Home kitchen, cottage food, or a commissary kitchen

Before you cook a single dollar’s worth of food for a paying customer, you have to answer one question that most new caterers get wrong: where am I legally allowed to make this? Not where is it convenient — where is it legal. Cook the wrong food in the wrong kitchen and you’re not running a lean startup, you’re running an unlicensed one, and one complaint to the health department ends it.

There are three realistic paths for where you cook. Which one fits you depends entirely on your menu and your volume. This chapter walks all three honestly so you can pick the one that matches the food you actually want to sell.

Path 1: Cottage food from your home kitchen

Most states have a “cottage food” law that lets you make and sell certain foods out of your own home kitchen without a commercial license. It sounds like the dream for a bootstrapping caterer, and for some businesses it is — but it comes with two hard limits that rule out most catering menus.

The first limit is what you’re allowed to make. Cottage food laws generally cover only non-perishable, non-hazardous foods — think baked goods, jams, dry mixes, candies, and similar shelf-stable items. They generally exclude perishable foods: meat, dairy, cut produce, cooked dishes that need refrigeration. This is state-specific and you must verify yours, but the pattern holds almost everywhere. If your catering plan is trays of chicken, pasta bakes, and a carving station, cottage food is not your path — those are exactly the perishable foods it excludes.

Concretely, the foods that typically qualify are the shelf-stable ones: breads and cookies, cakes and pastries that don’t need refrigeration, jams and jellies, dry mixes and spice blends, granola, candies, and roasted nuts. The foods that are typically excluded are anything perishable: meat and poultry dishes, cheesecakes and cream pies, anything with dairy or eggs that needs to stay cold, cut fruits and vegetables, hot cooked entrées, and canned low-acid goods. Cream cheese frosting is the classic trap — a cake that would qualify plain can fall out of cottage food the moment you frost it with something that needs refrigeration. Your state’s list is the one that governs, so read it directly.

Cottage food also comes with labeling and selling rules. States commonly require a label listing ingredients and allergens plus a statement that the food was made in a home kitchen not subject to inspection, and many restrict where you can sell — some allow farmers markets and direct sales but not sales across state lines or into restaurants. Again: verify the specifics with your state, because these details differ everywhere.

The second limit is how much you can sell. Most states cap annual cottage food sales somewhere around $25,000–$75,000, but the numbers vary wildly by state. A few are far more generous — Florida allows up to $250,000, Texas up to $150,000, and Michigan up to $50,000 (per findhomegrown and the National Agricultural Law Center, 2025–2026). Others are much lower or have no cap at all. You have to check your own state’s current number, because these change.

So cottage food is a genuine fit for a specific kind of caterer — dessert tables, cookie and cake orders, jam and granola gift boxes, packaged dry goods. If that’s your menu, you may be able to start with almost no kitchen cost at all, which is the cheapest possible entry (see what that does to your budget in what it costs to start a catering business). If your menu includes hot, perishable, catered meals, keep reading — you need a commercial kitchen.

Path 2: A rented commissary or commercial kitchen

This is the path most real caterers take. A commissary — also called a shared or commercial kitchen — is a licensed, health-department-approved space you rent by the hour or by the month. You cook there, store there, and your business operates under a kitchen that’s already permitted for perishable food and full menus. It’s what unlocks actual catering.

The pricing comes in two shapes, and most caterers use both over time:

• Hourly rental runs roughly $15–$75 per hour (per UpMenu and Toast, 2025), depending on your city and the kitchen. This is how you start — you pay only for the hours you’re actually prepping a booked job, so your kitchen cost scales with your revenue instead of hanging over you every month.
• Monthly memberships typically run about $250–$750 per month, climbing to roughly $1,000–$1,250 in major metros like New York or Los Angeles (per UpMenu and Toast, 2025). A membership makes sense once you’re prepping often enough that per-hour rates would cost you more than the flat monthly fee.

The move most operators make is simple: start hourly, watch your actual usage, and switch to a membership the month the math flips. Renting a commissary also means you’re cooking in a space that’s already inspected and permitted — but you still need your own permits and certifications as an operator, which is covered in licenses, permits, and food safety.

Renting is dramatically cheaper than the third option, which is leasing or building your own commercial kitchen. That’s a five-figure build-out and a multi-thousand-dollar monthly lease, and it’s almost never the right first move for a new caterer. Rent someone else’s approved kitchen until your volume genuinely demands your own.

How to find and evaluate a commissary

Finding a commissary is mostly local legwork. Search for “commissary kitchen,” “shared commercial kitchen,” or “commercial kitchen rental” plus your city; ask other caterers and food-truck operators where they prep; and check whether a nearby culinary incubator or food-business accelerator rents time. Once you have a couple of candidates, go tour them — the right kitchen is a working relationship, not just a rate.

On the tour, get past the hourly number and ask about the things that actually govern your day:

• Storage. Do you get dedicated dry, refrigerated, and freezer space, or do you haul everything in and out each visit? For a caterer, secure cold storage you can count on is often worth more than a slightly cheaper hourly rate.
• Scheduling and access. How far ahead do you book, and can you get the hours you need? Catering is weekend- and holiday-heavy, so a kitchen jammed on Fridays and Saturdays may not fit your calendar no matter how good the price is. Ask about after-hours and early-morning access, too.
• What’s actually included. Which equipment comes with the space, what’s shared, and what you’re expected to bring. Ovens, ranges, refrigeration, prep tables, and dish areas vary a lot between kitchens.
• The permit and licensing situation. Confirm the facility is a licensed commercial kitchen and ask what it needs from you — many require proof of your own insurance, food-handler or manager certification, and business registration before you can book. That dovetails with your own licenses, permits, and food safety setup.
• The rules. Cleaning expectations, cancellation terms, whether the month-to-month membership has a commitment, and how billing works. Read the agreement before you sign.

A good commissary tour tells you whether the place fits your menu, your calendar, and your budget. A cheap kitchen you can never book on a Saturday is not cheap — it’s useless to a caterer.

Path 3: Other shared and venue kitchens

Between cottage food and a full commissary, there are a few other arrangements worth knowing about — though availability depends entirely on your area and your relationships.

• Restaurant off-hours. Some restaurants rent their kitchen during hours they’re closed. If you can find one, you get a fully equipped, already-permitted space at negotiable rates. It takes hustle and a good agreement, but it’s a real option.
• Church, school, and community kitchens. Many are commercially licensed and rent out for a modest fee. Check whether the space is actually permitted for commercial food production, not just a big residential-style kitchen.
• Venue kitchens. If you regularly cater at a specific hall or event venue, some let you use their on-site licensed kitchen for events held there. This doesn’t cover your prep, but it can cover finishing and holding on the day.

For all of these, the same rule applies: the kitchen has to be a licensed commercial space, and you have to verify that with the operator and with your local health department. A generously sized home kitchen at a friend’s house is not a commercial kitchen, no matter how nice it is.

How to actually choose

Your kitchen path falls out of two things: your menu and your volume.

• Shelf-stable menu, low-to-moderate sales — baked goods, packaged dry items, dessert catering — start with cottage food if your state allows it and you stay under the cap. Cheapest entry there is.
• Hot, perishable, full-meal catering — the moment your menu includes anything that needs refrigeration or hot-holding, you need a commercial kitchen, and renting a commissary by the hour is the sane way to start.
• Growing volume — when hourly commissary time adds up to more than a membership, switch to the membership. When a membership can’t hold your volume, then and only then look at your own leased space.

One honest warning that applies to every path: rules vary by state and by county, and the person who tells you what’s allowed is your own state and local health department — not a forum post, not another caterer in a different state, and not this page. Call them, get the current requirements in writing, and build on that. Nothing here is legal advice; it’s the map, not the permit.

Once you know where you’re cooking, the next step is getting yourself legal to cook there — business registration, permits, and food-safety certification. That’s licenses, permits, and food safety. And if you want to see how each kitchen path reshapes your total budget, head back to the start hub and work through the money chapters in order.