What are Cottage Food Laws?

Cottage food laws matter because they determine whether you can legally bake in your home kitchen and sell your products. Most states allow non-potentially-hazardous baked goods like cookies, brownies, and quick breads—foods that don't require refrigeration and have a low risk of foodborne illness. However, some states are stricter. For example, California allows home-based bakeries to sell cookies, breads, cakes, and pastries made without cream cheese frosting or custard fillings, but prohibits anything requiring refrigeration. If you bake a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting in your home kitchen in California, you cannot legally sell it—even if you sell 50 cakes a month at $45 each. The sales cap varies by state. Some states allow unlimited annual sales of allowed products (like Texas and North Carolina), while others cap you at $25,000 per year (like Michigan) or $50,000 per year (like New York). If you're a home baker generating $3,200 per month in orders ($38,400 annually), you're fine in unlimited states but over the cap in Michigan. Many states also require labeling: you must include your name, address, the product name, ingredients, and sometimes the phrase "Made in a home kitchen that is not subject to state licensing or inspection." Where you can sell also matters. Some states allow direct-to-consumer sales only (you deliver to the customer's home). Others allow farmers market sales. A few states allow retail sales through stores. If you're selling through an online shop and shipping cookies across state lines, you may have crossed into federal territory—and home kitchens are not federally approved for interstate commerce. A home baker shipping 20 boxes of cookies per week to customers in three states is operating illegally, even if each state individually allows home baking. The consequence of violating cottage food laws ranges from warnings to cease-and-desist letters to fines ($500–$5,000 depending on the state) and seizure of your products. Some states actively investigate home bakeries; others don't. But insurance companies and platforms like Etsy and Instagram are increasingly cracking down. If you scale beyond your state's cap or sell a prohibited product, you lose your legal protection—and you lose access to liability insurance, payment processors, and sales channels that require compliance.