Good morning!
Here’s your Daily News for Monday, August 2.
- Melissa Humble and her husband moved back to Alabama in March 2020, just before much of the state shut down.
- Looking for a way to earn income and stay home to protect her immunocompromised spouse from COVID-19, Humble began baking and selling French macarons and other treats.
- HumbleBee Bakes is now a regular at farmers markets around Headland in Henry County, and Humble locally sources the fruit, jellies and eggs that go into her products.
- But the state’s laws regulating the cottage food industry were limiting. It capped gross sales at $20,000 a year and didn’t allow for Internet sales.
- That online restriction especially hurt Humble around the holidays.
- “I have had so many people ask about purchasing online and shipping, and that just wasn’t an option,” Humble said. She estimates she lost about $400 in sales in December from people who contacted her wanting to order her macarons.
- Starting this month, those restrictions will be eased under Senate Bill 160, approved in the spring. Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, sponsored the law change.
- “It takes the ridiculous shackles off of people who want to start home businesses,” Orr said. “This could be the first step, the incubation of new small businesses in the home.”
- Read more from Mary Sell HERE.
- After much delay, senators unveiled a nearly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package, wrapping up days of painstaking work on the…
