The short version: Homemade jam sells in seven places: a farmers market booth, your porch or farm stand, your own online storefront link, local shops and gift stores, craft fairs and holiday markets, Etsy, and gift orders for weddings and offices. On a $10 half-pint, cash at a booth costs you nothing, your own Homegrown link costs $0.59 in card processing plus $10 a month billed annually, Etsy costs $1.40 before shipping, and a shop buying at the $7 wholesale floor pays you $3 less a jar than your own $10 price. Selling to shops is where states split: Michigan and Illinois ban it for cottage food jam, Ohio allows grocery stores and restaurants, and Texas allows it through a registered cottage food vendor. Most part-time jam vendors do best with one in-person place and one link, and add a shop only when their state allows it and the price clears $7.
Checked September 22, 2026: Homegrown is $10 a month billed annually or $12.50 billed monthly, $0 platform fee and 0% commission, card processing 2.9% + $0.30 paid by the vendor, with 7 days at no charge before the first bill on day 8 (findhomegrown.com/signup). Etsy charges a $0.20 listing fee, a 6.5% transaction fee and 3% + $0.25 payment processing (etsy.com/sell). Square's free plan charges 2.6% + 15 cents in person and 3.3% + 30 cents online (squareup.com/us/en/pricing). State rules come from each state's law, agency page or extension guide, loaded the same day. Honest bounds: your customer creates a Homegrown account to place a first order, there is no countdown or timed release feature, and your storefront is listed on the Homegrown marketplace, but plan on most orders coming from people you send to your own link.
Your pantry shelf is full of strawberry, peach and blackberry jam, and the jars your coworkers already bought were gone in a week. The next 40 jars need a real home, and every place that sells jam takes a different cut: a booth fee, a card fee, a shop's markup, or a rule in your state that closes the door entirely.
This guide walks through seven places a home jam vendor can sell, what each one costs on a single $10 half-pint jar, which of them your state allows, and where the 17 jam vendors on Homegrown actually hand their jars to customers.
Homemade jam sells in seven places, and a part-time vendor making 30 to 60 jars a month can run two or three of them without help. Each place asks for something different: a Saturday behind a table, a pitch to a shop owner, a shipping box, or just a link you text to the neighbor who asks every June.
If you are still sorting out labels, cottage food rules and your first price, start with how to sell jam from home. That guide covers the legal basics and the label. This one takes your jar and its price as given and works through each place to put it.
The seven places:
A jam vendor who picks the right two of these can run both without a website, a warehouse or a second job's worth of hours.
Start with the place that matches your jar count and the number of people who already know your jam, because the right first place for 20 jars a month is different from the right first place for 200. The table below matches your situation to the place that fits it best.
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| Your situation | Start here | Why it fits |
|---|---|---|
| Under 20 jars a month, friends keep asking | Your own link plus your porch | No booth fee, no travel, and $0.59 per $10 jar in card processing plus $10 a month billed annually, about $1.09 a jar at 20 jars |
| 30 to 80 jars a month, weekends free | A farmers market booth | Tasting sells jam, and you learn which flavors move |
| A signature flavor people gift | Craft fairs and holiday markets | Gift buyers take three jars at once |
| 100+ jars and a tested, consistent recipe | Local shops, where your state allows it | Volume, at a $7 wholesale floor per half-pint |
| Customers moved away and want to reorder | Etsy, within your state's shipping rules | Reaches people who cannot come to your market |
| Pretty 4 oz jars and a free weekend each month | Wedding and gift orders | 100 jars on one order |
Your own count after two or three Saturdays at any of these places is the number to plan on, not anyone else's.
Most vendors do best with one in-person place and one link. The in-person place finds new customers. The link keeps the ones you already found, so they do not have to wait for next Saturday to buy.
A farmers market is the best first place for most jam vendors, because jam sells on taste and a booth is the one place a steady stream of strangers can try it before buying. Our how-to guide calls markets the best channel for the same reason, and the catalog agrees: 8 of the 17 jam vendors on Homegrown list a farmers market or market event as a pickup spot.
The booth math is simple, and it is tighter than it looks. A $10 half-pint costs about $6.98 to make with your time paid, per our jam pricing guide, which leaves about $3 of margin a jar. Say your booth costs $35 for the day. Twenty jars bring about $60 of margin, the booth takes $35 of it, and card processing on 20 tapped jars takes another $8.20 at Square's in-person rate. You keep about $17 on top of your wage. At 35 jars you keep about $56, which is why a booth pays when you sell enough to fill it.
What makes a jam booth work:
To find markets near you, search the USDA Local Food Directories farmers market listing by state or within 10 to 250 miles of your address. Ask each market manager how many jam vendors they already take before you apply. Some markets limit repeats of the same product, and the second jam booth in a small market splits the same customers.
Sampling has its own rules. Some counties require a sampling permit or specific handling, such as single-use spoons and a covered jar. Ask your market manager what your county requires before you open a jar for tasting.
A 4 oz jar opened for tasting holds about 24 teaspoons, which is about 48 half-teaspoon tastes. That is roughly one tasting jar per busy morning. Price it into your day: one $6 jar of samples that sells 15 half-pints is the cheapest ad you will ever buy.
Yes, a porch shelf or farm stand you staff yourself is allowed for cottage food jam in all four states we checked, and it is the cheapest place to sell because there is no booth fee and no drive. Leaving jars out unattended is a gray area: Illinois requires you or your employee to be present for each sale in a rented space, so ask your health department before you leave jars out. In the catalog pull, 4 of the 17 jam vendors hand orders over at a farm stand or front porch, including From Scratch, whose pickup spot is named "Farmstand- Front Porch Pick-up."
A porch works best for people who already know you: neighbors, coworkers, your kid's soccer team. With no booth fee, a $10 jar paid in cash leaves you the full $10, and a card payment through your link leaves $9.41. It works badly for strangers, because nobody drives to a house they have never heard of for one jar of jam.
Ways to run it without standing there all day:
Check your town's zoning before you put a sign at the road. The University of Illinois Extension's 2024 cottage food guide says home sales are fine as long as you follow local zoning that is consistent with state law.
Your jam should live on one link your regulars can order from any day of the week, because the customer who loved your peach jam on Saturday will want another jar on Wednesday, not next Saturday. Without a link, that order becomes a text thread, a Venmo request and a note on your fridge.
Homegrown gives each jam vendor that link for $10 a month billed annually, with no percentage fees beyond standard payment processing (2.9% + $0.30, or $0.59 on a $10 jar). Your regulars pick the flavor, pay by card, and choose pickup at your market booth, your porch or your farm stand. If your pickup spot is your house, you can show only the neighborhood until someone orders. The same link goes on your jar labels, your booth sign and your Instagram bio.
Compare that to the places jam vendors usually try first. Square's free plan costs $0 a month, but it charges 3.3% + 30 cents online, or $0.63 on a $10 jar. Etsy charges $1.40 on the same jar before shipping and is built for shipping glass across the country, which your state's cottage food rules may not allow. Instagram messages cost nothing and cost you an evening every week matching messages to payments.
Homegrown does not print shipping labels, run wholesale accounts for shops, or track consignment jars. It has no countdown or timed release feature. Your customer creates a Homegrown account to place a first order, and while your storefront is listed on the Homegrown marketplace, plan on most orders coming from people you send to your own link.
In a pull of the Homegrown catalog on September 22, 2026, 72 of the 2,586 products listed by 293 vendors were jam, jelly, preserves, marmalade or fruit butter, from 17 vendors in 13 states. The median price was $9, and the range ran from $3 to $14. Gram's Jams lists 12 jams and fruit spreads at $10 each, all in 8 oz jars except a 10 oz peach, and hands them over at three Maryland farmers markets: Bowie, Crofton and North Beach. Tinaisms Jams and Jellies lists 12 at $5 and picks up at the College Park Farmers Market. Dolce Farm & Orchards in Oregon sells four jams and fruit butters at $14, right beside its sourdough.
Where 17 Homegrown jam vendors hand over orders
Source: Homegrown catalog and vendor pickup locations, pulled September 22, 2026. 17 jam vendors; a vendor with more than one kind of pickup spot is counted in each.
If your regulars keep texting you for jars between markets, that is the problem this link solves. Set up your jam storefront on Homegrown and send the link to the next person who asks, so the order and the payment arrive together.
You can sell jam to local shops only if your state's cottage food law allows sales to a business that resells it, and at a price no lower than about $7 for a half-pint. Michigan and Illinois say no. Ohio says yes to grocery stores and restaurants. Texas says yes when a registered middleman buys it for resale. The next section has the sources.
Where it is allowed, a shop buys your jam in one of two ways:
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| Wholesale | Consignment | |
|---|---|---|
| Who owns the jar on the shelf | The shop, once it pays you | You, until it sells |
| When you get paid | When you deliver, or on the shop's terms | After each jar sells, often monthly |
| Typical split | 50 to 60 percent of your retail price, the rule of thumb in our how-to guide | Whatever split the shop sets |
| Who eats a broken or unsold jar | The shop | You |
| Legal in Michigan | No | No |
| Legal in Illinois | No | No |
The jam pricing guide works out the wholesale floor: about $6.98 is your true cost of a half-pint with your time paid, so charge $7 or more and aim for $7.50. At the 50 to 60 percent of retail our how-to guide uses, your own $10 jar would wholesale for $5 to $6, under that floor, so the split only works when the shop's shelf price is $12 to $14 or more. A shop that wants your jar for $5 is asking you to pay to be on its shelf.
How to pitch a shop that is allowed to buy from you:
Jam is allowed under cottage food rules in all four states we checked, but the places you may sell it differ a lot, and the biggest split is whether a shop, restaurant or another vendor may resell your jar. The table below comes from each state's law, agency page or extension guide, loaded September 22, 2026.
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| State | Farmers market, porch, events | Online orders | Shops, restaurants, consignment | Sales cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michigan | Yes, direct to the customer | Yes, by internet or mail order to Michigan buyers, if they get a face-to-face or video meeting with you before paying | No. Consignment and wholesale are prohibited | $50,000 a year ($75,000 if products are $250 or more each); starting October 1, 2026, the state may adjust it for inflation each October 1 |
| Illinois | Yes, including a craft mall space if you or your employee is there for each sale | Yes, within Illinois only, including Etsy | No. Not for resale, not to a bakery or grocery store, not to a restaurant as an ingredient | None |
| Ohio | Yes, from your home, farm markets and farmers markets, and at festivals run by a local government for up to seven days | Not stated on the page. Cottage food may only be sold in Ohio | Yes. Grocery stores and restaurants may sell or use it | Not stated on the page |
| Texas | Yes, direct to the customer | Yes, if you, an employee or a household member hand-deliver it, and your label details are posted on your store page before payment | Yes, by selling wholesale to a vendor registered with the state, who can resell it in any retail store | $150,000 gross a year |
Sources, loaded September 22, 2026: Michigan Food Law section 289.4102 and the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development cottage food FAQ, Illinois law 410 ILCS 625/4 and the University of Illinois Extension 2024 Cottage Food Guide, the Ohio Department of Agriculture cottage food page, and the Texas Department of State Health Services cottage food production page.
In its own words, Michigan's cottage food law, section 289.4102, says "Sales by consignment or at wholesale are prohibited," and it caps gross sales at $50,000 a year. Illinois law 410 ILCS 625/4 says cottage food "shall be sold directly to consumers for their own consumption and not for resale" and "shall not be shipped out of State." The University of Illinois Extension's 2024 guide applies that to jam vendors: no selling to a bakery or grocery store to resell. The Ohio Department of Agriculture's cottage food page lists jams, jellies and fruit butters and says they may be sold through grocery stores and restaurants, in Ohio only.
Cottage food rules change. Michigan's cap is $50,000 a year ($75,000 for items priced at $250 or more), and starting October 1, 2026 the state may adjust it for inflation each October 1. A guide from Michigan State University still says $25,000 with no online sales. Verify your state's current rules on your own agriculture or health department page before you sign a shop deal or ship a jar, and check any low-sugar or pepper jam recipe against your state's list, because some states treat those differently from standard fruit jam. Georgia's rules, for one, leave out fruit butters whose safety could be affected by reduced sugar or pectin.
The pattern across states: direct sales to the person eating the jam are almost always fine. Anything where a third party holds or resells your jar is where the rules bite.
Craft fairs and holiday markets are worth it for jam when you bring gift sets, because the people walking a December craft fair are shopping for someone else and jam is one of the easiest $10 to $30 gifts on the floor. They are weaker than a farmers market in July, when people are buying food for their own kitchen.
What sells at a fair that does not sell at a Saturday market:
Fair fees usually cover a whole day or a weekend, so do the same math as a market booth: divide the fee by your margin of about $3 a half-pint to see how many jars you need to break even. If a holiday market charges $90 for a weekend, that is 30 jars before you earn a dollar over your wage.
Illinois adds one rule for anyone thinking of a year-round craft mall: you may rent a space only if you or your employee is there for each sale, and you cannot leave jars on a shelf for the mall to sell. For more on choosing between the two, see how a craft fair compares to a farmers market for a food vendor.
Etsy can work for jam where your state allows mail orders inside the state, as Michigan and Illinois do (Texas's health department page lists hand delivery only), and Amazon is not a real option for cottage food jam, because both lean on shipping across the country and cottage food rules generally stop at your state line. Illinois says it plainly: Etsy is fine, but only to buyers in Illinois, and you must not ship or deliver out of state.
On a $10 jar, Etsy charges a $0.20 listing fee, a 6.5% transaction fee ($0.65) and 3% + $0.25 payment processing ($0.55), or $1.40 in all before shipping. The 6.5% also applies to what you charge for shipping. If a sale comes through Etsy's Offsite Ads, add 15% of the order. We checked those fees on etsy.com/sell on September 22, 2026.
Amazon's Grocery and Gourmet category charges an 8% referral fee on products priced at $15.00 or less, plus $0.99 per jar sold on the Individual plan, or $1.79 on a $10 jar. Amazon takes the payment itself, so there is no separate card fee to add. We checked that on sell.amazon.com/pricing the same day. The fee is not the problem. A national marketplace is the problem, because a jar made under a cottage food exemption is meant for customers in your state.
What shipping jam asks of you, on any site:
If you want to compare the online options side by side, our guide to the best platforms to sell jam online goes through Homegrown, Etsy, Shopify and a free form in detail.
On a $10 half-pint, what you keep ranges from the full $10 in cash at your porch (a booth fee comes off that at a market) down to $7 when a shop buys it, with every card, marketplace and storefront fee somewhere in between. The table puts every place on the same jar, with every part of the fee stack, so nothing is hidden in a footnote.
Scroll sideways to see every column.
| Place | Monthly plan | Trial period | Platform fee or commission | Card processing | Customer pays on a $10 jar | Vendor pays on a $10 jar | Vendor pays on 50 jars in a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash at a booth or porch | $0 (booth fee separate) | n/a | $0 | None, cash | $10.00 | $0.00 | $0 plus booth fees |
| Square free plan, in person | $0 | n/a | $0 | 2.6% + 15 cents, vendor pays | $10.00 | $0.41 | $20.50 |
| Square free plan, online | $0 | n/a | $0 | 3.3% + 30 cents, vendor pays | $10.00 | $0.63 | $31.50 |
| Homegrown storefront link | $10 billed annually ($12.50 billed monthly) | 7 days, no charge until day 8 | $0, 0% commission | 2.9% + $0.30, vendor pays | $10.00 | $0.59 plus the plan | $39.50 ($42.00 on monthly billing) |
| Shopify Basic | $29 billed yearly ($39 billed monthly) | 3 days, then $1 a month for 3 months | $0 with Shopify Payments (2% with another provider) | from 2.9% + 30 cents online (3.5% + 30 cents on premium cards), vendor pays | $10.00 plus any shipping | $0.59 plus the plan | $58.50 ($68.50 on monthly billing) |
| Etsy | $0 (a one-time shop set-up fee may apply) | None | $0.20 listing plus 6.5% transaction fee ($0.65); 15% on Offsite Ads sales | 3% + $0.25 ($0.55), vendor pays | $10.00 plus shipping | $1.40 | $70.00 |
| Shop buying at wholesale | $0 | n/a | The shop's markup: it pays you $7, you give up $3 | None, the shop pays you | The shop's shelf price, $12 to $14 | $3.00 below your $10 price | $150 below retail |
Fees checked September 22, 2026 on findhomegrown.com/signup, squareup.com/us/en/pricing, shopify.com/pricing and etsy.com/sell. Card processing is figured on the $10 jar alone. On Etsy and Shopify, shipping adds to the total and to the percentage fees. The wholesale row uses the $7 floor from our jam pricing guide.
Three things stand out once every row carries its full stack:
At 50 jars a month through a Homegrown link, you pay $39.50 on annual billing, or 7.9% of $500 in sales. At 20 jars, the same plan is $10 plus $11.80 in processing, or 10.9% of $200. The flat plan gets cheaper per jar as your regulars grow.
Selling jam through someone else's business is allowed in some states and banned in others, and it is an easy way to break a cottage food rule without meaning to. A CSA box, a coffee shop counter and a friend's market table all put a third party between you and the person eating your jam.
State by state, from the pages we loaded:
Where it is allowed, these partners work well for jam. A coffee shop with a small shelf of local food sells jam beside scones; our guide on getting your food into a local coffee shop covers the pitch. A CSA farm that lets partner vendors add a jar to a weekly box reaches families who already pay for local food each week, which is the setup in adding your products to a CSA as a partner vendor.
In the Homegrown catalog, Gram's Jams lists a 16 oz honey from Stormy Acres Bee Farm at $19 next to its 12 jams and fruit spreads at $10. That is one vendor carrying another farm's product on its own table. Before you try the same thing with jam, check that your state lets someone other than you, your family or your employee sell your jar.
Couples planning weddings, people hosting baby and bridal showers, and offices buying holiday gifts all buy jam in bulk, often 4 oz jars, in orders of 50 or more. One wedding order of 100 favor jars at $6 each is $600, the same revenue as 60 half-pints at a booth, in one delivery.
What these buyers want from you:
For favors specifically, edible wedding favors for food vendors covers quoting, deposits and timing. For offices, bulk pricing tiers for corporate gifting shows how to set bulk price tiers at 10 to 24, 25 to 99 and 100 or more units.
Check one legal point first. A couple buying favors for their own wedding is a direct sale to the consumer. A business buying jars to hand out is less clear in states that require direct sales, so ask your state's cottage food office whether a company counts as the consumer.
You can start selling jam in a new place within 7 days if you pick one place, check the rule, and set up the link before you go. The steps below work for a market booth, a porch shelf or a first shop visit.
Once you know your place, a storefront link keeps the customers you meet there. Start your Homegrown jam storefront before your first market, so the QR code is on your table the day you meet your first regular.
Experienced jam vendors treat each place as a test with a number attached, so they drop the places that do not pay and double down on the ones that do. After a season or two, most of them sell at fewer places, not more.
Habits that separate year-three vendors from first-season vendors:
Count jars sold per flavor for three markets in a row before your next batch. Any flavor that sells fewer than 3 jars a market is costing you shelf space. Turn it into a gift-set flavor or retire it, and put that fruit into your top flavor.
The Gram's Jams pattern in the catalog is a useful model: one price, $10, across 12 flavors, nearly all in 8 oz jars, and three farmers markets as pickup spots. One price means no math at the table and no second-guessing.
The biggest costs of selling jam are not on any fee page: broken jars, tasting jars, drive time and unsold jars on a consignment shelf. Each one can cost more in a month than the $10 plan or the card fees.
Costs to count before you pick a place:
Put a number on each of these for your top two places. A place that looks cheap on the fee table can lose once drive time and breakage are counted.
For most home jam vendors, the best place to sell jam is a farmers market booth paired with an online storefront link. The booth lets strangers taste your jam, and the link lets them reorder between markets. In a September 22, 2026 pull of the Homegrown catalog, 8 of 17 jam vendors listed a farmers market or market event as a pickup spot, more than any other kind of place.
It depends on your state. Michigan and Illinois prohibit selling cottage food jam to a store to resell, and both rule out consignment. Ohio allows sales through grocery stores and restaurants, and Texas allows wholesale to a reseller who has registered with the state. Where it is allowed, charge at least $7 for a half-pint, which is about your full cost with your time paid.
In Michigan, Illinois and Texas, yes, with limits, and the customer has to be in your state. Michigan allows internet and mail orders if the customer can meet with you face to face or on a video call before buying, Illinois allows online sales including Etsy, within Illinois only, and Texas allows online orders only when you, an employee or a household member deliver the jar in person. A storefront link with local pickup keeps the sale in your state by design.
Generally no, if you make it under a cottage food exemption. Illinois Extension's guide says cottage food cannot be shipped out of state, because crossing state lines puts the product under federal rules. The same guide describes cottage food as a way to test products before deciding whether to scale into a commercial kitchen, which is a licensed operation. Ask your state health or agriculture department which license covers shipping jam across state lines.
A half-pint (8 oz) jar of standard fruit jam sells well at $10, and specialty flavors at $12. In the Homegrown catalog on September 22, 2026, the median jam listing was $9, but 24 of 72 were $5 or less, which is under the $6.98 true cost of a jar if that jar is a half-pint. Our pricing guide counted 56 listings on September 18; by September 22 the catalog had grown from 2,485 to 2,586 products and from 15 to 17 jam vendors. Knowing where to sell jam matters less than pricing it so each place pays.
Some states require one and some do not. Illinois requires cottage food vendors to register with their local health department every year, for a fee of up to $50, and to pass a Certified Food Protection Manager course and exam before that registration is approved, while Texas says health departments may not inspect a cottage food operation or charge it a fee to sell directly to customers. Texas requires registration for foods that need temperature control, which standard fruit jam does not, or if you want a state registration number on your label instead of your home address. Texas does require every cottage food operator to complete an accredited food handler training course. Your market may also ask for its own vendor application and proof of your state's registration, so check both before deciding where to sell jam.
These six guides answer the questions this one only touches, from your first label to your first booth.
Pick your two places, check your state's page, and put your storefront link on every jar. Set up your Homegrown storefront and take your first jam pre-order this week.
