Texas Cottage Food Law: Rules, Labeling, and $150K Income Cap

The Texas cottage food law lets you make and sell homemade food directly to consumers without a commercial kitchen, a food manufacturer’s license, or routine government inspection. As of September 1, 2025, the law changed in three big ways: nearly every food is now allowed except a short prohibited list, the annual gross income cap rose from $50,000 to $150,000, and you can wholesale shelf-stable products to registered cottage food vendors for the first time.¹ Nonprofits now qualify too. In exchange for that freedom, you have to follow specific labeling, training, and sales rules.

What You Can Sell

The old law listed a handful of permitted foods — baked goods, candy, jams, roasted coffee — and banned everything else. The current law reverses that. You can sell almost any food you make at home, including items that need refrigeration (called time and temperature control for safety, or TCS, foods), frozen fruits and vegetables, and a much broader range of cooked or prepared products.¹

TCS foods carry extra obligations. Cold items must stay at or below 41°F and hot items at or above 135°F during storage and delivery. Every TCS label must show the date the food was made and include safe handling instructions in at least 12-point font: “SAFE HANDLING INSTRUCTIONS: To prevent illness from bacteria, keep this food refrigerated or frozen until the food is prepared for consumption.”² Shelf-stable products — baked goods, candy, granola, roasted coffee, dry tea, herb mixes, nut butters — are the simplest to sell because none of these temperature rules apply.

Foods You Cannot Sell

The prohibited list is fixed. You cannot produce or sell any of these under the cottage food law:¹

Meat and poultry, including beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and products made from them such as jerky or sausage
Fish, shellfish, and any seafood products
Ice and frozen desserts, including ice cream, frozen custard, gelato, popsicles, and shaved ice
Low-acid canned goods such as canned corn, green beans, or soups with a pH above 4.6
Any food containing CBD or THC
Raw milk and raw milk products of any kind

These items require USDA inspection, commercial processing, or safety controls a home kitchen can’t reliably provide. To sell any of them, you need a food manufacturer’s license and a commercial kitchen.

Extra Rules for Pickled, Fermented, and Acidified Foods

Pickles, kimchi, sauerkraut, and plant-based acidified canned goods are permitted, but improper acidity can allow dangerous bacterial growth, so the law adds safety steps. The finished product must have an equilibrium pH of 4.6 or below.³

You can meet that requirement in one of three ways: use a recipe from a source the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) has approved, have a certified laboratory test your recipe, or get approval from a qualified process authority. Skip all three, and you have to test every individual batch yourself with a calibrated pH meter before selling it.³

You also have to assign each batch a unique number and keep records for at least 12 months, including the batch number, the recipe, where the recipe came from or the test results, and the preparation date. DSHS publishes an updated list of approved recipe sources, certified labs, and qualified process authorities twice a year. Pickled cucumbers are exempt from all of these extra requirements.³

Labeling Requirements

Every product needs a label, and label mistakes are one of the fastest ways to end up in trouble with a health department. The required elements are:⁴

Your business name and physical address. If you’d rather not put your home address on every package, you can register with DSHS and use a unique identification number instead.²
The common or usual name of the product.
A full ingredient list in descending order by weight, unless the product is a single-ingredient standardized food.
Allergen disclosure for any of the nine major food allergens present: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame.⁵
The disclosure statement in at least 10-point font: “This food is made in a cottage food production operation that is not subject to Texas food safety regulations.”⁴

A separate provision also requires the statement: “THIS PRODUCT WAS PRODUCED IN A PRIVATE RESIDENCE THAT IS NOT SUBJECT TO GOVERNMENTAL LICENSING OR INSPECTION.”² Both statements make the same point in slightly different wording, and both should appear on your labels.

Food Handler Certification

You need a food handler certificate from an accredited food safety course before you start selling. ANSI-accredited providers offer the course online, usually for $10 to $20, and it takes a few hours. The course covers cross-contamination, handwashing, safe storage temperatures, and personal hygiene.

The certificate is good for two years. When it expires, retake the course and renew. This is the only formal credential the law requires, and it’s cheap enough that there is no reason to skip it.

Where and How You Can Sell

Cottage food sales have to go directly from you to the person who will eat the food. You can sell from your home, at farmers’ markets, at fairs, from a roadside stand, or anywhere else you can hand the product to the buyer in person.¹

Internet and mail orders are allowed, but you have to personally deliver the food after the customer orders. No shipping through the mail, no third-party delivery services. Before you accept payment on an online order, you have to share the required labeling information with the buyer — on your website, in a catalog, or by direct communication. Your home address doesn’t have to appear at the pre-payment stage, but it does have to be on the product label when you deliver.⁶

All sales must stay inside Texas. Selling across state lines is not permitted.

Selling Through Cottage Food Vendors

The 2025 amendments created a new category called cottage food vendors. A cottage food vendor is a Texas person or business that contracts with you to sell your products directly to consumers on your behalf.¹ That lets your food appear at farmers’ markets, farm stands, food service establishments, and retail stores without you being present at every sale.

The limits: the vendor must register with DSHS, and you can only wholesale non-TCS foods to them. Anything that needs temperature control is off the table. The vendor also has to post the standard disclosure that the food was made in a private residence and is not subject to government inspection in a prominent spot near the sale location, and every product label must show the date the food was made.¹

Selling wholesale to grocery stores or restaurants outside the cottage food vendor framework is still prohibited. The vendor pathway is the only legal way to get your products into someone else’s hands for resale.

The $150,000 Income Cap

Your cottage food operation cannot exceed $150,000 in gross annual revenue.¹ That’s gross income — total sales before ingredient costs, packaging, or any other expenses. The old cap was $50,000.⁶ Cross $150,000 and you have to move to a licensed food operation with a commercial kitchen.

The threshold applies to your calendar-year gross, not net profit. A baker with $140,000 in sales but only $40,000 in profit after costs is comfortably under the cap, but one strong holiday season can push gross over the line. Track revenue month by month so year-end doesn’t surprise you.

Sales Tax

Not everything you sell is tax-exempt. Bakery items sold without plates or utensils — bread, cookies, whole cakes, pies — are generally not subject to Texas sales tax. Candy, snack foods, and ready-to-eat items are typically taxable. If you sell only tax-exempt items, you don’t need a Sales and Use Tax Permit from the Texas Comptroller. If any product you sell is taxable, you need the permit and you’re responsible for collecting and remitting the tax.

Liability and Insurance

Being exempt from food establishment regulation does not shield you from product liability. If someone gets sick from your food, you can be sued for medical costs and other damages. Your homeowner’s policy almost certainly won’t cover a business run out of the home.

Food liability policies for small operations start around $300 per year and generally cover third-party bodily injury, property damage, and product liability. Cost varies with revenue, product type, and claims history. One foodborne illness lawsuit can cost many years’ worth of premiums, so coverage is one of the more sensible investments for a home food business.

Enforcement and Local Rules

Texas does not set a specific fine schedule for cottage food violations. DSHS and local health authorities can issue emergency orders and recall orders when an operation poses an immediate and serious threat to public health.¹ Health departments must keep records of every complaint filed against a cottage food operation, so a pattern of violations creates a paper trail even if no single incident shuts you down.

Local governments cannot require you to get a permit to run a cottage food business. If a city or county official tries to make you apply for one, the law prohibits it.¹ The flip side is that the state framework is your only regulatory layer, so staying inside its boundaries is entirely on you.

1
Texas Department of State Health Services. Texas Cottage Food Production
2
State of Texas. Texas Health and Safety Code Section 437.0193 – Packaging and Labeling Requirements for Cottage Food Production Operations
3
State of Texas. Texas Health and Safety Code Section 437.01951 – Requirements for Sale of Certain Cottage Foods
4
State of Texas. Texas Health and Safety Code Chapter 437
5
Food and Drug Administration. Food Allergies
6
Texas Legislature Online. Texas Senate Bill 572