Selling food you make at home in Ohio

A lot of Cleveland food businesses start on a home stove, and the rules for that are genuinely favorable — more favorable than most people assume. But they run through the Ohio Department of Agriculture, not your county health district, and the track you are on is decided by what you make, not how much of it or where you sell it.

Get that one distinction right and the rest follows.

The two tracks

The dividing line is refrigeration. If the finished product has to be kept cold to be safe — cheesecake, cream pie, custard pie, pumpkin pie — cottage food does not cover it and a home bakery license does.¹²

Ten dollars a year is not the obstacle. The inspection is the real decision, and for most people it is a reasonable trade for a much bigger product range and the ability to ship.

What counts as “home”

Both tracks use the same definition, and it is stricter than it sounds:¹²⁹

the primary residence occupied by the residence’s owner, on the condition that the residence contains only one stove or oven used for cooking — which may be a double oven — designed for common residence usage and not for commercial usage, and operated in an ordinary kitchen within the residence.

Two things fall out of that. It must be where you live, so you cannot run either track out of a rental you do not occupy or a second property. And installing a second range to keep business separate from family cooking disqualifies you, which is the exact opposite of what most people’s instincts suggest.

Cottage food: the permitted list

This is a closed list, set by rule. If a food is not on it, it is not a cottage food.¹¹⁰

• Non-potentially-hazardous bakery products — cookies, breads, brownies, cakes, fruit pies
• Candy, including no-bake cookies and chocolate-covered pretzels or similar chocolate-covered non-perishable items
• Jams, jellies, and fruit butters
• Granola, including granola bars and granola bars dipped in candy — any fruit used must be commercially dried
• Popcorn — flavored, kettle corn, popcorn balls, caramel corn, but not un-popped popping corn
• Unfilled baked donuts
• Waffle cones and pizzelles
• Dry cereal and nut snack mixes with seasonings
• Roasted coffee, whole bean or ground
• Dry baking mixes, for things like breads and cookies
• Dry herbs and dry herb blends
• Dry seasoning blends, such as barbecue rubs and seafood boils
• Dry tea blends
• Flavoured honey made by a beekeeper exempt under the Revised Code
• Fruit chutney
• Maple sugar made by an exempt tree syrup processor
• Dry soup mixes containing commercially dried vegetables, beans, grains and seasoning

And the list of what you may not make

A cottage food operation may not process:¹

• Acidified foods — a low-acid food with acid added. Salsa, pickles, pickled vegetables, and similar preserved products live here, and this is the single most common thing people are surprised to find prohibited.
• Low-acid canned foods — anything with a finished equilibrium pH above 4.6 and a water activity above 0.85
• Potentially hazardous foods — anything needing temperature control, including raw or cooked animal products, cooked vegetables, garlic in oil, cheesecakes, pumpkin pies, custard pies and cream pies
• Anything not on the permitted list, even if it seems harmless

That last clause does most of the work. The list is not a set of examples; it is the boundary.

Where each track may sell

Cottage food products may only be sold in Ohio.¹ Within that, properly labeled products may be sold:¹

• Direct to the consumer from the home where they are produced
• Through licensed grocery stores, registered farm markets, and farmers markets
• Sold in, or used in preparing food in, a licensed restaurant
• At festivals or celebrations, on the condition that the event is organized by a political subdivision of the state and runs no longer than seven consecutive days

That festival condition is narrow and worth reading twice before you buy a booth.

Home bakery products may be sold from the home bakery, through grocery stores, convenience stores, farm markets, farmers markets and other retail outlets, served as an item by restaurants, and distributed outside Ohio.² Retail outlets carrying your product remain subject to their own health district, zoning, and other rules — your license covers your kitchen, not their shelf.²

What the home bakery inspection looks for

A short, physical list. Your kitchen must have:²

• Walls, ceilings and floors in good repair, clean, and easily cleanable
• No carpeted floors
• A home free of pests
• No pets in the home — not “pets kept out of the kitchen”; the rule as written is no pets in the home
• Equipment and utensils maintained and kept sanitary
• A mechanical refrigerator with a properly located thermometer, capable of holding 45°F or less
• Labels available for review at the time of inspection
• If the home is on a private well, an annual coliform test with a negative result within the past year, with proof provided to the inspector

The no-pets rule is the one that ends the conversation for a lot of households, and it is better to know that before you build a business plan around it.

Labeling: the part that gets people in trouble

Labeling is where an exempt operation can still be found in violation, because an improperly labeled product is misbranded or adulterated regardless of whether anyone inspects your kitchen.¹ ODA also samples cottage food products in the market to check exactly this.¹

Both tracks need these four:¹²⁷

1. Statement of identity — the common or usual name of the food, accurately describing what it is
2. Net quantity of contents — the net weight in both US customary and metric, on the principal display panel, within the bottom 30 percent of the panel⁵
3. Ingredient list — common or usual names, in descending order by weight, with sub-ingredients in parentheses, and major food allergens declared
4. Statement of responsibility — business name, street address, city, state and zip, all continuous. A phone number, website or email may be added but cannot replace the address.⁵

Cottage food adds a fifth: the statement “This Product is Home Produced” in ten-point type.¹ It means the product was made in a private home not subject to inspection by a food regulatory authority.¹

Home bakery adds two conditional ones: items needing refrigeration must carry “Keep Refrigerated” or similar, and products whose quality diminishes in 30 days or less must carry a sale date the consumer can understand.²

If you make a nutrient content claim (“low fat”) or a health claim, you trigger a full Nutrition Facts panel.¹² The simplest advice is not to make the claim. There is also a small-business exemption from nutrition labeling for retailers under set sales thresholds — provided no nutritional claims are made.⁵

One thing ODA’s own pages disagree on

ODA’s cottage food page lists nine major food allergens, including sesame.¹ ODA’s home bakery page lists eight, and does not include sesame.²

The federal position is not ambiguous. FALCPA named eight allergens in 2004; the FASTER Act, signed April 23, 2021, declared sesame the ninth, and all FDA requirements applicable to major food allergens have applied to sesame since January 1, 2023.¹¹

If you use sesame, declare it, whichever ODA page you are working from. Following the home bakery page’s shorter list to the letter would leave you under-declaring a major allergen, and that is the most consequential labeling error there is — it is the one that hurts somebody.

Honey, maple syrup, and sorghum are their own exemption

These are not cottage foods. They sit under a separate exemption in the Revised Code’s definition of a food processing establishment.⁴⁸

• A beekeeper who jars honey is exempt from licensing, registration and mandatory inspection when at least 75 percent of the honey comes from their own hives.⁴⁸ Maple syrup and sorghum producers have parallel exemptions.⁴
• Fall outside that 75 percent and you are a food processing establishment, registered and inspected by the Division of Food Safety.⁴
• Flavoured honey from an exempt beekeeper is a cottage food and follows the cottage food rules.⁴
• Honey still needs a label, even when gifted or traded. One useful quirk: if sold on site the net weight may be in ounces only; sold off site it needs both ounces and grams.⁴ Honey is a single-ingredient food, so no ingredient list is required.⁴
• Exempt producers can request a voluntary inspection, and a complaint can still bring inspectors to the honey kitchen.⁴

A citation warning. ODA’s own materials cite three different Revised Code sections for this same beekeeper exemption — 3715.021 on the cottage food fact sheet, 3715.012 on the cottage food web page, and 3717.021 on the honey page. 3715.021 is the one that exists and contains the exemption; there is no section 3715.012 in the Revised Code. If you are quoting a statute in a permit conversation, quote that one.⁸

When you outgrow the home kitchen

Three doors out, and they lead to different agencies:⁶

• Selling wholesale to stores or shipping anywhere — a food processing license from the ODA Division of Food Safety. This is the one that lets you sell anywhere and to anyone, including groceries, restaurants and the internet.
• Opening a place people eat at — an FSO or RFE license from your local health district. See which agency licenses you.
• Renting production space instead of building it — a commissary or shared kitchen, which is usually the cheapest way to test whether the volume is real before signing a lease.

Meat, poultry and dairy are separate again: those go to ODA’s Division of Meat Inspection and Dairy Division respectively, not the Division of Food Safety.⁶

Before you sell anything

1. Check your product against the permitted list, not against your sense of whether it is safe. The list is the boundary.
2. Decide cottage food or home bakery on refrigeration, then on whether you need to ship out of state.
3. Write the label before the first batch, and get the allergens right, including sesame.
4. If you are going the home bakery route, walk your own kitchen against the inspection list first — carpet and pets are the two that stop people.
5. Check zoning. Nothing above overrides your municipality’s rules about running a business from a residence, and the outer suburbs vary a lot.
6. Ask about insurance. Product liability does not come with the exemption, and a retailer or farmers market will usually ask you for a certificate before they will take your product.

Nothing here is legal advice, and requirements change. ODA’s Division of Food Safety answers questions directly at 614-728-6250 or foodsafety@agri.ohio.gov — for a question this cheap to ask, ask it.¹