Selling Food From Home in Florida: Cottage Food Rules, Labels, Sales Cap

Selling food from home in Florida is legal under the state’s Cottage Food Law without a food permit, a commercial kitchen, or a pre-opening inspection, as long as your annual gross sales stay at or below $250,000 and you stick to shelf-stable products that don’t need refrigeration.¹ What you do need is the right product, a compliant label, and a handle on the tax and liability rules that kick in the moment you start collecting money.

What the Cottage Food Exemption Actually Covers

Section 500.80 of the Florida Statutes exempts qualifying home operations from the food permit that the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) would otherwise require under Section 500.12. The $250,000 cap is total revenue from all cottage food products across every channel, not per product or per location.¹

Skipping the permit doesn’t mean skipping the rules. You still have to comply with the rest of Chapter 500, and FDACS keeps the authority to investigate complaints and inspect. Refusing to let an authorized FDACS officer enter your premises is grounds for disciplinary action under Section 500.121.² Random inspections of home kitchens aren’t routine, but a foodborne illness complaint will bring one quickly.

Florida does not require cottage food operators to complete food safety training or hold a food handler’s card. Learning safe food handling is still in your interest, because a complaint is the fastest path to FDACS attention.

Products You Can Sell From Home

Cottage food is limited to “non-potentially hazardous” items: things bacteria can’t grow on quickly at room temperature. The approved list is broader than most people expect:

Breads, biscuits, cookies, cakes, pastries, and fruit pies
Candies, chocolates, and similar confections
Jams, jellies, and fruit butters
Cereals, trail mixes, granola, dried herbs, seasonings, and dry pasta
Honey, vinegar, and popcorn

The common thread is shelf stability. A buttercream-frosted layer cake is fine. A cheesecake is not. Anything that needs refrigeration to stay safe, along with meat, poultry, fish, and eggs as standalone items and any dairy-based dessert like custard or cream-filled pastry, is off-limits. When you’re not sure about a recipe, ask whether the finished product can sit safely at room temperature. High sugar (jams) and low moisture (dry mixes) tend to pass. Significant dairy, egg custard, or meat content does not.

Who You Can Sell To

Sales must go directly to the end consumer. You can sell in person from your home, at farmers’ markets, flea markets, roadside stands, and event venues. You can take orders online or by mail and deliver them yourself, through USPS, or through a commercial shipper.²

What you cannot do is sell wholesale. No supplying restaurants, grocery stores, distributors, or any retailer who would resell your products. Consignment falls in the same bucket. If the end consumer isn’t buying directly from you, it isn’t a permitted cottage food sale.²

Shipping Out of State

Florida’s statute doesn’t explicitly ban shipping to other states, but food that crosses state lines enters interstate commerce and comes under FDA jurisdiction. Federal standards for those facilities are hard for any home kitchen to meet. As a practical matter, keeping sales within Florida is the safe move. A nationwide shipping operation generally requires a licensed commercial kitchen, which defeats the point of the exemption.

How to Label Your Products

Every cottage food product must be prepackaged with a label containing:

The name and physical address of your cottage food operation
The product name
Ingredients listed in descending order by weight
Net weight or volume
Allergen information per federal rules
The disclaimer “Made in a cottage food operation that is not subject to Florida’s food safety regulations,” printed in at least 10-point type in a color that clearly contrasts with the label background

The disclaimer wording and type size are set by statute. You can’t paraphrase it. If you make any nutritional claim on the label, such as “low sugar” or “high fiber,” you must also include the full nutrition information required under federal rules.³

Federal law requires you to declare any of nine major allergens present in your product: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame.⁴ Do this either by naming the source in parentheses after the ingredient (“flour (wheat)”) or with a “Contains:” statement immediately after the ingredients list.⁵

Most cottage food operators are exempt from the Nutrition Facts panel. The FDA exempts businesses with food sales to consumers of $50,000 or less, or total annual gross sales of $500,000 or less, from nutrition labeling.⁶ Every operator under the state cap qualifies. Make a voluntary nutritional claim, though, and you lose the exemption for that product.

Local Rules That Still Apply

Florida preempts local governments from banning cottage food operations or setting their own rules on how you prepare, store, or sell products. That authority is the state’s alone.¹ Your city or county can’t require a separate food license or impose extra food-safety rules on top of the state’s.

Preemption stops at food regulation. You still have to follow local rules on how your property is used as a business — traffic, parking, noise, and signage — and your operation must comply with the home-based business conditions in Section 559.955 of the Florida Statutes.² Many cities and counties also require a local business tax receipt (sometimes called an occupational license) before you operate any business in their jurisdiction. Fees and process vary, but it’s usually a straightforward registration rather than a regulatory hurdle.

Taxes on Cottage Food Income

FDACS makes the tax point explicit: a cottage food operation must comply with all applicable state and federal tax laws.⁷

If your net profit reaches $400 or more in a year, you owe federal self-employment tax at 15.3%, which covers the Social Security portion (12.4%) and Medicare (2.9%).⁸ For 2026, the Social Security portion applies to the first $184,500 of combined wages and self-employment earnings.⁹ Report this on Schedule SE.

Your net profit is also subject to regular federal income tax, reported on Schedule C. Common deductions for home food businesses include ingredients and packaging, equipment used exclusively for the business, farmers’ market booth fees, liability insurance premiums, and a portion of home utilities and space used regularly for production. Keep receipts. The IRS expects documentation, not estimates, and generally wants records kept at least three years from the date of the return.¹⁰

Track cumulative sales throughout the year so this doesn’t sneak up on you. Crossing the line mid-year without a permit already in place is a violation, not something you fix retroactively at tax time. If you’re approaching $200,000, start looking at commercial kitchen options and the permit process so the transition is planned rather than forced.

1
Florida Senate. Florida Code 500.80 – Cottage Food Operations
2
The Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes 500.80 – Cottage Food Operations
3
Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 500.80 – Cottage Food Operations
4
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Food Allergies
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 21 USC 343 – Misbranded Food
6
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Small Business Nutrition Labeling Exemption Guidance
7
Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Cottage Foods
8
Internal Revenue Service. Self-Employment Tax (Social Security and Medicare Taxes)
9
Social Security Administration. Contribution and Benefit Base
10
Internal Revenue Service.