Cottage food law
Updated August 2026
Cottage food laws are state-level rules that let certain low-risk foods be produced in a home kitchen and sold directly to consumers without a commercial facility or a full food-service permit. What qualifies, how much may be sold, and where it may be sold are all defined by the individual state.
Also called: cottage food operation, homemade food law.
Why it matters to a small caterer
A cottage food allowance is where a great many food businesses start, and it is genuinely useful: it lets a baker or a jam maker sell legally, at a farmers market or from a home kitchen, without renting production time before there is revenue to pay for it. If your product is shelf-stable and your customer is the person eating it, it may be the whole permit conversation you need for a while.
Catering usually is not that. The moment the work involves hot food held for service, cooking on site, or feeding a room at an event, most cottage food allowances stop covering it, and the answer is a permitted commercial kitchen plus whatever catering or food-service permit your jurisdiction issues. Caterers who grow out of cottage food without noticing are not usually caught by an inspector; they are caught by a venue or a corporate client asking for a permit number they cannot produce.
The rules are state law, and they differ
There is no national cottage food statute. The rules are written state by state, and states disagree about almost everything that matters: which foods are on the allowed list, whether sales must be face to face or may be shipped, whether an annual sales cap applies, what a label has to say, and whether any training or registration is required first. Some states also let counties or cities add rules on top.
So the only reliable procedure is to read your own state’s current rules and then confirm with your local health department before you sell anything. A summary written anywhere else, including this page, is a starting point and never the authority.
The honest signal that you have outgrown it
You are being asked for a permit number by a venue. You are being asked to serve hot food at an event. You are approaching whatever sales limit your state sets. Any one of those is the point to price a commissary and treat the move as a business decision rather than an emergency.
Where this shows up
Put the terms to work on a real quote
CaterKit costs every dish from your own ingredients, prices the quote at your margin, and sends it as a page the client can accept on their phone.