The ladder — pick your rung honestly
The three categories look similar from the outside and are wildly different to start. What separates them is not skill. It is food safety law.
Rung 1 — Floral arrangements · start this week
Flowers are not food. No health permit, no kitchen inspection, no cottage food regime. The barriers are commercial rather than regulatory: wholesalers generally want a business registration and a resale certificate before they will sell to you, and you need somewhere cool to condition stems.
Cash flow is the kindest here — flowers are bought against a confirmed order, so a job funds itself.
Rung 2 — Pastry & baked goods · start in 2–6 weeks
Most jurisdictions have a cottage food regime that permits some home-produced foods with registration and labeling, and those regimes generally reach shelf-stable, non-TCS baked goods. They generally do not reach cream fillings, custards, or cheesecake.
Which of your products land on which side is exactly what What You Can Sell makes you determine before you buy anything.
Rung 3 — Cheese & charcuterie boards · start in 4–10 weeks
This is the one everybody wants to start with, and it is the hardest. Cheese and cured meats are TCS foods — they need temperature control for safety — and building a board is food handling. Cottage food regimes almost universally do not cover it.
Realistically this means a licensed kitchen (shared commissary kitchens rent by the hour, which is how nearly every small food business starts), a food handler's or manager's certification, and in many places a caterer's permit.
None of that is a reason not to do it. It is a reason not to do it first.
The recommended path
Start on Rung 1 or 2 → bank 3–5 real jobs → build the photo portfolio
→ use that revenue to fund the Rung 3 licensing
Rung 3 costs money before it earns any. Rungs 1 and 2 earn money almost immediately. Fund the hard lane with the easy one.
Starting from scratch with no capital at all
There is a fourth entry that costs nothing, and it is the best-kept secret in this model.
Join a Guild Job as a Contributor. On a large job (Working Together), a Job Lead with a licensed kitchen needs hands for a build day. Working under the Lead's permit, in the Lead's licensed space, on the Lead's insurance, you need no license of your own — verify this with your jurisdiction, because it is exactly the kind of thing that varies.
What it gets you:
- Paid the same day or same week, at a lot price agreed before you start.
- The standard, learned by doing it rather than by reading The Standard alone.
- A relationship with an experienced maker, which is the thing that actually turns into a business.
- A record with the network — build days are how you earn the standing to lead one.
Three or four build days will typically pay for a food handler's certification and a first month of commissary time. That is the zero-capital route to Rung 3.
The 30-day plan
| Days | Do | Produced |
|---|---|---|
| 1–3 | Pick your rung. Be honest about money and time, not about talent. | A lane |
| 4–7 | Run What You Can Sell end to end. Call the authority. Write down what they said and who said it. | A completed legal-gate record |
| 8–10 | Buy the minimum kit for your lane (§4). Nothing else. | Kit |
| 11–14 | Build three practice pieces at the size you intend to sell. Photograph each to the spec in The Standard §5. Give them away to people who will tell you the truth. | 3 pieces, 6+ photos |
| 15–18 | Cost those three pieces with real receipts using Pricing Your Work. Most people discover they were about to charge half. | A costing worksheet per product |
| 19–21 | Submit the maker application with photos, costing, and your legal-gate record. | Application in |
| 22–26 | Network review, insurance and licensing verified on file. Meanwhile: shadow a delivery or work a build day. | Verified file |
| 27–30 | First routed job — small, single-category, deliberately unambitious. | First invoice |
If day 4–7 comes back "you cannot legally sell this from here yet," that is the plan working. Drop to a lower rung and keep the date.
Minimum viable kit
Buy the short list. Buy the rest out of revenue. Prices are not listed here on purpose — get real quotes, they move constantly and by region.
Floral: clean buckets · floral shears · stem stripper · wire & tape · a starter set of vessels · a cool space out of direct sun · flat-bottomed transport crates.
Pastry: a scale that reads to the gram · sheet pans and liners · piping set · airtight transport containers · food-safe packaging with a label area · a thermometer.
Boards: a small set of serving boards in two sizes · small bowls for wet items · cheese knives · portioning scale · cling and cold packs · an insulated transport container that actually holds temperature · a thermometer.
All three: a phone camera and a neutral surface for photos · a printed label stock ·
a business email that is not boardqueen92@.
One purchase to make before any equipment: liability insurance. It is the network's requirement, it is what lets a corporate buyer say yes, and it is usually the largest fixed cost of year one. Get three quotes.
What the network checks before routing you a job
Not a test of taste. A test of whether a corporate buyer can safely be pointed at you.
- Legal-gate record complete, with the authority named and dated
- Licenses or permits for your rung, on file and current
- Certificate of insurance, Todo Tasteful named as additional insured
- Three photographed pieces meeting The Standard
- A costing worksheet showing you priced above cost
- A delivery zone and an honest weekly capacity
- Signed acknowledgment of the standard and the order runbook
Everything on that list is a document. That is the whole onboarding cost.
The progression
Where this goes, if you want it to. Criteria in Working Together §6.
Contributor → Solo Maker → Pod Member → Pod Lead → Job Lead
(no license, (own lane, (mixed (owns the (owns a job
build days) small jobs) events) client) of any size)
A Contributor who never wants to run anything can stay a Contributor and be paid for build days indefinitely. That is a legitimate outcome, not a failure to progress.