For cottage food makers

From water bath to market day.

A batch of jam is fruit, sugar, pectin, and a case of jars — twelve half-pints, each needing a label, a price, and a sell-by. Cottage food runs on batches and market days, with your state's rules riding along. MadeKeeper costs the batch to the jar, keeps the records, and tells you whether Saturday's table beat staying home.

The app is live. Free during the pilot. Founding rate $19/mo, locked for life.

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No card to start. Use it free through the pilot, and lock the $19/mo founding rate for as long as you stay.

How MadeKeeper maps to your kitchen

Ingredients by the pound, jars by the caseFruit, sugar, pectin, flour, butter — logged at grocery-receipt reality. A batch recipe pulls them down and splits the cost across the jars or loaves it made.

Batches with datesEvery water-bath run gets a batch date and a sell-by. What's fresh, what's close, and what needs the discount basket is a glance, not a sniff test.

Market day is the P&LTable fee, miles at the IRS rate, the morning's hours — against what actually sold. The drive-home question, "did I even make money today?", gets a number.

The honor box and the wholesale caseRoadside honor-box sales and a case into the local shop track alongside market days — every channel in one ledger, each at its own prices.

One batch of jam, to the penny

Say you put up 12 half-pints of strawberry jam:

6 lb strawberries @ $2.80/lb$16.80
4 lb sugar @ 89¢/lb$3.56
Pectin$2.40
12 jars and lids @ $1.05$12.60
12 labels @ 8¢$0.96

Batch cost — $3.03 per jar$36.32

At $9 a jar you keep $5.97 each before the table fee — so a market that sells eight jars grossed $72.00 and needs the rest of the table to carry the morning. MadeKeeper does that whole-table math for you.

MadeKeeper keeps the batch records your state's cottage food paperwork asks about — dates, ingredients, lots — and your labels' information lives in the app instead of a recipe-box card; your state's allowed list and caps stay yours to check.

Straight about what's live

Materials and true cost per piece, products (in bulk or one-of-a-kind), sales that drain stock, the was-this-fair-worth-it event math, mileage, expenses, and the year-end tax packet — all in the app today. Etsy and Square sync, your own storefront, a booth card reader, and shipping labels are building, shaped with founding makers. Nothing above describes a feature that doesn't exist without saying so. See the full live-vs-building list →

Questions cottage food makers ask

Can MadeKeeper track sell-by dates?

Yes — batches carry made-on and sell-by dates, so your stock answer is always "what's fresh," not just "what's on the shelf." The discount basket gets its own pricing tier.

How does market-day math work?

Log the table fee, the round-trip miles, and your hours; count what sold. The event report answers profit, profit per hour, and go-back-or-skip — the drive-home questions, answered before the drive home.

Does it help with cottage food paperwork?

It keeps the records — batches, dates, ingredients, sales — organized and exportable. What your state allows, caps, and requires on labels stays between you and your program's rules.

Ready to see your real numbers?

The app is live and free during the pilot. Lock the $19/mo founding rate for as long as you stay.

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