Bee Boyd slid on a baking mitt, fittingly decorated with bees, before pulling open the oven door. They took a quick glance at the puffy, mounded toffee and chocolate chip cookies inside, announced, “They’re perfect,” and pulled them out to cool.
Staying at home in their Memorial apartment, Boyd sometimes repeats this process upward of 10 times in a day, churning out enough cookies to satisfy customers online and at places like the Houston Farmers Market. Along with their fiancé, Ty’Sun Ambres, Boyd runs All The Buzz Bakery as a cottage food business, meaning that it’s operated out of their home rather than a commercial kitchen.
For Boyd, a Navy veteran, the flexibility of this model worked best with their disabilities — even though they knew from the start that Texas law would limit their business. Currently, cottage food businesses can’t sell food that has to be refrigerated. They have to include home addresses on every food label. And perhaps most importantly, they can’t bring in more than $50,000 in revenue a year, not even accounting for expenses…