How to Sell Cookies at Farmers Markets: Everything I Learned Building Our Bakery

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When I first started our bakery (Tetelestai Bakery), I definitely did not have some elaborate farmers market strategy. Our first event was a tiny charity market with a basic three-tier display from Amazon, a simple banner we had made locally, and business cards with a logo I had created online. We brought our cookies, set everything up (not nearly early enough, which was lesson number one, haha), and hoped people would actually want to buy them. We almost sold out. 🥹

Over the years, those little markets turned into huge market bakes, lines of customers, hundreds and sometimes thousands of cookies going through our kitchen, employees helping with production, and eventually our own commercial bakery. God blessed our business beyond what I ever could have imagined when we set up that first little table.

We also learned A LOT along the way.

There are plenty of things I would eventually invest in if I were building another bakery, but I absolutely don't think you need a giant mixer, custom packaging and a perfectly branded booth before you sell your first cookie. Most of what made our market setup what it became happened because we started with what we had, paid attention to our customers, and slowly figured out what made our lives easier and our products stand out.

So, if you're thinking about selling cookies at a farmers market or pop-up, here are the things I would want you to know.

Just stick with one thing

I know this sounds ridiculously simple, but I think this was one of the biggest lessons I learned in our entire business.

When I first started baking commercially, I wanted to make EVERYTHING. I love baking, so why wouldn't I sell cookies and cinnamon rolls and croissants and whatever else sounded fun that week?

Well...because it was exhausting. 😂

Every additional type of product brought an entirely different production process with it. Suddenly we're dealing with dough that needs to rise, different ingredients, different packaging, different prep schedules, and a million other little things that add up very quickly when you're trying to produce food at any kind of volume.

People genuinely loved some of those products, especially our brown butter cinnamon rolls, so narrowing down wasn't necessarily an easy decision. But when we decided we were going to make really epic cookies and focus our energy there, our business exploded.

It also gave me room to do what I loved most, which was creating. Instead of trying to make ten different types of baked goods, I could make ten completely ridiculous cookie flavors. We became known for these huge, creative stuffed cookies that people couldn't get anywhere else, and even if there were other cookie vendors at an event, our products were different enough that people still came looking for us.

If you want to sell cookies, I would much rather see you make a menu of fantastic cookies than wear yourself out trying to run an entire bakery out of your home.

Make it obvious why your cookies are special

This one came directly from our very first market.

We brought some stuffed cookies, but from the outside, they just looked like really big cookies. We found ourselves explaining over and over what was inside each one, and words just didn't do them justice.

So after exactly ONE market, we started cutting them open.

That changed everything.

Instead of telling someone there was a brownie batter filling or a pistachio cake ball inside, they could see it. People would stop walking when they saw the display. They would point things out to each other, take pictures, and even FaceTime people to show them the cookies. It became such an effective part of our setup that if you dropped me into a brand-new city tomorrow and told me to start selling cookies again, I would display them exactly the same way.

I've actually written an entire post about how we displayed our stuffed cookies to sell more, with pictures of the actual setup, so I won't repeat all of that here. But the larger point applies whether you sell stuffed cookies or something completely different: figure out what makes your product special and make sure someone walking past your booth can see it.

We never stood outside our booth trying to call people over, and we didn't hand out samples. Our cottage food requirements made sampling more trouble than it was worth because samples needed to be individually packaged and labeled, so we let the display do the heavy lifting. We stayed present, greeted people, answered questions and talked to everyone who came over, but we never felt like we had to pitch people into buying a cookie.

Your menu doesn't have to be huge, but give people something to come back for

Now, I'm probably not the best example of restraint when it comes to flavors. 😂 Creating was my favorite part of owning the bakery, and I would regularly show up to markets with around ten different cookies.

There were certain flavors I could count on, though. Our chocolate chip cookie came with us EVERY time and consistently sold out. We always had something with Oreo, peanut butter, Biscoff, and Nutella because people knew those flavors and loved them. Our Nutella Chocolate Chip, Hole in One Pistachio Cake Ball, Cookies & Cream Brownie Batter and Biscoff Banana Bread (pro-tip...trade out cookie butter for Nutella on this one and it's a top seller too!!) were all strong sellers, and then I would fill out the menu with whatever new ideas I had been playing with or other fun flavors.

We would also typically have a gluten-free option and sometimes something dairy-free or vegan.

Looking back, I probably made my own life harder by creating so many new flavors all the time. Every new flavor meant a new recipe to produce, a new label to create, different ingredients to manage and another thing to add to our production schedule. At the same time, our customers LOVED seeing what we came up with, and that creativity became part of our brand.

So I don't think the answer is that you need ten flavors, because you absolutely don't. I would start with a few products you can execute incredibly well, pay attention to what people buy again and again, and leave yourself a little room to make something fun that gives your regulars a reason to see what's coming next.

Please actually calculate what your cookies cost

Pricing is one area where I really don't recommend looking at another baker and deciding, "Well, she charges $6, so I'll charge $6."

Our cookies weren't even all the same price within our own bakery because they didn't cost the same amount to produce. At the end, our chocolate chip cookie was $5 because it was our least expensive cookie to make. Our other six-ounce drop cookies were around $6, and the more elaborate stuffed cookies were usually $7 to $8.

Those are historical numbers from our bakery, not what I'm telling you to charge. Ingredient costs, packaging, overhead and your local market all matter.

I personally used CakeCost when I was figuring out our pricing, and it was incredibly helpful because I could actually see what went into the cost of each recipe instead of guessing. We also didn't typically offer bundle discounts at markets because we were already selling out at our regular prices. If discounts or multi-cookie offers make sense for your business, that's perfect! Just make sure you know your numbers before you start giving margin away. 

Don't underestimate your packaging

This is one of those little things I probably wouldn't have understood until I saw it happening in real life.

We originally used clear self-sealing cellophane bags that we put our logo sticker on, and I actually really liked them for our cookies because the cookies were HUGE. People would walk around the market eating one, decide they couldn't possibly finish the whole thing, seal the bag back up and save it for later.

Eventually, we invested in custom branded bags which saved us a ton of time and made everything look much more professional. We also had custom rubber stamps made with our logo and stamped the paper bags customers carried their cookies around in.

Then we started hearing things like, "I knew you guys were here because I saw someone with your bag."

People would walk around eating these giant cookies and other shoppers would literally ask them where they got them. Our customers were marketing the bakery for us without even realizing it.

I would think about packaging as more than something that holds the cookie. It can make the product easier to eat, keep it fresh, make your business recognizable and help the person who just saw someone eating your cookie figure out where on earth they bought it.

Market prep takes so much longer than baking the cookies

I chronically underestimated this in the beginning.

There is the actual baking, of course, but then there's making fillings, portioning dough, weighing everything, creating labels, printing labels, packaging cookies, sealing bags, organizing inventory, loading coolers, loading the vehicle, setting up the booth, cleaning everything...and somehow there are always seventeen other things you forgot about until you're doing them.

For a larger Saturday market, we might start prep on Wednesday or Thursday. We would portion dough and fillings ahead of time and refrigerate what made sense, then time the actual baking so the cookies were as fresh as possible for the event. When I was still operating from home and our volume got larger, I would have one or two people come in to help me with production.

A few relatively simple equipment upgrades made this SO much easier. We bought stackable dough boxes that were actually designed for pizza dough, lined them with parchment, and used them to store portioned cookie dough in the refrigerator. We'd put a layer of plastic wrap on top of cookies before adding lid to seal them well, and they made keeping ready dough balls in the fridge SO much easier! Super easy to clean too. We also bought a 10-tier rolling sheet pan rack pretty early on, and eventually we had two 20-tier racks plus the 10-tier rack.

The rolling racks may not sound very exciting, but try cooling hundreds of giant cookies without somewhere to put all those sheet pans and suddenly they're thrilling. 😂

And eventually we bought a 20-quart Avantco mixer from WebstaurantStore (works with 110V power), which genuinely changed my life. Making batch after batch of dough in a KitchenAid is fine when you're starting out, but once your volume gets high enough, you spend an unbelievable amount of time simply repeating the same mixing process. The larger mixer was worth every penny for us.

I would never tell someone to go buy all of this for their first market of course. Upgrade as your business gives you a reason to upgrade. Pay attention to the thing that is eating up your time every single week, because that's usually where the next investment makes sense.

PLANNING YOUR OWN MARKET WEEK? 📋

I turned the spreadsheet system I used to plan our bakery production weeks into a free Bakery Production Planner. Plan your flavors, batches, inventory, projected sales, ingredient needs, production days, shopping & market prep all in one place.

GET THE FREE BAKERY PRODUCTION PLANNER →

Keep your actual booth fairly simple

Our booth eventually became very recognizable, but there really wasn't a ton going on.

We had a 10x10 tent, fitted spandex tablecloths so we weren't fighting fabric any time the wind decided to show up, a logo banner behind us, a large chalkboard, a sign sharing the meaning behind the Tetelestai Bakery name, and our cookie display.

Most of our inventory stayed tucked away in large coolers behind everything. We didn't cover every inch of the tables in packaged cookies because I wanted the cookies on the display to be what caught your eye.

Also, get there earlier than you think you need to. Seriously. Setting up a tent and an entire bakery booth somehow operates in a different dimension where twenty minutes lasts six seconds. 🫠

Make checkout the easy part

We used Square for payments and eventually bought a Square Terminal. The basic phone reader absolutely works, but once we were doing higher-volume markets, I loved having a dedicated terminal. We weren't tying up anyone's phone, it was incredibly reliable, and checkout was so fast and easy.

We also paid around $20 per month at the time for a hotspot that we brought to markets so we didn't have to depend on whatever internet happened to be available.

Again, you don't need to buy all of this before you've sold a cookie. But once you're standing in front of a line of customers, you will be very grateful if the payment part of the transaction works without anyone having to think about it.

Know the laws where you live

This is one area where I don't think anyone should rely on a random blog post, including mine, to tell them exactly what they need to do.

Cottage food laws vary by state, so look up the current requirements where you live and understand what you are allowed to sell, how products need to be labeled, what your sampling requirements are, and anything else that applies to your business.

Those rules actually influenced the way I developed recipes. I wanted to make these wild stuffed cookies while keeping as many of our fillings as possible within cottage food requirements, so I became very intentional about avoiding ingredients that required time and temperature control when I could.

It's one of the reasons I still think about cottage food bakers when I'm developing recipes for this site. I know many of you are using these recipes in your own businesses, and I want them to be as practical for you as possible.

We also carried business insurance through FLIP, which was incredibly easy for us to manage online and made adding markets and events simple. Whatever route you take, please do your own homework here and make sure you're properly set up for wherever you live and sell.

Don't just show up to sell cookies

This may be the part I care about the most.

God blessed our bakery immensely, and I will never pretend there was some perfect business formula I followed that guaranteed the success we experienced. There wasn't.

But I do believe the relationships we built were a HUGE part of what made Tetelestai Bakery what it became.

When you go to markets, get to know people. Talk to your customers. Talk to the other vendors. Buy their products. Find ways to support each other. If the farmer a few booths down has beautiful strawberries, buy the strawberries, make and incredible menu item with them, tell your customers where they came from and tag that farm when you share it. We used local spices, flour, produce, honey, and so so much more. These people are still incredible friends to this day and I have never ever regretted plugging our money and support into our locals. 

Be part of the community you're selling to. ❤️

And if you're able to be the person standing in front of your customers, especially while your business is growing, I think there is tremendous value in that. We developed incredibly loyal customers over the years. I would stand there listening to someone in line tell the complete stranger behind them which cookies they needed to order. People brought their friends. They came looking for us at markets. They challenged me to create ridiculous flavors. Some of those customer requests eventually became permanent menu items.

We always wanted our customers to feel like part of our bakery family, and I genuinely believe they did.

How do you choose the right farmers market?

I wish I had a perfect formula for this one, but I don't.

For us, it took trial and error. Certain areas performed really well, and others simply didn't. We also found that some pop-up shopping events actually performed better for us than traditional farmers markets because there was less food competition and people were there specifically to shop. We did well at both, but it took time to find our favorites.

I would try different markets before making huge assumptions about where your business belongs. Pay attention to where people buy from you, what kinds of customers come through, how much competition there is, whether the event itself brings people in, and whether those people are actually there to spend money. Make sure to market where you will be and what you will have too, don't just rely on the market's promotion!

After a while, you start getting a feel for the places where your particular product works.

If I were starting a cookie business again

If someone dropped me into a new city tomorrow and told me I had to start selling cookies at markets again, I honestly wouldn't change much about the model we eventually landed on.

I would focus on cookies and make them really, really well. I would bring flavors that people couldn't find at every other booth while keeping a few crowd-pleasers around. I would cost every recipe carefully, package everything well, create a clean setup that made the cookies impossible to miss, and cut those stuffed cookies right down the middle so people could see exactly what they were getting.

But I wouldn't try to recreate the bakery we eventually became on day one.

Our first market had an inexpensive Amazon display and a simple banner, and we almost sold out. The big mixer came when we needed it. The rolling racks came when we needed them. The label printer came after I had already driven myself half insane dealing with Avery labels (never again lol). 

There are so many things I had to figure out through trial and error, and I'm actually grateful for those years because they're the reason I know what I know now. But that doesn't mean everyone else needs to learn every lesson the hard way, and that's why I love being able to share all of this now.

God blessed our little bakery more than I ever could have imagined when I started baking cookies at home. If anything we learned along the way can make another baker's road a little easier, help them build something that serves their family well, or give them the confidence to finally sign up for that first market, I am incredibly grateful to be able to share it.

I hope this information has helped you or blessed you in some way. 🫶 I know firsthand how much trial and error goes into building a baking business, and one of my favorite parts of our bakery season is getting to share what we learned along the way.

If you're building your own cookie business, I have a growing collection of free bakery-style cookie recipes here on the site that you're welcome to use, along with my full collection of stuffed cookie recipes and bundles if you're looking for something a little more unique to add to your menu. Many of these are the same recipes and flavors we sold in our own bakery, and I love hearing from bakers who are now successfully selling them in theirs. ♥️

And as always, if you have a question about something I didn't cover here, feel free to reach out. I'm happy to help however I can! ☺️

-Kaley