What St. Louis home sellers make on Coop, and what's still missing

St. Louis has more home sellers on Coop than any other city we serve. As of this week that's 199 sellers and 634 live listings across the metro, from St. Louis itself out to Saint Charles and over the river to Edwardsville. Dallas is close behind with 183 sellers, then Houston with 149.

I spend a lot of time looking at what sellers in each city actually list, because it tells you two things at once: what's working, and where someone new could walk in and have the shelf mostly to themselves. St. Louis is a great example of both!

Here's what the shelf looks like right now.

What St. Louis sellers list

(Categories overlap, so a sourdough loaf also counts as bread and as a baked good. That's why the rows add up to more than 634.)

Bread is the crowded lane

Almost four in ten St. Louis listings are baked goods, and bread is the biggest piece of that. 32 different sellers list sourdough. That's a lot of loaves!

It's also a sign the demand is real. In a recent week, sourdough and eggs were the two words St. Louis buyers searched most in the app, and sourdough searches almost always turned up something nearby.

So if you bake sourdough here, you're not too late. You're just not alone, which means the thing that sets you apart is less "I make bread" and more how you sell it. A set pickup day every week does a lot of that work, because a buyer who knows Thursday is bread day comes back on Thursday. (Here's how to set a weekly pickup rhythm on Coop.)

One St. Louis surprise while we're here: tallow. 17 listings from 10 sellers, enough for its own city page. Dallas has 3.

Where the shelf is thin

Cakes. Our biggest metro has just 9 cake listings from 7 sellers. Dallas, with fewer sellers overall, has 30 from 22. Missouri's cottage food law names cakes outright as a baked good you can sell from home. The catch is fillings and frostings that need the fridge to stay safe (cream, custard, cheesecake, cream cheese frosting), which our Missouri guide reads as likely off the table. Buttercream birthday cakes, bundts and pound cakes are a wide open lane.

Jam and jelly. 3 listings from 2 sellers. Missouri lets you sell canned jam or jelly from your home kitchen under the same law that covers your bread, with no extra permit. If you already put up preserves every summer, that's a whole category with almost nobody in it.

Dried herbs. Also covered by the same law, and almost all of the 9 St. Louis listings come from one seller. Herb blends and tea mixes make good add-ons for a bread buyer who's already picking up from you.

The holidays. Thanksgiving is November 26, about six weeks out, and St. Louis has 3 Thanksgiving listings. Christmas cookies? One. Holiday baking sells best when buyers can claim a spot early, so now is the time to list pies, rolls and cookie boxes as pre-orders. (I wrote up how to take Thanksgiving pie pre-orders a couple of weeks ago.)

Honey, eggs and meat work differently

Buyers want these. Eggs are the most searched word on Coop nationally, and honey got searched from St. Louis in that same recent week with only 3 local listings to show for it. Meat is thin here too (4 listings).

These aren't covered by Missouri's cottage food law, though. That law covers three things only: baked goods, canned jam or jelly, and dried herbs. Eggs, honey and meat follow other rules, so check with the state before you list. When you do list, the food and meat listings lesson walks through the details buyers expect to see.

Missouri's rules, in short

Missouri is one of the easier states to start in. From our Missouri guide:

• No permit, registration or training certificate.
• No sales cap. The old $50,000 cap went away in 2022.
• You sell directly to the person eating it, not through stores or cafés.
• Online orders are fine when you and your buyer are both in Missouri.
• Your label needs your name and address, plus a statement that the food isn't inspected by the health department. (More on labels here.)

If you're on the Illinois side in Edwardsville or the Metro East, Illinois has its own rules, so check those instead.

Where to start

If you've been thinking about selling, St. Louis already has a lot of buyers looking, and some lanes where you'd be one of very few. Pick the thing you make well that the table above says is thin, and open a free storefront. It takes a few minutes!

And if you're here to buy, everything for sale near St. Louis is one tap away.

Cole Coleman, founder of Coop

This is general information, not legal advice. Laws change, and cities and counties can add their own rules, so confirm with the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services and your local health department before you sell.