Catering license requirements in Florida

Most states hand a caterer a generic food establishment permit and leave you to work out whether it covers you. Florida does not. The Department of Business and Professional Regulation, Division of Hotels and Restaurants, publishes Caterers as its own licensing category alongside Permanent Food Service, Mobile Food Dispensing Vehicles, Temporary Food Service Events, Culinary Education Programs and Theme Park Food Carts. You are applying for the thing you are.

Florida’s split is by sector rather than by geography, which is the second thing to know. The Division of Hotels and Restaurants takes restaurants and caterers. The Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services takes retail food stores and food processing, and administers cottage food. The Department of Health takes certain institutional facilities. Three state agencies, no county food permitting, and the right one depends on what kind of business you are rather than where you live.

Who issues a caterer’s permit

The Department of Business and Professional Regulation, statewide. Its Division of Hotels and Restaurants licenses restaurants, caterers, mobile food dispensing vehicles, temporary food service events, culinary education programs and theme park food carts, and publishes plan review guides for each. There is no county health department step for a Florida caterer, which makes the process unusually simple to describe and unusually easy to get right the first time. Plan review is required for a food service establishment, so the kitchen is approved before you trade rather than inspected after.

Home kitchen or commercial kitchen?

Commercial. Cottage food in Florida is an exemption from permitting, granted to a category of product, not a license to run food service from a home. A licensed caterer goes through plan review with the Division of Hotels and Restaurants and carries manager certification. The moment somebody caters a hot buffet they are in that world, however generous the cottage food statute is about jars of jam.

The cottage food route

Yes, at Fla. Stat. § 500.80, and it is the most permissive in the country on channels as well as on money. Cottage food products are prepared in a private home kitchen and may be sold direct to consumers, over the internet, by mail order, and delivered by the postal service or a commercial carrier. Wholesale is the line: the statute states that a cottage food operation may not sell, offer for sale, or deliver cottage food products at wholesale. Products have to be prepackaged with a label carrying the operation’s name and address, the product name, ingredients by weight, net weight or volume, allergen information, and the statement "Made in a cottage food operation that is not subject to Florida’s food safety regulations."

The sales cap

Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The statute exempts an operation with annual gross sales of cottage food products that do not exceed $250,000, and that is the highest cottage food ceiling in the United States by a wide margin. It is a plain statutory figure with no inflation indexing attached, so unlike California, Minnesota or Texas the number on the page is the number, until the legislature changes it. Above the ceiling the exemption falls away and standard food permitting applies.

Food safety certification

Licensed establishments carry Food Service Manager Certification and food service employee training, both administered through the Division of Hotels and Restaurants. Cottage food operators are not subject to a certification requirement under § 500.80: the statute imposes labeling and channel rules, not training. That asymmetry is deliberate and it is large, so anyone moving from a cottage food business into catering should treat manager certification as a new line item rather than a formality.

Off-site events

The Division of Hotels and Restaurants issues a Temporary Food Service Event license, which is a named category on its licensing page alongside the permanent ones. As with everything else in Florida food service, it is a state license rather than a county one, so the same office handles an event in Pensacola and an event in Key West. That is a real convenience for a caterer who works statewide.

What people get wrong about Florida

The Florida cottage food exemption is genuinely light: no registration, no fee, no routine inspection, and the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services may enter and inspect the premises only upon receipt of a complaint. It is the closest thing in the country to a permissionless home food business at real scale.

The counterweight is the product scope. Cottage food is non-temperature-controlled only and cannot be sold wholesale. Both of those bite well before the $250,000 ceiling does, and a home producer who plans around the ceiling rather than around the product list has planned around the wrong constraint.

Because Florida splits by sector rather than geography, the wrong-agency mistake here is different from most states. It is not calling the state instead of the county. It is calling the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services about a catering license, or the Division of Hotels and Restaurants about a jar of jam.

What this page was written from

Every claim above comes from one of the sources below, and each entry says what was actually read there. A citation nobody opened backs nothing.

1. Fla. Stat. § 500.80 (cottage food operations) primary

   Re-opened live for this review. Confirms "annual gross sales of cottage food products that do not exceed $250,000", "A cottage food operation may not sell, offer for sale, or deliver cottage food products at wholesale", and the required label statement "Made in a cottage food operation that is not subject to Florida’s food safety regulations." Also carries the § 500.12 permit exemption and the complaint-only inspection provision.

2. Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation — Division of Hotels and Restaurants, Licensing primary

   Re-opened live for this review. Lists Permanent Food Service, Caterers, Culinary Education Programs, Mobile Food Dispensing Vehicles and Hot Dog Carts, Temporary Food Service Events, and Theme Park Food Carts, plus Food Service Manager Certification and plan review guides.

More on the paperwork in the licenses, permits and food safety chapter, or compare states on the state index.