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Selling food

What Michigan allows, and what that means here.

Food is sold by you, not by us

Every kind of food on WhimSale is bought from the person who made or grew it. We cannot take the payment for any of it, so your listing carries your own payment link and the buyer pays you directly.

That also means there is no basket on a food listing and we take no percentage of it.

The reasons differ by what you sell. Michigan requires cottage food to be sold direct. A producer who sells eggs over the internet loses their exemption entirely. Honey and maple syrup are exempt only where the shop is run by the producer, which is not us. Nobody has told us we may take payment for produce. Four roads, one place to arrive.

What you have to give us first

Somewhere for buyers to pay you. Every food listing needs one before it can go on sale.

If you sell cottage food, a way for buyers to meet you before they buy as well. Michigan requires an internet cottage food sale to offer the buyer a chance to interact with you first, and it has to be a meeting they can see and hear you in, so a phone number or a text thread is not enough. They do not have to take it; it has to be offered.

If either goes missing later, your listing stops being buyable. We tell you, and if it stays that way for seven days we take it off sale rather than leave a dead listing up.

The rules that are not ours

Every food listing needs a photograph of its real label before it can go on sale. A buyer with an allergy reads it.

Cottage food may only be sold or delivered within Michigan, and cannot be left out for unattended pickup. Honey and maple cannot be left out either, which is our own caution rather than a rule we were given.

Eggs can be advertised here and never bought here. Michigan does not stop you advertising, but selling eggs over the internet would cost you the exemption, so the buy path stays shut on them.

Produce has to be whole and uncut. You tell us it is, before it goes up.

Getting it right is yours

We are not a food business. We do not make, handle, store, carry or inspect anything you list, we hold no food license, and we do not check that you qualify for the exemption you are relying on.

What we do is build the listing around the rules we do know, which is why we will not take payment for food, why we ask for a label, and why some options are switched off on some items. That is not the same as us having checked your operation, and you should not read it that way.

Things only you can know are yours: how many hens you keep, what your yearly sales come to, whether your kitchen and your process meet the standard. If you are not sure whether what you make qualifies, ask MDARD before you list it rather than after. They answer, and they answer quickly.

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