Catering license requirements in Maryland

If you want a single sentence explaining why most caterers need a commercial kitchen, Maryland supplies it. Anne Arundel County’s health department states that each catering business must obtain a food service facility license, and that a catering business may not operate from a private residence or unlicensed kitchen. All food and beverages have to be prepared at the licensed facility where the business was inspected and approved.

That is unusually direct, and it is stated by a county rather than by the state, which tells you where the authority sits. Maryland licenses and inspects food service through county health departments. The Maryland Department of Health writes the rules under COMAR Title 10 and supports plan review, but the license is a county license and the inspector is a county inspector.

Who issues a caterer’s permit

Your county health department. Maryland counties license and inspect restaurants, snack bars, institutional food facilities and event food service, and issue the food service facility license a catering business needs. The Department of Health’s role is rule-making under COMAR Title 10 and plan review support. Because the county holds the license, the county is also who decides whether your proposed kitchen passes, and the answer for a private residence is already published.

Home kitchen or commercial kitchen?

Commercial, unambiguously, and this is the clearest statement of the rule this review found in any state. A catering business may not operate from a private residence or unlicensed kitchen, and all food and beverages must be prepared at the licensed facility where the business was inspected and approved. There is no home caterer license, no separate room exception, and no volume threshold below which it stops applying. Maryland is the state to cite when someone asks whether they can simply cook at home and deliver.

The cottage food route

Yes, under COMAR 10.15.03.27, and its channels are more generous than the catering rule would suggest. A cottage food product is a non-potentially-hazardous food sold in Maryland directly to a consumer from a residence, at a farmers market, at a public event, by personal delivery or by mail delivery, or directly to a retail food store. That retail-store channel is unusual: most direct-only states forbid exactly it. Typical products are jams, jellies, candy, dried mixes and baked goods. Producing anything non-cottage or potentially hazardous requires a food license and moves production to a commercial kitchen.

The sales cap

Not stated. The Maryland Department of Health page read for this review states no cap, which is an absence rather than a declaration. No figure is published here as a result. Confirm with the Department or your county health department before planning around either the presence or the absence of a ceiling.

Confidence: unconfirmed. This review could not confirm this specific from a source it could read, and it is not stated here as settled. Your Maryland county health department, under the Maryland Department of Health is the authority. Ask them directly.

Food safety certification

Food service facilities carry certified food service manager requirements under COMAR, enforced by the county. This review did not read a page stating the cottage food side’s certification position, so nothing is asserted about it here. Both questions belong to the county health department, and asking them together is more efficient than asking them separately.

Confidence: unconfirmed. This review could not confirm this specific from a source it could read, and it is not stated here as settled. Your Maryland county health department, under the Maryland Department of Health is the authority. Ask them directly.

Off-site events

From the county health department, which in Maryland licenses event food service including fairs and carnivals as a named category rather than as an afterthought. Farmers market vendors have a separate timing rule worth knowing: applications go to the market or the health department at least two weeks before participating. Build that fortnight into any plan that involves a market date.

What people get wrong about Maryland

Maryland is the state that makes the commissary question concrete. Elsewhere the answer to "can I cater from home?" is assembled from a definition, an exclusion and an inference. Here a county health department has written it down in one sentence, and every other Maryland requirement follows from it.

The asymmetry inside Maryland is striking and worth naming: a home baker has a route into retail food stores that a Maryland caterer does not have into anybody’s kitchen. The cottage food channel is broader than most states while the catering rule is stricter than most states.

Two weeks is the number to remember for farmers markets. It is short enough to feel ignorable and long enough to lose you a date.

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. Anne Arundel County Department of Health — Catering Business primary

   Re-opened live for this review. Confirms "Each catering business must obtain a food service facility license." and "A catering business may not operate from a private residence or unlicensed kitchen."

2. Maryland Department of Health — Farmer’s Markets and Cottage Food Businesses primary

   The cottage food product definition, the non-hazardous scope, the direct-to-consumer and direct-to-retail-food-store channels, that county health departments handle food service facility licensing, the COMAR 10.15.03.27 reference, and the two-week farmers-market application lead time. The page states no sales cap.

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