Cookie Income Report: One Month at 3 Farmers Markets

If you sell cookies at one farmers market, the next question is usually whether a second and a third would pay. This income report follows one month of doing exactly that. It covers three real markets near Detroit, each with its own fee rules and each with a different crowd, and it tracks every cookie, every fee and every hour.

You will see what each market cost to get into, how many cookies went home unsold, what the card reader took, and which market paid best for the time. If you want the bigger picture across a full year first, our breakdown of how much farmers market vendors make runs the USDA numbers by market day and by season.

One thing up front: the baker in this report is a model, not a real person's ledger. The prices, fees and market rules are real and dated. The cookie counts and hours are our assumptions, so swap in your own.

How Much Did a Month of Selling Cookies at Three Farmers Markets Make?

In this model, one month of cookies at three farmers markets brought in $2,310 in sales and left $1,281.65 after every cash cost. That is about 55 cents kept from each dollar of sales. Across 93.4 hours, it pays $13.72 an hour before taxes.

Here is the whole month in one table, market by market.

Scroll sideways to see hours and pay per hour.

Model built for this post on October 14, 2026. Every price and fee was loaded that day. Cookie counts, how many sold and the hours are our assumptions. "Kept" is before income tax and self-employment tax.

Three things stand out before the details:

• The busiest market was also the best paid hour. Birmingham had the highest booth fee and the longest drive, and it still kept $16.96 an hour.
• A $15 booth can still pay the least. Westland's Thursday booth cost $15 a day, the same as Ypsilanti's, yet it paid $11.55 an hour, because 26 of the 80 cookies brought each week went home.
• Pre-orders were the only sales with no leftovers. The 14 dozen ordered ahead for pickup at the booth brought in $336, and none of those cookies went to waste.

Who Is This Cookie Baker, and Is She a Real Person?

No, she is a model built for this post, and we say so because a made-up diary would be worse than useless to you. We built one realistic home baker in Westland, Michigan, who sells under Michigan's cottage food law. Then we put her at three markets whose 2026 rules we could read and quote, for eight market days in September 2026.

Here is what is real and what we assumed:

• Real and dated: every booth fee and market rule, every ingredient and packaging price, every card and platform fee, the insurance price, the IRS mileage rate and the driving distances.
• Real catalog data: her single-cookie and dozen prices are the middle prices home bakers list on Homegrown, and her half-dozen price sits inside the catalog's usual range, from a catalog pull on October 14, 2026.
• Assumed: how many cookies she brings, how many sell, how many dozens customers pre-order, and how long each job takes.
• Left out: her tent, table and cooler (bought before this month), her phone, her oven's electricity, and her own unpaid time.

The point of the model is the method. Every line can be swapped for your own number, and the last section shows how.

Which Three Markets Did She Sell At, and What Did Each Charge?

She sold at the Westland Farmers & Artisan Market on Thursdays, the Ypsilanti Farmers Market on Saturdays and the Birmingham Farmers Market on Sundays. Their booth fees ran from $15 to $40 a day, and each one asked for something different beyond the fee.

Swipe left to see each market's other rules.

Read on each market's 2026 vendor document on October 14, 2026: the Westland 2026 Vendor Application, the Ypsilanti Farmers Markets 2026 policies and the Birmingham Farmers Market Rules and Regulations (revised January 29, 2026).

Westland and Ypsilanti name cottage food vendors in their 2026 documents, and Birmingham lists baked goods among the items it sells; each market approves its own vendors, and Westland takes three of each type of vendor. Michigan's agriculture department says you can sell up to $50,000 a year of cottage foods, cookies included, with no license, registration or inspection, and every label must say "Made in a home kitchen not inspected by the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development." The same one-pager lets a cottage food baker take orders online only for sale or delivery within Michigan, and only if she gives the buyer a chance to talk with her before the sale; the pre-orders in this model come from customers she met at her booth. The full label list and the rest of the rules are in our guide to Michigan's cottage food law.

Rules differ by state and by market, and they change. Verify your state's current rules and read your own market's vendor packet before your first sale.

What Did the September Calendar Look Like?

Her September 2026 had eight market days: every Thursday in Westland plus one weekend market each week, Ypsilanti and Birmingham taking turns. Pre-order pickups at the booth grew from none in the first week to four dozen on the last Sunday.

• Week 1: Thursday, September 3, and Saturday, September 5. Westland sold $141 of walk-up cookies. Ypsilanti sold $282. No pre-orders yet, because nobody had her order link.
• Week 2: Thursday, September 10, and Sunday, September 13. Westland sold $141 plus one pre-ordered dozen ($24), for $165. Birmingham sold $423 plus two pre-ordered dozens, for $471.
• Week 3: Thursday, September 17, and Saturday, September 19. Westland's fall festival night sold $141 plus two pre-ordered dozens, for $189. Ypsilanti sold $282 plus two dozens, for $330.
• Week 4: Thursday, September 24, and Sunday, September 27. Westland sold $141 plus three dozens, for $213. Birmingham sold $423 plus four dozens, for $519, the best day of the month.

The walk-up sales stay flat on purpose. We did not want the model to assume a market grows in one month. The only thing that grows is the pre-order line, because customers who met her at the booth scanned her code and ordered next week's dozen ahead.

How Did She Price Her Cookies?

She charged $3 a cookie and $24 for a dozen, the middle prices home bakers list on Homegrown, and $15 for a half dozen, inside the catalog's usual range but below its middle of about $18. Pricing to the catalog keeps the model honest, because a made-up price can make any month look good, and the low half-dozen price keeps this month on the cautious side.

Her menu was the same at all three markets:

• Single cookie, bagged and labeled: $3, the impulse buy for someone walking past.
• Half dozen in a window box: $15, the "one for the car, five for home" size.
• Dozen in a window box: $24, the size people pre-order for a party or the office.

Our cookie selling guide counted 43 bakers selling by the dozen at a typical $22 on September 30, against 39 here; the guide's count kept pizzelle, this one leaves out pizzelle, minis and custom decorated cookies, and the two were pulled two weeks apart, so treat $22 to $24 as the going rate. A dozen at $24 works out to $2 a cookie, a third less per cookie than a single at $3. That gap is why the dozen box matters at a booth: it turns one $3 impulse buy into one $24 sale.

What Did a Batch of Chocolate Chip Cookies Cost?

One batch of King Arthur Baking's classic chocolate chip cookie recipe cost $6.29 at Walmart.com prices on October 14, 2026. She portions it into 16 cookies of about 2 1/2 ounces, so each cookie costs about 39 cents in ingredients.

Slide the table left to see the cost of each ingredient.

Recipe from King Arthur Baking's Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies page (36 small cookies as written); prices from Walmart.com search results, all loaded October 14, 2026. Each row is rounded to the cent, so the rows add to $6.28; the unrounded batch is $6.286, or $0.393 a cookie.

The chocolate chips are half the batch: $3.12 of $6.29. The vanilla is next, at 81 cents, more than the butter. If you are looking for the line that moves your cost, it is the mix-ins, not the flour.

Across the month she baked 1,196 cookies, about 75 batches, for $469.87 in ingredients. The model costs every cookie at the chocolate chip price, which is the high end of a typical menu, so a snickerdoodle-heavy table would cost a little less. To build this number for your own recipes, the cost per dozen cookies breakdown walks through it line by line.

How Much Did Bags, Boxes and Labels Add?

Packaging added $93.74 for the month, about 4% of sales. Westland's application requires every cottage food product to be pre-packaged and fully labeled before the market opens, so nothing could sit loose on a tray.

Here is what each format cost her, using prices loaded October 14, 2026:

• Single cookie, about 13 cents: a 5 x 7 inch self-sealing cookie bag ($10.99 for 200 on Walmart.com) plus a 2 x 4 inch Avery label ($7.97 for 100).
• Half dozen, about 41 cents: an 8 x 8 x 2 1/2 inch kraft window bakery box from WebstaurantStore ($65.49 for 200, 33 cents each) plus a label.
• Dozen, about 57 cents: a 10 x 10 x 2 1/2 inch kraft window bakery box ($98.49 for 200, 49 cents each) plus a label. A buyer of the white 10-inch version wrote in WebstaurantStore's reviews that it fits 1 to 1 1/2 dozen sugar cookies of 3 1/2 to 4 inches.

Packaging is small next to ingredients, but it is the part people forget. A single cookie's bag and label cost about a third as much as the cookie inside it.

How Many Cookies Went Home Unsold?

244 of the 1,196 cookies she baked went home unsold, about one in five. Their ingredients and packaging cost $114.27, and in this model every one of them counts as a loss.

The leftovers were not spread evenly:

• Westland: 26 of 80 cookies went home every Thursday, about a third. A weeknight market sells to people on their way home, and in this model fewer of them stop.
• Ypsilanti: 32 of the 144 cookies brought for sale went home each Saturday, about 22%. Two more cookies were cut into bite-size samples, which Ypsilanti's 2026 policies allow without extra licensing. Birmingham requires a sampling permit, so the model gives no samples there.
• Birmingham: 38 of 208 cookies went home each Sunday, about 18%.

What Did Card Fees Take at the Booth and Online?

Card fees took $117.77 for the month: $103.82 on Square for walk-up sales and $13.95 on Homegrown for the 14 pre-ordered dozens. The model rings every walk-up sale on a card, one cookie, bag or box at a time, so this is the high end; cash sales would cost less.

On Square's free plan, Tap to Pay on her phone costs 2.6% + 15 cents per in-person sale. Small sales pay a bigger share because of the fixed 15 cents. Here is the Square fee on each size she sells:

• $3 single cookie: about 23 cents, 7.6% of the sale.
• $15 half dozen: 54 cents, 3.6% of the sale.
• $24 dozen: about 77 cents, 3.2% of the sale.

Pre-orders run through an online checkout instead, and every online option has its own fee stack. Here is what a $24 pre-ordered dozen costs on each, with every fee shown.

Scroll sideways to see every option's full fee stack.

Checked on Homegrown's signup page, Square's pricing page and Hotplate's pricing page on October 14, 2026. Hotplate's pricing page says you can pay its fee yourself or pass it to customers, "your choice"; its post "What Hotplate does" says it charges the fee to your customer and that 80% of its chefs keep that default. Card processing is figured on the $24 price.

At 50 pre-orders a month, Square's free online store costs the baker a few dollars less than Homegrown, and Hotplate's default costs her less again while her customer pays $1.75 more per dozen. The booth reader is the cheapest of all. Apart from Hotplate with the baker covering its fee, these options run from $38.70 to $59.80 a month at 50 orders with Homegrown billed annually, a gap of about $21, or up to $62.30, a gap of about $24, if you pay Homegrown monthly; the bigger money is in the leftovers above.

Which Market Paid Best Per Hour?

Birmingham paid best per hour at $16.96, ahead of Ypsilanti at $15.43, and Westland paid least at $11.55. Here is every line, market by market.

Swipe sideways to see all three markets side by side.

Model built October 14, 2026. Market-day hours include setup, selling, teardown and the drive. Kitchen hours count 24 minutes per batch of 16 cookies, 30 seconds to bag and label a single and 2 minutes per box. The $10 Homegrown plan and 4 hours of weekly admin sit outside the three columns.

A long Birmingham day runs about 8 hours and 41 minutes from leaving home to getting back: arrive at 7:30, sell from 9 to 2, take down after 2 because the rules forbid it sooner, and drive 43 minutes each way. A Westland Thursday is about 5 hours and 50 minutes. Birmingham still wins, for three reasons:

• It sells more per hour at the table. About 34 cookies an hour across its five selling hours, against 13.5 an hour across Westland's four (170 cookies a day against 54), so the fixed costs of showing up are spread thin.
• It wastes less. 18% of Birmingham's cookies went home, against about a third at Westland.
• Its customers buy bigger. Five walk-up dozens a day at Birmingham against one at Westland, and a dozen carries the lowest card fee per cookie.

The booth fee was not the deciding cost at any of the three. Westland and Ypsilanti both paid $15 a day for a booth, and Ypsilanti still kept $3.88 more an hour. Birmingham paid the most for its booth and kept the most per hour. What separated the three markets was how much sold, not what the booth cost. If you want to find the sales level where a booth starts paying, the break-even guide for a farmers market booth shows the math.

What Did Driving and Insurance Add?

Driving added $141.05 and insurance added $25.92, together about 7% of sales. Both are easy to leave out, and both were real money in this month.

Driving. We priced every mile at the IRS business mileage rate of 76 cents a mile for the second half of 2026, which covers gas, wear and the car's other running costs, not just fuel. Distances come from OpenStreetMap driving routes: 15.1 miles each way from the Westland market to Ypsilanti and 25.3 miles each way to Birmingham. We measured from the Westland market because the model puts her home about 3 miles from it, which is also why each Westland Thursday counts a 6-mile round trip. The two Birmingham Sundays alone cost $76.91 in driving, almost as much as their $80 in booth fees. Our mileage deduction guide covers how to log those miles for your taxes.

Insurance. Birmingham requires every vendor to carry liability insurance of $1,000,000 per occurrence and to name the market as an additional insured. Ypsilanti's 2026 policies require all vendors to carry liability insurance too, without naming an amount. Westland only encourages it. The model buys FLIP's food vendor policy on its monthly option, $25.92, which lists free, unlimited additional insureds, and splits it between the two markets that require it; the annual option starts at $299 a year. One policy covers all three markets once you have it. Compare providers in our farmers market vendor insurance guide.

Do You Charge Michigan Sales Tax on Cookies?

Usually not: in Michigan, a cookie sold without a napkin or other eating utensil is not taxed as prepared food. Michigan Treasury's Revenue Administrative Bulletin 2026-2 says baked goods, cookies included, fall outside prepared food when they are sold without eating utensils, and it lists napkins as an eating utensil.

That is why the model collects no sales tax. Birmingham still asks every vendor for a copy of a Michigan sales tax license, and Ypsilanti asks for a copy of your sales tax ID, so this baker holds one; we did not count a fee for it.

If you sell outside Michigan, our plain-language guide to sales tax at farmers markets covers how other states handle food sales.

How Much Should She Set Aside for Taxes?

She should set aside about $196, 15.3% of the $1,281.65 she kept, for self-employment tax, and plan for income tax on top. The IRS says the self-employment tax rate is 15.3%, and you file Schedule SE once your net earnings from self-employment reach $400 for the year.

The tax itself comes in a little lower than the set-aside. Schedule SE taxes 92.35% of your profit, so the self-employment tax on this month works out to about $181.09 ($1,281.65 x 0.9235 x 0.153). After that, the month leaves about $1,100.56, or $11.78 an hour.

Three things change this for a real baker:

• Mileage is already in this estimate. The $1,281.65 already subtracts the $141.05 of driving at 76 cents a mile, so the tax figure above already reflects it. A real baker only gets that deduction with a mileage log, so keep one.
• Income tax depends on the rest of your household. A part-time baker with a day job pays income tax on her cookie profit at her own rate. Ask a tax preparer what to hold back.
• The set-aside is monthly, the tax is yearly. Schedule SE uses your whole year's profit, so a slow winter month and a busy September land on the same form.

Bake Next Week's Dozens to Order Before You Load the Car

The 14 pre-ordered dozens were the only part of the month with no leftovers at all, and Homegrown is built for exactly that: customers order and pay ahead, then pick up at your booth. It costs $10 a month billed annually, with no percentage fees beyond standard payment processing of 2.9% + $0.30 per order.

Here is how it fits the three-market week in this report:

• One storefront, three pickup spots. You add each market from Homegrown's built-in market list, set its pickup day and time window, and customers choose Thursday in Westland or Sunday in Birmingham at checkout.
• A lead time you control. Set how far ahead orders must come in, so Wednesday night you know exactly how many dozens to bake for Thursday.
• A printable QR code for your booth sign, so the walk-up customer who loved a $3 cookie can order a dozen for next week before she leaves.
• Your customer list stays yours, with names, emails and order history.

How it compares: Square's free plan costs $0 a month and includes a basic online store at 3.3% + 30 cents per online order, which is a good fit if you already ring up the booth on Square and only take a few pre-orders. Hotplate charges no subscription, adds 5% + 55 cents to your customer's checkout by default and charges you 2.9% + $0.30 card processing, which suits bakers who run timed drops. Homegrown is the better fit when you want one weekly menu with pickup at several markets and a clean $24.00 checkout for your customer.

What Homegrown does not do: it has no card reader, so you still need Square or cash at the booth. Customers create a Homegrown account to place their first order. There is no drops or countdown release feature. Payouts go to your bank by next-day ACH, but 20% of each order is held for 30 days and then released automatically, so a big pre-order week shows up in your bank in two parts. Your storefront appears on the Homegrown marketplace, but plan on most orders coming from the customers you send to your own link.

If your leftovers look like Westland's, set up your pre-order storefront and put the QR code on your table this week. Customers order the dozen ahead, and you bake to the order count instead of a guess.

What Would Change This Month's Number the Most?

Doubling the pre-orders would add the most, $248.04, and dropping the weakest market would cost the most, $406.56, though it would raise her hourly pay. Here is each change run through the same model, one at a time.

Move the table sideways to see what each change keeps.

Each row changes one thing and holds everything else at the September model. Prices and fees as loaded October 14, 2026.

The table says what the earlier sections hinted. Pre-orders move the number most because a pre-ordered dozen keeps about $17.72 after ingredients, a box, a label and the card fee, and none of it gets wasted. Dropping Westland loses money but buys back 35.2 hours, and whether that trade is worth it depends on what else you would do with a Thursday.

How Do You Run Your Own One-Month Market Test?

Run your own test by writing down six numbers for every market day for four weeks, then putting them in a table like the one above. It takes about ten minutes after each market.

• Write down what you brought. Count singles, half dozens and dozens before you leave home, not from memory afterward.
• Write down what came home. The difference is what sold. Do this before the leftovers get eaten or given away.
• Pull your card total and count your cash. Square's daily report gives the card side and its fees; cash has no fee.
• Add the market's real costs. Booth fee, your share of any insurance the market requires, and round-trip miles at 76 cents.
• Log your hours both ways. Kitchen hours for that market's bake, plus the market day from leaving home to getting back.
• Divide what you kept by the hours, per market. After four weeks, the market with the lowest number is the one to fix or drop.

If one market keeps coming in last, try fixing it before you quit it. Bring less, move pre-order pickups there, or lead with your best-selling flavor. Our guide to getting more pre-orders from farmers market customers covers how to turn booth traffic into next week's orders.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much can you make selling cookies at a farmers market in a month?

In this income report model, one home baker selling cookies at three Michigan farmers markets over eight market days made $2,310 in sales and kept $1,281.65 after ingredients, packaging, card fees, booth fees, insurance, driving and the $10 Homegrown plan. That was $13.72 an hour before taxes. A single weekly market would come in lower; the Thursday market alone kept $406.56 in four weeks.

Is it worth selling cookies at more than one farmers market?

It can be, but each market has to earn its hours on its own. In the model, the two weekend markets paid $15.43 and $16.96 an hour while the weeknight market paid $11.55, mostly because a third of its cookies went home. Track kept-per-hour for each market for a month before deciding.

How many cookies should you bring to a farmers market?

Bring roughly what sold last time plus a small cushion, and adjust weekly. In this model, the Sunday market sold 170 of 208 cookies and the Thursday market sold 54 of 80, and cutting Thursday's load to what sold added $44.86 to the month. Pre-orders tell you part of the count before you bake.

What does a chocolate chip cookie cost to make for selling?

About 39 cents in ingredients for a 2 1/2 ounce cookie, using King Arthur Baking's classic recipe and Walmart.com prices on October 14, 2026. A batch costs $6.29 and makes 16 cookies at that size. The chocolate chips are about half that cost, and a bag and label add about 13 cents more per single cookie.

Do cookie vendors pay sales tax on cookies in Michigan?

Usually not, if the cookies are sold without eating utensils. Michigan Treasury's Revenue Administrative Bulletin 2026-2 says baked goods, including cookies, are excluded from prepared food when sold without utensils, and it counts napkins as utensils. Some markets, like Birmingham and Ypsilanti, still ask for your sales tax license or ID, so check each market's rules.

Do you need insurance to sell cookies at a farmers market?

Some markets require it and some do not. In this cookie income report, the Birmingham Farmers Market required $1,000,000 in liability insurance, Ypsilanti required liability insurance without naming an amount, and Westland only encouraged it. A food vendor policy from FLIP cost $25.92 a month, or from $299 a year, on October 14, 2026.

Related Reading

These guides go deeper on the numbers in this report:

• Is Selling at Farmers Markets Profitable? Real Numbers Inside breaks down one typical cookie market day and the margins by product.
• Where to Sell Cookies: 8 Places That Actually Work compares the farmers market to coffee shops, Etsy and cookie clubs on a $24 dozen.
• The Real Cost of Selling at Farmers Markets lists every fee a market can charge before your first sale.
• Cottage Food Law in Michigan covers what Michigan home bakers can sell and what goes on the label.
• How Much Do Farmers Market Vendors Make? puts a full year of market income in USDA's per-day figures.

A month of markets is the best test you can run on a cookie business. Count what you bring, count what comes home, and let the numbers pick your markets. When you are ready for customers to order next week's dozen before you bake it, start your Homegrown storefront.