Globally, the woman is often seen as the center of the rural family. She fulfills the role of caretaker and housekeeper and, in the national imaginary, the rural woman is often the protector of heritage. Recently in Jordan, as a result of an international and governmental push for rural development, there has been an increase in women’s businesses selling traditionally homemade goods. These women’s businesses can be seen at nearly any outdoor market or festival in Jordan. Some common products include soaps, spices, dairy products, baked goods, full meals, olive oil, pickles, jams, and handicrafts. However the process of transitioning from domestic work to the formal economy is not as simple as earning money for previously unpaid labor. Instead, women must learn how to engage with and navigate a new network of customers, business consultants, and government agencies in order to get their products from house to market. While work on women’s entrepreneurial labor has argued that projects should be evaluated based on women’s goals and perspectives, further work is needed to understand how women are obtaining these goals through different structures and business strategies. By calling attention to the larger structures with which women engage, this paper asks, how does producing local traditional foods, largely for urban consumers, change the nature of women’s labor and affect rural livelihoods? This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork with women’s rural food businesses and organizations in order to examine how women structure their businesses within the context of their social, economic, and governmental networks. Through this investigation, I argue that although women often see their work as supporting a traditional rural lifestyle, production for distant customers necessitates several changes. Women must learn how to produce for different people’s tastes, how to market their goods and communicate quality and safety, and how to balance this work with their other roles and expectations. Furthermore, I found that women whose businesses or organizations involve intermittent donors, faced a larger pressure to find ways to expand the business. Meanwhile, women with sole control over the businesses had fewer pressures for expansion. These findings provide a more nuanced understanding of the outcomes of rural development plans supporting women’s businesses, in their various forms.