Delaware cottage food label requirements

The cap is a recent casualty. The December 2023 amendment to 4458A (27 DE Reg. 432, effective December 11, 2023) removed the old $25,000 gross-sales limit, dropped your home street address from the label, and added sesame to the allergen list. Guides that still quote $25,000 predate it. A further revision was proposed in the February 1, 2026 Delaware Register; it mostly renames the "registration" a "permit" and had not been published as final when this page was reviewed.

There are five situations where the answer flips and you do need a panel. They're below, after the part you actually came for.

The label Delaware actually requires

Section 8.2 of 4458A says products "shall be properly labeled" with the following:

1. The name of the cottage food establishment (CFE). Your business name.
2. The name of the product.
3. "town/city, Delaware." Since December 2023 you print your town, not your street address. This is the only state in the region where the home address is not on the package by default.
4. A phone number or e-mail address for the CFE.
5. Net weight or unit count.
6. The date of production or a lot number. You also have to keep a batch record (product, date, lot, where it was sold) for three years under Section 8.5.
7. The ingredient list, in decreasing order by weight. Sub-ingredients count. If your chocolate chips contain soy lecithin, that has to show up. If the package is genuinely too small, Section 8.2.2 lets you provide the list on request instead.
8. Allergen declaration. Section 8.2.3 requires "the name of the food source for each major food allergen" — milk, eggs, fish, tree nuts, wheat, peanuts, soybeans, and sesame — unless the source is already part of the ingredient's common name. Federal law counts the same nine, with crustacean shellfish listed separately. Sesame joined the list under the FASTER Act on January 1, 2023. You can declare them parenthetically inside the ingredient list or in a separate "Contains" statement. Tree nuts, fish, and shellfish must be named by species — "almonds," not "tree nuts."
9. The Delaware disclaimer, word for word.

The exact disclaimer wording

This food is made in a Cottage Food Establishment and is NOT subject to routine Government Food Safety Inspections

Section 8.2.4 prints it exactly that way: capital C, F, E, G, F, S, I, "NOT" in capitals, and no period inside the quotation marks. Section 8.2.5 requires labels "printed in at least 10-point type in a color that provides a clear contrast to the background label."

Don't paraphrase it, don't drop the capitals, and don't swap in Maryland's wording because you sell at a market near the line. Inspectors read this string literally, and your labels go in with your permit application.

Where a Nutrition Facts panel becomes required

No US state requires a full Nutrition Facts panel on cottage food products. You need one when:

1. You make a nutrient content claim — "high protein," "low sugar," "keto," "sugar free." Any of these obligates the panel that substantiates it.
2. You make a health claim — connecting your food to a disease or health condition.
3. You outgrow your state's cottage food cap and move to a commercial kitchen. At that point you are a regular food manufacturer and the cottage exemption is gone.
4. You sell wholesale or into retail. Cottage exemptions are almost universally direct-to-consumer only.
5. You sell on Amazon or another marketplace that requires a panel. Amazon's requirement is contractual, not legal, and it does not care what your state says.

Delaware has no cap, so trigger three never arrives by itself. What ends the exemption here is the channel: 4458A bans online sales and wholesale outright, so the first time a shop or a website wants to sell your product, you're out of cottage food entirely, not just out of the exemption for that sale. Triggers four and five are the near-term risk.

Trigger one catches more people than the other four combined, and it catches them somewhere they don't expect. Under 21 CFR 101.9(j)(18), the exemption is void if the claim appears in advertising — not just on the package. Calling your granola "high protein" in an Instagram caption is enough to require the panel on the bag.

What you can and can't make in Delaware

Delaware uses an approved-list model. Section 3.2.1 limits a CFE to "those listed on the approved list maintained by Division," and 3.1.3.4 says you may only make "those specific food products listed on" your permit. If it isn't on your permit, you can't sell it, even if it's harmless.

Allowed (the categories named in Section 3.2):

Prohibited:

If your product is on that prohibited list, cottage food law is not your path. You'll need a licensed commercial or shared-use kitchen and a Delaware food establishment permit, and once you're operating out of one you're a food manufacturer under federal law — which means full labeling, including a Nutrition Facts panel unless you qualify for the small business exemption below.

Where you can sell

Delaware's definition of "direct sales" is sales "that moves the products only within the State of Delaware directly to the consumer without the use of an independent retailer or other intermediary," and a cottage food product is one "offered for sale directly to consumers and only at a farmer's market or other approved venue." Your permit lists the venues. Bake sales and private events restricted to an organization's members are exempt from the regulation entirely under Section 1.4.3. Whether selling from your own front door counts as an "approved venue" is something to confirm with the Office of Food Protection when you apply, because the regulation does not list the home as a venue.

Interstate is a hard no everywhere, and the reason is jurisdictional rather than arbitrary: the moment a product crosses a state line it enters interstate commerce and FDA has authority over the whole operation that made it. Your state's cottage food exemption cannot exempt you from federal law. If you ship to one customer in another state, you have stepped outside the exemption for that shipment.

The cap, the permit, and the training

The application asks for your product list, ingredients, example labels, a floor plan of the kitchen, and proof of training; the Division adds you to the Delaware State Registry of Cottage Food Establishments after the inspection, and only then can you sell. Operating without a registration is a violation that triggers an immediate closure order under Section 9.2.1.1. Registration does not exempt you from county or local codes, so check zoning. You also need a written recall plan and three years of batch and distribution records.

When you outgrow cottage food

Delaware has no cap, so the exits look different here. Any of these ends the exemption:

• A store, a restaurant, or a reseller wants to carry you.
• You want to take orders online or ship anything.
• You want to sell out of state.
• You want to make pickles, salsa, cheesecake, or anything else that isn't an approved product.
• You want to say "high protein" on the bag.

Whichever one gets you first, the day after it happens you are a food manufacturer, and food manufacturers label under 21 CFR 101.9. Your label now needs a Nutrition Facts panel with a serving size pulled from the RACC table in 21 CFR 101.12 — not a serving size you chose.

You might still be exempt, even out of a commercial kitchen

21 CFR 101.9(j)(18) exempts small businesses from the Nutrition Facts requirement if you have fewer than 100 full-time equivalent employees and sell fewer than 100,000 units in the US in a 12-month period. You have to file an annual notice with FDA to claim it. FDA is blunt about the follow-up: "FDA DOES NOT NOTIFY FIRMS WHEN IT IS TIME TO FILE A NOTICE." That's on you.

There's a smaller carve-out under the same section: if you're not an importer, have fewer than 10 full-time equivalent employees, and sell fewer than 10,000 units a year, you don't have to file anything at all.

And the exemption is void — filed or not — for any product carrying a nutrient content claim, a health claim, or other nutrition information, whether that appears on the label, in labeling, or in advertising. See FDA's labeling guidance for the full text.

If you've hit one of the triggers and need the panel itself, Nutrillius builds an FDA-compliant Nutrition Facts panel from your recipe in about a minute — $39 one time, no subscription. That's against $1,609–$1,724 for a single lab-analyzed sample at Medallion Labs, or $195 and a two-to-four week wait through a university extension lab.

Verify this yourself

Cottage food law changes most legislative sessions, and Delaware has moved by regulation rather than statute: the December 2023 amendment removed the cap and the home-address rule, and a February 2026 proposal would rename the registration a permit. Before you print labels, check the current rules with the agency directly:

• Delaware Division of Public Health — Cottage Food Establishment Program
• 16 DE Admin. Code 4458A: Cottage Food Regulations
• 27 DE Reg. 432 — December 2023 final order
• February 2026 proposed revision to 4458A

This page was last reviewed October 30, 2026. If you're reading it much later than that, verify the fee and the disclaimer wording before you rely on either.