Where to Sell Maple Syrup: 7 Places That Actually Work

The drums are full, the jugs in the basement are stacked three high, and the family has already said no to a fourth gallon each. Selling a pint to a neighbor who stopped by during boiling was easy. Selling 40 gallons, every spring, means picking the places where syrup actually moves, and each place pays a very different price for the same gallon.

This guide covers seven places a small sugarmaker can sell maple syrup, what each one costs you on a single $20 quart, what one gallon of syrup brings in each place, and who buys syrup by the drum when the jugs run out before the syrup does.

Where Can You Sell Maple Syrup?

Maple syrup sells in seven places, and a sugarmaker with 50 to 300 taps can run two or three of them without hiring anyone. Each place trades a different amount of your time for a different price per gallon, from about $80 a gallon in quarts at your own table to about $28.80 a gallon in a drum.

• Your sugarhouse, farm stand or driveway. A shelf of jugs, a sign and a payment code. The cheapest place to sell and the one most tied to your road.
• A farmers market. Weekly foot traffic, a booth fee, and strangers who taste before they buy a pint.
• Your own storefront link. A page where regulars order a quart between markets and pick it up. $10 a month on annual billing ($12.50 monthly) plus card processing, and no commission comes off the jug.
• Maple weekends and sugarhouse open houses. One or two March weekends when the public drives out to watch you boil and leaves with syrup.
• Holiday markets and craft fairs. A November and December gift crowd that buys glass leaf bottles and gift sets.
• Local shops, co-ops and restaurants. Wholesale by the case, at a price near your own shelf price.
• Bulk buyers. Packers who buy whole drums by the pound, and the usual buyer for Processing Grade syrup, which the USDA's grade standard, a voluntary federal standard, says belongs in pails or drums of 5 gallons and up, for use in other foods.

Etsy and Amazon are an extra option for mail-order buyers far from your road. They are covered further down with their full fees, because shipping a heavy jug changes the math.

Syrup has two advantages most homemade food lacks. Finished to the right density it keeps for months on a shelf, and buyers who find a sugarmaker they trust tend to come back every year. The limit is the season: the sap runs in late winter and early spring and then stops, so the question is less "who will buy it" and more "which place pays the most for the gallons you have."

If you have not sorted out the grade label, the jug sizes or the price yet, the companion guide on how to sell maple syrup from home covers the rules and production side. This article starts after that, with full jugs and no plan for where they go.

Which Place Should You Start With?

Start with the place that matches what you already have, because a sugarmaker on a busy county road has a different first move than one with 30 gallons, a day job and no booth. The table pairs five common starting points with a first and second place to sell. Whichever row fits, the goal is to sell as many gallons as you can at the retail price of about $20 a quart before any go into a drum at $2.60 a pound.

Scroll sideways to see all four columns.

The $20 quart in the paragraph above is the quart price from the maple syrup pricing guide's ladder, and the $2.60 a pound is Bascom's 2026 bulk price for Golden and Amber syrup, from The Maple News report linked in the bulk buyer section below.

The mistake is opening five places in one year. Each one needs its own price sign, its own restock trip and its own share of a crop that does not grow back until next March. Two places run well beat five places that each run out of amber by August.

Can You Sell Maple Syrup From Your Sugarhouse or Driveway?

Yes, and for a sugarmaker on a road with traffic, a stand at the sugarhouse is the cheapest place to sell maple syrup: no booth fee, no drive, and nothing off the jug beyond whatever your card reader charges. Square's free plan charges 2.6% + 15 cents on a tapped card, which is 67 cents on a $20 quart, and cash costs nothing.

Syrup suits a stand better than almost anything else a farm sells. A sealed jug does not wilt, melt or go stale on a shaded shelf, so an unstaffed stand can hold a week of stock. Three setups work, from simplest to most involved:

• A shelf inside the sugarhouse door. Jugs, a price list and a payment code taped to the shelf. Neighbors walk in, pay and leave.
• An honor box at the end of the driveway. A small roofed stand with a locked cash slot and a payment code. Expect the occasional missing jug and price it into the season.
• A staffed stand on weekends. Syrup next to eggs, maple candy or fall produce, open set hours, with a jug open for tasting.

A road sign does real work here. Bascom Maple Farms sells an 18 by 24 inch "Pure Maple Syrup Sold Here" sign for $85 (bascommaple.com, September 26, 2026), which costs about what four or five $20 quarts bring in, or about eight quarts once you count the jugs and what that syrup would fetch in a drum. Our guide on how to set up a roadside farm stand covers the build, the signage and the payment box.

The stand's limit is the calendar and the road. Drivers pass all year, but the only people who stop are the ones who pass your sign. A card on the shelf that says "sold out of quarts, order here for pickup Saturday" turns an empty shelf into an order instead of a lost sale.

Is a Farmers Market a Good Place to Sell Maple Syrup?

A farmers market is one of the best places to sell maple syrup to strangers, because shoppers walk the aisles looking for something local and a taste of dark syrup on a spoon closes the sale. Booth space runs $20 to $75 a week at most markets, with a full season often costing $400 to $800 up front, as broken down in our guide to the real cost of selling at farmers markets.

Run the math on a $40 booth. Two $20 quarts cover it. Sell ten quarts and six pints in a morning and you take in $272, so the booth is about 15% of the day. Syrup does not spoil at the end of the day, so whatever you bring home goes back on the shelf instead of in the compost.

What a booth gives you that nothing else does:

• A tasting. Four small cups, one for each color class you have, turn "I buy the pancake syrup" into a pint sale. Ask the market manager whether open samples are allowed before you plan a tasting.
• A face on the jug. Buyers want to know where the trees are. A photo of your sap lines or your evaporator on the table answers that before they ask.
• Price discovery. One morning shows you whether the pint or the quart moves, and what people say when they see $20.
• The reorder card. Every buyer who says "we go through a quart a month" should leave with your link on a card.

Fall and winter markets matter more for syrup than for most farm products. Holiday baking starts in the fall, right when tomatoes and sweet corn leave the tables.

Keep Syrup Orders Coming After the Stand Closes

Your syrup needs a place to be ordered on the days your booth and your stand are closed, and for a part-time sugarmaker that place costs about $10 a month. Homegrown is $10 per month billed annually, or $12.50 billed monthly, with no percentage fees beyond standard payment processing of 2.9% + $0.30 per order, which is $0.88 on a $20 quart. The first 7 days are not billed, so nothing is charged until day 8.

For maple syrup specifically, the $10 buys four things: each jug size and grade listed with its price, so nobody texts to ask whether you have dark in a quart; orders paid ahead and picked up at your sugarhouse, your stand or your market booth on a day you pick; local delivery inside a radius you set, from 1 to 25 miles, with a delivery fee you keep, less card processing; and a page that is live in about 15 minutes without building a website.

Compare that to where sugarmakers usually land first:

• Text messages and a payment app cost little or nothing, and they bill you in time: quantities tracked across a dozen threads, payments chased by hand, and no list of who wanted dark syrup when the new crop comes in.
• Etsy brings shoppers you did not find yourself, and takes $2.35 of a $20 quart through its listing fee, 6.5% transaction fee and 3% + $0.25 processing, before it adds 6.5% of whatever you charge for shipping.
• Square's free plan is $0 a month, with in-person card processing at 2.6% + 15 cents and online or invoice processing at 3.3% + 30 cents. Of the options compared here, it is the cheapest way to take a card at the stand, at $0.67 a quart, and $0.96 a quart on an online order.

Honest bounds, so you can weigh it fairly. Your customer creates a Homegrown account to place a first order, which is one more step at checkout. Homegrown handles pickup and local delivery, not shipping, so a customer in another state who wants a gallon mailed is an Etsy or direct-shipping order, not a Homegrown one. There is no countdown or timed release feature for a new-crop announcement. Your storefront is listed on the Homegrown marketplace, but plan on most orders coming from the link you text, print and hand out yourself. And it will not make your syrup legal to sell: the grade, the density and any state license are still yours to handle.

If your regulars already ask when the new syrup is coming, that is the whole case for a link. Set up a storefront for your syrup, list each jug size with its grade and price, and text the link to last year's buyers the week you finish bottling, so the first quarts are spoken for before the stand even opens.

Are Maple Weekends Worth Opening Your Sugarhouse For?

Yes, if the public can reach your sugarhouse safely, because a maple weekend sends local families out to watch the boil on the one or two weekends a year they go looking for a sugarhouse to visit. Maine's maple association says most sugarhouses on its map offer syrup samples and a demonstration of how syrup is made. The events run in March, when the sap is running and the steam is rising, and they are organized by each state's maple association. New York's runs over 4 days across two weekends.

The dates follow a pattern in each state:

• New York. Maple Weekend in New York runs March 13 and 14 and March 20 and 21, 2027, from 10am to 4pm at participating farms, according to the New York State Maple Producers Association.
• Maine. Maine Maple Sunday is always the fourth Sunday in March, and the 2026 edition on March 21 and 22 was the 43rd. That rule puts the next one on Sunday, March 28, 2027.
• Massachusetts. The Massachusetts maple association's directory lists sugarhouses that were open for last season's Maple Weekend on Saturday, March 7 and Sunday, March 8, 2026. The 2027 dates were not posted when we checked on September 26, 2026.

A maple weekend is a sales day, not just a tour. Visitors taste, compare colors and buy the jug that matches the one they liked, so have every size priced and stacked before the doors open. Keep a pad of cards with your storefront link at the register, because the family that buys one pint in March is the family that wants a quart in November.

A maple weekend fills the register for two days, and then the sugarhouse goes quiet until fall. If you set up a Homegrown storefront for your syrup before March, every visitor who leaves with a card can order a quart for pickup in October without calling you, and you see the order and the payment before you pull the jug off the shelf.

Ask your state association how a sugarhouse gets on the open-house map, what it costs to join, and what the event requires of you. Parking, a safe path around the evaporator, and a restroom plan matter more than signage on a day when cars keep pulling in from 10 to 4. If your setup cannot take a crowd, a spot at a neighbor's open house, selling beside a larger sugarhouse, is a gentler first year.

Do Holiday Markets and Craft Fairs Sell Maple Syrup?

Yes, and November and December are when maple syrup sells as a gift. Holiday buyers are shopping for teachers, hosts and relatives out of state, and a small glass maple leaf bottle with a ribbon is an easy yes at $12.

What sells at a holiday table is different from what sells at the stand:

• Small glass bottles. A 250 ml glass maple leaf bottle is the classic gift size. The pricing guide sets it at $12, well above what the same syrup brings in a plastic jug.
• Gift sets. Two or three small bottles of different colors in a box, sold as a tasting set.
• Maple candy and maple cream. If you make them, they sit beside the syrup and raise the average sale.
• Pint jugs for the table. Buyers who want one for themselves still pick up the everyday size.

A craft fair is one or two days of selling instead of a weekly routine, so ask each fair for its table fee and work out how many bottles cover it before you sign up. Our comparison of craft fairs and farmers markets for food vendors walks through which foods suit which venue, and why the gift crowd at a fair buys differently from the repeat customers at a weekly market. Bring enough small bottles, because a holiday crowd buys the gift size first and the everyday size second.

The gift season also sets up the rest of your year. A shopper who buys three gift bottles in December is a shopper who might want a gallon for the house in February, so the reorder card belongs in every gift bag.

How Do You Get Maple Syrup Into Shops, Co-ops and Restaurants?

Offer a local shop a case of 12 quarts at 80 to 85 percent of your own shelf price, so $16 to $17 for a quart you sell for $20, and deliver it yourself. The USDA's 2025 wholesale average was $48.70 a gallon, which is 86 percent of the $56.70 retail average, so maple wholesale runs close to retail.

Who buys syrup wholesale from a small sugarmaker:

• Food co-ops and natural food stores. They look for local products and already stock a shelf of them.
• Farm stores and general stores. Especially ones on a tourist route, where visitors want something to take home.
• Diners and breakfast restaurants. Real syrup on the menu is a selling point, and a breakfast kitchen pours it every morning.
• Bakeries and coffee shops. Maple lattes, maple scones and maple glaze all start with a jug of syrup.
• Gift shops and inns. Small glass bottles for the gift shelf and the welcome basket.

Walk in with a sample, a one-page price list and a 12-quart case minimum. The list shows each size, the case price and how you want to be paid. Our guide to selling food products in local stores covers the pitch, the paperwork and how to follow up.

Wholesale's strength is volume per trip. One delivery of 48 pints to a co-op moves in a single stop what might take several market mornings to sell one pint at a time. Its weakness is the price: a quart at $17 wholesale leaves you $3 less than the same quart at your own table, and the store sets the shelf price. Ask the store to keep your quart at or near your own $20, so a shopper does not find it cheaper down the street from your stand.

For the full price math, including why maple wholesale sits close to retail, the maple syrup pricing guide walks through each container size and the wholesale discount.

Should You Sell Maple Syrup on Etsy or Amazon?

Sell maple syrup on Etsy or Amazon only if you want mail-order buyers you cannot reach locally and you are ready to ship a heavy jug, because Etsy's fees come to $2.35 on a $20 quart before shipping and Amazon takes $3.99 on its Individual plan. Syrup ships well, since it is shelf-stable and a plastic jug does not break, but a quart of syrup alone weighs about 2.8 pounds, at the roughly 11.1 pounds a gallon implied by the USDA's bulk prices, before the jug and the box.

What each one charges, checked September 26, 2026:

• Etsy. A $0.20 listing fee, a 6.5% transaction fee on the price and on the shipping you charge, and 3% + $0.25 payment processing. On a $20 quart that is $2.35 before shipping. Etsy may also charge a one-time shop set-up fee, and a 15% fee on any sale that comes from its offsite ads.
• Amazon, Individual plan. $0.99 per sale plus a Grocery and Gourmet referral fee of 15% on anything priced over $15.00, figured on the total sales price. On a $20 quart that is $3.99, more once shipping is added to the total.
• Amazon, Professional plan. $39.99 a month plus the same 15% referral fee, so $3.00 a quart plus the plan.

Online marketplaces make the most sense for a sugarmaker who already has shipping boxes and a reason to reach far away buyers, such as family who moved out of state or an organic or single-grade syrup people search for by name. The detailed breakdown of Etsy's fees for food vendors shows how the listing, transaction and processing fees stack on a real order.

For local customers, the online marketplaces cost more than they need to. A neighbor who orders a quart for pickup through Etsy pays you the same $20, and you give up $2.35 of it for a buyer you already had.

What Does Each Place Cost You on a $20 Quart?

On a $20 quart, card and platform fees take from $0 to $3.99 depending on where you sell it. Cash at your own stand costs nothing, a tapped card through Square's free plan costs 67 cents, your own storefront link costs 88 cents plus the monthly plan, Etsy costs $2.35 and Amazon's Individual plan costs $3.99. That leaves $20.00 in cash, $19.33 after a tapped card, $19.12 through your own link before the $10 monthly plan, $17.65 on Etsy and $16.01 on Amazon's Individual plan.

Swipe the fee table sideways to see every column.

We checked every fee in this table on September 26, 2026, on findhomegrown.com/signup, Square's pricing page, etsy.com/sell and sell.amazon.com/pricing. Fees are figured on the $20 price with no shipping or tax. Etsy's transaction fee also applies to what you charge for shipping, and Amazon's referral fee is figured on the total sales price, so a shipped quart costs more than the table shows. Booth fees, shipping boxes and postage are not included.

What the table means for where your syrup goes:

• In person, fees barely matter. At 0 to 67 cents a quart, the booth fee and your drive cost more than the card reader.
• A link costs 21 cents more than a tapped card on each order, plus the $10 monthly plan, so about $20.50 more in a month of 50 quarts. What you get for it is an order that is paid for before the customer shows up, on a day your stand is closed.
• Marketplaces charge for the buyer they bring. Etsy's $2.35 and Amazon's $3.99 make sense for a buyer in another state and cost you money on a buyer down the road.

How Much Does One Gallon of Syrup Bring in Each Place?

One gallon of syrup bottled into four $20 quarts leaves you about $56 to $72 after quart jugs and fees, depending on where the quarts sell, while the same gallon in a drum brings about $28.80 from a bulk buyer. That gap, about $27 to $43 a gallon, is the reason small sugarmakers bottle everything they can sell.

Slide the table left to see all five columns.

Quart jugs are Bascom Maple Farms' All State plastic quart at $1.94 each, loaded September 26, 2026; labels are not counted. Bulk prices are Bascom's 2026 buying prices as reported by The Maple News on March 23, 2026, converted at the roughly 11.1 pounds per gallon the USDA uses when it turns $2.80 a pound into $31.00 a gallon.

The USDA's own averages tell the same story from the whole industry's side. In its Crop Production report of June 11, 2026, the average 2025 gallon brought $56.70 when sold at retail and $31.00 when sold in bulk, a gap of $25.70 a gallon before containers and fees.

Where the 5,701,000 gallons made in 2025 actually went:

• Bulk: 4,414,000 gallons, 77.4% of the crop.
• Retail: 598,000 gallons, 10.5%.
• Wholesale: 592,000 gallons, 10.4%.
• Value added, meaning candy, cream and other products: 97,000 gallons, 1.7%.

The all-sales average of $35.60 sits close to the bulk price because 77% of all syrup is sold in drums. For a small sugarmaker, that means the industry average is not your price. A sugarmaker who sells 30 gallons in quarts is working in the 10.5% of the market that pays the most.

Who Buys Maple Syrup by the Barrel, and What Do They Pay?

Bulk syrup goes to packers who buy it by the drum, weigh it, grade it and pay by the pound. Bascom Maple Farms, which The Maple News calls the nation's largest bulk syrup buyer, announced in March 2026 that it would pay $2.60 a pound for Golden and Amber syrup from the 2026 crop, a 20-cent increase over the year before.

Bascom's full 2026 price list, as reported by The Maple News on March 23, 2026:

• Golden and Amber: $2.60 a pound, about $28.80 a gallon.
• Dark: $2.55 a pound.
• Very Dark: $2.35 a pound, about $26.00 a gallon.
• Processing Grade: $1.60 a pound, about $17.70 a gallon.
• Organic: a 15-cent premium on top of the grade price.

The same story reports that other Vermont bulk buyers adopted similar prices for the 2026 season. The USDA's 2025 bulk average of $2.80 a pound shows what the whole market paid the year before, with state averages from $2.44 a pound in Pennsylvania to $3.20 in Minnesota.

Bulk makes sense in three situations. You made more syrup than you can bottle and sell before next season. You have Processing Grade syrup, which the USDA's voluntary grade standard reserves for bulk containers of at least 5 gallons, not retail jugs. Or you have no time to sell retail at all. A 40-gallon drum of Golden syrup at $2.60 a pound is worth about $1,150, paid in one transaction with no market days.

Before your first drum, call the buyer and ask what drums they accept, how they sample and grade, when they pay, and whether they have a minimum. Bascom sells 30- and 55-gallon epoxy-lined drums for $100 each and lists a 40-gallon stainless drum at $255, out of stock when we checked (bascommaple.com, September 26, 2026), which gives a sense of what a first drum costs. Massachusetts' maple association lists 17 sugarhouses in its directory under bulk sales, but that means they sell syrup in bulk, not that they buy it. A larger sugarhouse near you may still buy syrup from a smaller maker, so call and ask; the directories we checked list sellers, not buyers.

Can You Sell Sap Instead of Syrup?

Yes, and in 2025 US sugarmakers sold 14,082,900 gallons of raw sap at an average of 30 cents a gallon, according to the USDA. Selling sap skips the evaporator, the fuel and the long boiling nights, and trades them for a much smaller check.

Where the sap was sold in 2025, in every state the USDA reports by name:

• Vermont: 10,732,000 gallons at 30 cents.
• Wisconsin: 2,221,000 gallons at 32 cents.
• New York: 657,000 gallons at 25 cents.
• Michigan: 32,000 gallons at 35 cents.
• Massachusetts: 29,200 gallons at 28 cents.

Look for a sap buyer among the larger sugarmakers near you, since a buyer needs evaporator capacity to spare. SDSU Extension notes that it can take 43 or more gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, so 43 gallons of sap at 30 cents is about $12.90, compared to about $28.80 for that same gallon of syrup sold in bulk, or $80 sold in quarts.

Sap selling fits a landowner with good maples, a few hundred taps and no sugarhouse. It does not fit someone who can boil, because every step up the ladder, from sap to bulk syrup to bottled syrup, at least doubles what the same trees earn. Sap also spoils fast: SDSU Extension advises that sap should not be stored more than a few hours before it is processed, so a sap buyer needs to be close enough to pick up quickly.

What Rules Change Depending on Where You Sell?

The rules that matter shift with the container, the grade and the place you sell. A federal definition and the USDA grade standard set the baseline, and your state adds its own rules on top.

What the federal definition and the USDA grade standard say:

• Density. Federal law defines maple syrup as the concentrated sap of the maple tree containing not less than 66 percent soluble solids by weight (21 CFR 168.140, the FDA's standard for maple syrup). Syrup below that is not maple syrup under the federal definition, and SDSU Extension warns that syrup holding excess water can grow bacteria, yeast or mold in storage.
• Grade A limits. The USDA's grade standards cap Grade A at 68.9 percent solids and sort it into four color classes: Golden, Amber, Dark and Very Dark. Syrup must also be clear and free of off flavors to be Grade A.
• Processing Grade stays in bulk. The USDA standard says Processing Grade syrup, meaning syrup that misses Grade A but may still go into other foods, often because of an off flavor, must be packed in containers of 5 gallons or larger and cannot be packaged in consumer-size containers for retail sale. Federally, that grade standard is voluntary, so check whether your state's rules adopt it; where they do, that syrup is sold by the pail or drum, for use in making other foods. For most small sugarmakers that means a bulk buyer, at $1.60 a pound in Bascom's 2026 prices, or a food maker willing to buy a 5-gallon container.

Your state layers its own rules on top, and they differ from state to state. Two examples, loaded September 26, 2026:

• South Dakota. SDSU Extension's guidance, last updated October 2023, says syrup sold at a farmers market must be tested for water activity, and the finished syrup must test below 0.85.
• Maine. The Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry's farm stand FAQ, posted in 2026, says packaging and selling maple syrup may require licensing and labeling depending on your operation, and tells sugarmakers to contact the department before offering packaged syrup for sale.

Selling to a store or shipping out of state can bring more rules than a stand does, and this guide has not checked those rules for any state. Rules change and vary by state, so verify your state's current rules with its department of agriculture before you open a new place to sell.

How Do You Start Selling Maple Syrup Somewhere New This Season?

Start by counting what you have and deciding which gallons go to which place, before the first jug leaves the sugarhouse. A sugarmaker with 40 gallons might plan 25 for retail, 10 for a shop account and 5 for a bulk buyer in a 5-gallon pail, if your buyer takes lots that small, and adjust after the first month.

• Count your gallons by grade. Write down how many gallons of each color class you made and how many are Processing Grade. The Processing Grade gallons go to a bulk buyer or a food maker who buys by the pail, so line one up before you need it.
• Set your retail ladder. Pick a price for each jug size before you pick a place. The pricing guide's ladder is $8 for a half pint, $12 for a pint, $20 for a quart, $34 for a half gallon and $58 for a gallon.
• Pick one in-person place. A stand at the sugarhouse if you have traffic, a farmers market if you do not. Put the prices on a sign large enough to read from the car.
• Add your link. Build the storefront, list every size and grade, and print the link on a card that goes in every bag and on the shelf.
• Call two shops. Bring a sample quart, your wholesale prices on one page and a 12-quart case minimum. Start with the co-op or farm store closest to you.
• Call your bulk buyer before you need one. Ask about drums, sampling, payment timing and the current price per pound, so the overflow has a plan.
• Mark March on the calendar. Ask your state maple association about the next maple weekend, and decide by January whether your sugarhouse can take visitors.

The first season is a test. Keep a notebook of where each gallon went and what it brought, and next spring you will know whether the stand, the market or the shop earned the most for your time.

What Do Experienced Sugarmakers Do Differently When They Sell?

Experienced sugarmakers decide where the syrup goes before the sap runs, not after the drums are full. They know roughly how many gallons each place will take, so they bottle for retail first and send only the leftover to bulk.

What they do that first-year sugarmakers skip:

• They keep a customer list. Names and phone numbers from every stand sale and market day, so the new crop sells by text in April before a single sign goes up.
• They sell every color, not just the one they like. The USDA's own flavor words run from delicate for Golden to strong for Very Dark, so a buyer who wants a mild table syrup and a baker who wants a stronger one both find a jug. A tasting of all four answers the question faster than a description.
• They price the ladder, not the jug. A half pint for first-time buyers, a quart for regulars, a gallon for the families who go through syrup fast.
• They hold syrup back. They keep jugs for the fall and holiday season instead of selling everything in April.
• They ask bakers. A local baker who already makes maple scones or maple oat bread needs syrup every week. In the Homegrown catalog alone, 12 bakery listings from 9 vendors name maple syrup as an ingredient, out of 37 listings from 27 vendors that mention maple at all.

The same thinking applies to value-added products. Some sugarmakers turn part of the crop into maple candy and maple cream, which sit beside the syrup as gifts and give a holiday table more than one thing to buy. Our guide on how to sell maple candy from home covers that side, from labels to the holiday market.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is the best place to sell maple syrup?

The best place to sell maple syrup for most small sugarmakers is a sugarhouse stand or a farmers market, paired with an online storefront link for reorders. Those places sell syrup at retail prices, which averaged $56.70 a gallon in 2025 according to the USDA, against $31.00 a gallon for bulk syrup sold in drums. Send only the syrup you cannot bottle and sell to a bulk buyer.

Can I sell maple syrup to a grocery store?

Yes, a small sugarmaker can sell maple syrup to a local grocery, co-op or farm store, usually by the case at 80 to 85 percent of the shelf price. On a quart you sell for $20, that is $16 to $17 wholesale. Bring a sample, a price list and a minimum order, and check whether your state license covers wholesale before the first delivery.

How much do bulk buyers pay for maple syrup?

Bascom Maple Farms, the biggest US bulk buyer by The Maple News' account, set its 2026 prices at $2.60 per pound of Golden or Amber syrup, $2.55 for Dark, $2.35 for Very Dark and $1.60 for Processing Grade, according to The Maple News on March 23, 2026. At about 11.1 pounds to the gallon, $2.60 a pound is about $28.80 a gallon. The USDA's 2025 bulk average across all buyers was $2.80 a pound.

Can I sell maple syrup online?

Yes, maple syrup sells online through Etsy, Amazon or your own storefront. Etsy takes about $2.35 of a $20 quart before shipping and Amazon's Individual plan takes $3.99, so marketplaces fit buyers who live far away. For local customers, a storefront link with pickup or local delivery keeps more of each sale, at 88 cents in card processing on a $20 quart plus the $10 monthly plan.

Do I need a license to sell maple syrup at a farmers market?

It depends on your state and your market, so check with your state department of agriculture and the market manager before your first market day. SDSU Extension's guidance says syrup must test below 0.85 water activity before it goes on a South Dakota market table, and Maine's agriculture department says packaged maple syrup may need a license and labeling. The federal definition also requires maple syrup to contain at least 66 percent soluble solids by weight.

Where can I sell Processing Grade maple syrup?

The USDA's grade standard, which is voluntary at the federal level, says Processing Grade maple syrup must be packed in containers of 5 gallons or larger, for use in making other foods, and not in consumer-size retail containers, so check whether your state's rules adopt it. Bulk buyers purchase it for use in other foods; Bascom Maple Farms listed $1.60 a pound for Processing Grade in its 2026 prices. That is about $17.70 a gallon, so keeping syrup in the Grade A range is worth real money.

Related Reading

Five guides that pick up where this one stops, each answering a question a sugarmaker usually hits right after deciding where to sell:

• How Much Should You Sell Maple Syrup For? The full price ladder from an $8 half pint to a $58 gallon, the USDA's price by state, and what a jug costs you to fill, so every place you sell starts from the same numbers.
• How to Sell Maple Syrup From Home The production and legal side: grades, density, labels and value-added maple products, for sugarmakers who are still getting set up.
• How to Sell Maple Candy From Home Turning part of the crop into candy for the gift season, with the cottage food and labeling questions answered.
• Where to Sell Honey: 7 Places That Actually Work The same seven-place approach for another shelf-stable farm product, useful if you keep bees beside your sugarbush.
• How to Set Up a Roadside Farm Stand The build, the signs and the payment box for selling syrup at the end of your driveway.