How to sell homemade food online in India — pickles, masalas, snacks and sweets that survive the courier

TL;DR

• • Sell shelf-stable food. If it needs a fridge, don’t courier it.
• • Register with FSSAI and ask a CA about GST before shipping to other states.
• • Label every pack: ingredients, allergens, veg mark, net quantity, dates, FSSAI number, your address, MRP.
• • Test shelf life before you promise a best-before date.
• • Pack for drops: sealed jar, zip bag, bubble wrap, a box with no empty space.
• • Take payment online from new buyers; returned food can rarely be resold.

1. What to sell, and what not to ship

A parcel can spend several days in hot vans and warehouses. Choose food that stays good through that without a fridge.

Couriers also keep lists of items they won’t carry or will carry only with conditions, and liquids and perishable food can be on them. Check your aggregator’s list before you plan a product. If your food is fresh and local, like cakes and brownies, read how to start a home bakery business online instead; the delivery, payment and timing rules are different.

2. Paperwork: FSSAI, GST and packed-goods rules

This is general information, not legal or tax advice. Confirm every point with the authority or a CA.

• FSSAI. Anyone who makes and sells food, including from home, is generally expected to be registered with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India. Small businesses usually start with a basic registration; larger ones need a state or central licence. Apply on FoSCoS, FSSAI’s official portal. Put your number on every label and on your store.
• GST. Shipping food to other states brings in different GST rules from selling locally, and food items fall into different GST rates. Read do you need GST to sell online in India, use the GST calculator once you know your rate, and ask a CA first.
• Packed-goods rules. India’s Legal Metrology rules ask pre-packed goods to carry certain details, such as MRP, net quantity and the maker’s name and address, and online sellers are expected to show them on the product page too. Ask your CA or consultant how they apply to your packs.

3. What goes on the label

A label is where a stranger decides whether homemade food is safe to eat. Between the FSSAI labelling rules and the packed-goods rules, a packed food label usually carries the items below. The exact list for your product is in FSSAI’s labelling and display regulations, so check it (or ask whoever files your registration) before printing a thousand labels.

4. Shelf life: test it, don’t guess it

“Shelf life” is how long the food stays safe and tasty in its sealed pack. Grandmother’s recipe may last a year in her kitchen and a lot less in a courier van in May. Before you print a best-before date:

• • Keep a few packs from each batch, in the same jar or pouch you ship, at room temperature.
• • Open one at regular intervals and check smell, taste, texture and any mould. Write it down.
• • Print a date comfortably inside what you saw, and add “use a dry spoon” and “refrigerate after opening” where they apply.
• • For a formal figure, a food testing laboratory can run a shelf-life test on your product.

5. Packing that survives an Indian courier

• Pickles and anything oily: a jar with an inner seal, the lid taped, then each jar in its own zip bag. If it leaks, the oil stays in the bag.
• Glass: bubble wrap around each jar, then a box with padding on every side. Shake it; if anything moves, add padding.
• Masalas and powders: food-grade zip pouches, sealed, then a second bag. Moisture is what spoils them.
• Namkeen, chakli and cookies: airtight pouches inside a rigid box, so they arrive whole, not as crumbs.

Couriers charge by weight, or by volumetric weight (a figure worked out from the box’s size) when the box is big and light, whichever is higher. Use the smallest box that fits the padding. Our guide to shipping from home covers pickups, labels and returns, and Shiprocket and Shipmozo both connect to a SitesPlaced store for free.

6. Pricing a jar, including the parcel

Worked example for a 500 g jar of mango pickle. These are example numbers only; use your own costs.

At ₹399 plus delivery, about ₹171 is left per jar. Delivery is the other big cost, and it is charged per parcel, not per jar, so two or three jars in one box cost you much less per jar to send. That is why sampler packs and a free-delivery threshold work well for food: on SitesPlaced, set a flat delivery charge and “free delivery above” an amount, and the free-shipping bar tells buyers how much more to add. The product pricing calculator helps with the sums.

7. Taking payment

• UPI, cards and net banking through your own Razorpay, PhonePe or Cashfree account. SitesPlaced takes 0%; the gateway charges its own fee.
• Pay the store directly: buyers order, then pay your UPI ID; you ship once the money arrives.
• Cash on delivery (COD): the buyer pays on arrival. A refused food parcel comes back after days in transit and usually can’t be sold again, so think twice. You can switch COD off, or add a COD charge so paying online looks better.
• WhatsApp checkout: the order lands on your WhatsApp to confirm before you pack.

The COD vs prepaid calculator shows what refused parcels cost at your margins, and how to reduce RTO and fake COD orders has more.

8. Your first orders

• Start with people who already love your food: family WhatsApp groups, and relatives and friends who have moved to other cities for work or college and miss home food.
• Show the making on Instagram: mangoes being cut, spices drying in the sun, the jar being sealed. Price in the caption, store link in the bio.
• Sell a sampler: three small jars or pouches let a stranger try you at a lower price.
• Plan for festivals: Diwali snack boxes and gifting packs, announced early.
• Remind repeat buyers: a message when their jar is probably running low, with the product link.

9. Set up your free food store

1. Pick a template. The Food Store is built for packaged food: big bold type, colourful category cards, pack sizes like 250 g or 500 g right on the product card, and a − 1 + counter so buyers can add three snacks at once. If you sell a long list of small everyday items, the Grocery Store gives a dense grid with one-tap add, like a delivery app. Changing template later means a new store, so choose once. The food template guide compares them.
2. Add products with pack sizes as options, each with its own price, and stock per batch so a sold-out batch shows as sold out.
3. Put the label details on the product page: ingredients, allergens, veg or non-veg, net quantity, shelf life and storage.
4. Show your FSSAI number on your About page or in the footer.
5. Set checkout and delivery: online payment, COD if you want it, a flat delivery charge and a free-delivery threshold.
6. Publish on yourkitchen.sitesplaced.site and share the link. You can see other food sellers’ shops under food and grocery stores built on SitesPlaced.

10. When to upgrade

The free plan is ₹0 forever, with unlimited products and orders. When buyers start finding you beyond your family, Starter (₹199/month, or ₹1,990/year) adds your own domain such as yourkitchen.com, removes the SitesPlaced badge, adds store analytics, and makes your store’s pages answer about 4× faster than on the free plan. In our measurements on live paid stores on 28 September 2026, a page answered in about 75 ms instead of about 330 ms. “Answer” means how fast the page starts arriving on the phone, before the photos load, not the whole page load; price and stock changes still show at once. Growth (₹499/month) adds product reviews with Google star ratings, useful when strangers are deciding whether to trust homemade food. The code FREE7 gives 7 days free on either when you set up autopay; cancel before the first charge and you pay nothing.

Frequently asked questions