prices, but is undermining your branche.

Well, I just launched a popcorn and snack business and in my state you are allowed to produce under "cottage food" . This is also possible in Seattle, Google cottage food operations, it's on agr.wa.gov website.

There are some restrictions, I started there and some at farmer's markets and just started renting space in a kitchen so I can do full labeling. It required me getting a Serv Safe certification, about $125. And you rent the space and time so it's not too bad, I'm sure there are contract kitchens in your area.

Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions,

I only know our state for sure, but when I was researching this a few years back (so things could have changed), most states did not allow selling things that contained dairy and a few other things (low acid canned foods, for example) unless you had a separate kitchen at your house used only for that stuff and had it regularly inspected.

Hello. I was involved in a food company many years ago. The issue in part has to do with how are you going to maintain cleanliness. That food company used a shared kitchen because they had a setup that made it easier to keep everything separate and they had specialty equipment as well. Which a home wont have unless you have it specially designed.

Also be careful if you are selling gluten free because this adds to the need for a special setup.

I believe also that you might need to get food safety training.

You might be able to do what you want with a cottage food permit:

https://agr.wa.gov/cottagefood

Or look at a shared commercial kitchen arrangement such as this one, where as little as $500/mo can get you access to a commercial kitchen: https://www.seattlecommissary.com/copy-of-membership-rates

The laws on this vary between states and even counties in some states. In our state and county you can sell baked goods that don’t need to be refrigerated out of your house in your “normal” kitchen. If you want to sell baked good that need refrigeration you have to have a license which is easy to get. Most states have cottage food laws which you could look into. Selling at farmers’ markets are a great way to get started and build clients.

Here in my state you must have your kitchen inspected by the health inspector. I own a coffee shop and promote local goods. The health inspector looks wants proof that our suppliers are cooking in a clean kitchen.

There are people who sell on IG only (check out the YT series Instachef) or FB local foodie groups. I don’t know how they deal with licensing, etc.

Ok