New York’s cottage food laws operate through the state’s Home Processor Exemption, which lets you make and sell certain shelf-stable foods from your home kitchen without a commercial food processing license. Registration is free, handled by the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, and takes roughly two weeks. There’s no annual sales cap. Your approval is tied to your home address and doesn’t expire as long as you stay put and sell only foods on the approved list.
Foods You Can Make
The exemption covers non-potentially hazardous foods, meaning products that stay safe at room temperature and don’t require refrigeration. The Department of Agriculture and Markets maintains a specific approved list, and you can only sell items on it. Anything outside the list needs a call to the department before you assume it qualifies.
Baked goods are the largest category: breads, rolls, bagels, muffins, biscuits, scones, cookies, brownies, doughnuts, cakes, cupcakes, biscotti, baklava, and cake pops. Several carry conditions. Cakes and cupcakes can’t use homemade buttercream or cream cheese frosting. Doughnuts can’t have cream fillings. Bread-type items can contain high-acid fruits or commercially dried fruits and herbs, but no vegetables. Double-crust fruit pies are allowed; single-crust, custard, nut, and meat pies are not.
Fruit jams, jellies, and marmalades qualify when made with high-acid fruits such as apples, berries, citrus, peaches, or plums. Glass containers for these products must have rigid metal covers.
Snack items are broadly permitted: granola, trail mix, granola bars, popcorn, caramel corn, peanut brittle, and rice cereal treats, provided any nuts used are commercially roasted. Sugar confections like toffees, caramels, hard candies, and fudge are approved. Vegetable chips (thinly sliced and deep-fried, baked, or air-fried until crispy), crackers, waffle cones, and pizzelle also qualify.
You can repackage certain shelf-stable goods: commercially dried spices and herbs, dried vegetables, dried fruit, dried pasta, roasted coffee beans or grounds, dried soup mixes, dry baking mixes, and candy other than chocolate. Seasoning salt is included. You cannot roast your own coffee beans, dry your own fruit or herbs, or manufacture pasta at home under this exemption.
The Chocolate Rule
Melting or tempering chocolate for dipping, coating, or drizzling is prohibited across the board. No cocoa bombs, chocolate-covered fruit, chocolate candies, or candy-melt coatings of any kind. The department’s reasoning is that chocolate melts at low temperatures, the process doesn’t serve as a true thermal kill step, and chocolate products have been linked to foodborne illness outbreaks.
Items that contain chocolate baked in at high temperatures, such as brownies and chocolate chip cookies, are fine. But biscotti, cake pops, popcorn, rice cereal treats, pretzels, toffee apples, waffle cones, and pizzelle become ineligible the moment you add a chocolate or candy-melt topping.
Foods You Cannot Make
Anything potentially hazardous is excluded. If the finished product needs refrigeration, it’s out. Cheesecakes, cream-filled pastries, custard pies, and meringue pies are specifically prohibited.
Meat, fish, and poultry products are banned. Low-acid canned foods in sealed containers, including home-canned vegetables and pickles, are excluded because of botulism risk. Acidified foods like relishes made from low-acid ingredients fall into the same category. Vegetable oils, blended oils, and salad dressings are prohibited because oil-based products can harbor dangerous anaerobic bacteria. Vacuum-packed and other reduced-oxygen-packaged products are not allowed regardless of what’s inside.
Any of these products requires a full Article 20-C food processing license and a commercial kitchen.
How to Register
Submit the Home Processor Registration Request form along with sample labels for every product you plan to sell. The form asks about your production environment, including your water source. Applications can be emailed to the Department of Agriculture and Markets or mailed to the Division of Food Safety and Inspection at 10B Airline Drive, Albany, NY 12235.
If your home uses a private well, include lab results from a certified laboratory showing negative results for total coliform and E. coli. On public water, just identify your municipality. There is no fee. Approval usually takes about two weeks.
Your registration is tied to your specific address and doesn’t expire. Move, and you file a new application (with a fresh water test if you’re on a well). To add new products later, submit the form again marked as a supplemental registration, listing the additions. Your registration becomes void automatically if you sell foods outside the approved list or open a separately licensed food business through the Department of Agriculture and Markets or the Department of Health; at that point, all production must move to the commercial facility.
No pre-approval inspection is required, and home kitchens under this exemption aren’t subject to the routine inspections licensed commercial facilities face. The state does retain authority to inspect if a consumer complaint is filed or a foodborne illness is traced to your products.
Labeling Requirements
Every product must carry a label with the common name of the product, a complete ingredient list in descending order by weight, the net quantity of contents, and your name and full address as the processor.
All nine major food allergens must be clearly identified in the ingredient statement: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame. Sesame was added as a federally required allergen in 2023 under the FASTER Act. A missing allergen declaration is one of the fastest ways to trigger enforcement, and it can send a customer to the hospital.
The department also recommends adding a phrase such as “Made in a Home Kitchen” or “Made at Home by [Your Name]” with a font size of at least 1/16 of an inch. The exact phrasing isn’t mandated for every product, but it signals transparency to customers and retailers.
Where You Can Sell
All sales must take place within New York State. Inside that boundary you have wide flexibility: direct sales from your home, farmers’ markets, farm stands, green markets, craft fairs, flea markets, and wholesale to in-state retail stores and restaurants.
Internet sales are allowed as long as the product stays in New York. You can take orders online and arrange local delivery or in-person pickup. Shipping across state lines is not permitted. Interstate commerce falls under federal regulation, and the exemption provides no coverage there.
Sales Tax on What You Sell
Whether you collect New York sales tax depends on the product. Most food sold for home consumption is exempt from state sales tax when sold unheated in the same form you’d find at a grocery store. Bakery products, cookies, brownies, cupcakes, and doughnuts are exempt under New York tax law.
Candy and confectionery are taxable. If you sell fudge, hard candies, toffees, caramels, peanut brittle, or similar items, you must charge sales tax. Apply for a Certificate of Authority from the New York Department of Taxation and Finance before making any taxable sales, even at a single farmers’ market booth. If your entire product line is exempt baked goods, you may not need to register for sales tax purposes. One taxable item changes that. Confirm your obligations with the Department of Taxation and Finance based on your specific product list.
Income Tax and Deductions
Income from a home food business is taxable regardless of size. Report it on Schedule C of your federal return as self-employment income. If your net profit exceeds $400 in a tax year, you also owe self-employment tax, which covers Social Security and Medicare at a combined rate of 15.3% on 92.35% of your net earnings.
Deduct legitimate business expenses: ingredients, packaging, labels, farmers’ market booth fees, and similar costs. If you use a dedicated portion of your kitchen exclusively and regularly for the business, you may qualify for the home office deduction. The simplified method allows $5 per square foot of business space, up to 300 square feet. The regular method allocates actual household expenses like utilities, insurance, and rent by the percentage of your home used for business, and requires more detailed recordkeeping.
The exclusive-use requirement has an exception for inventory storage. If your home is your only business location, you can deduct storage space used regularly for ingredients or finished products even if that space isn’t used exclusively for business.
Insurance and Liability
The exemption gives you legal permission to sell food. It doesn’t shield you from liability if someone gets sick. Standard homeowners’ insurance policies typically exclude business activities, so an allergic reaction or illness claim could reach your personal assets.
Product liability insurance for home food vendors covers claims of illness or injury caused by your products. General liability insurance covers incidents at the point of sale, such as a booth canopy collapsing at a farmers’ market. Many vendors carry both. Annual premiums vary with product line and sales volume, and policies designed for cottage food operations are available from specialty insurers.
Forming a limited liability company can add another layer of protection by separating personal assets from business obligations. New York’s LLC filing fee is among the higher ones nationally, and the state requires a publication step that adds cost, so weigh the protection against the expense at your current scale. Many home processors start as sole proprietors and revisit the question as sales grow.