"In Adam Smith's time it was still quite common to brew beer at home, although not as common as 200 years earlier. The baker, who had an oven, would bake the bread of all people in the neighourhood. People would bring their bread to be baked communally. In the UK there were two kinds of slaughter-houses, private and public, which belonged to public authorities. In the public anybody could slaughter their own animals. The recipes weren't secret, and anybody could do it for themselves and did. In Adam Smith's time guilds were already falling out of favour, in The Wealth of Nations he himself was extremely critical of the guilds. And the year after he died guilds were abolished in France." - Daniel W. Crompton