Kansas cottage food label requirements

The allowed-food list is a safety test rather than a menu, and the Kansas Department of Agriculture (KDA) decides what passes.

The label Kansas actually requires

K.S.A. 65-689(d)(4) exempts "a person who produces food for distribution directly to the end consumer, if such food does not require time and temperature control for safety or specialized processing, as determined by the secretary." It says nothing about labels. Those come from KDA and K-State Research and Extension's joint publication "Foods Sold Directly to Consumers in Kansas" (MF3138, revised January 2026), which lists for packaged products:

1. The common name of the product.
2. Your name and address.
3. The ingredient list, in descending order by weight. Sub-ingredients count. If your chocolate chips contain soy lecithin, that has to show up.
4. Allergen declaration. MF3138 says the nine common food allergens "must be named in plain language": milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame. Sesame joined the federal 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 — "pecans," not "tree nuts."
5. Quantity — net weight, volume, or count, depending on the product.

The exact disclaimer wording

Kansas has no required disclaimer. MF3138 says it directly: uninspected food products "do NOT need to be labeled as 'homemade' or other indication that they are not inspected. However, homemade food products can be labeled as such." There is no string to copy.

One exception: House Bill 2158, approved April 9, 2026, lets beekeepers sell packaged honey at retail without a license if, among other conditions, honey sales stay under $35,000 a year and the label carries Product not subject to routine inspection by the Kansas department of agriculture.

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.

Kansas has no cap, so trigger four is the one that bites. MF3138: any sale "to another business entity for use, resale, or further distribution requires food safety licensing," including consignment and craft malls.

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 Kansas

Kansas uses an exclusion model: anything not needing time and temperature control for safety or specialized processing is allowed, and MF3138 publishes KDA's determinations.

Allowed without a license, per MF3138:

License required, per MF3138:

A Kansas quirk: some licensed-category foods may be sold without a license on six or fewer days a year, under K.A.R. 4-28-33. Day seven needs a license.

If your product is on that license-required list, cottage food law is not your path. You'll need a licensed commercial or shared-use kitchen and a KDA food establishment or food processing license, 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

The statute's only channel rule is "distribution directly to the end consumer." MF3138 reads that to include "exempt foods sold online and shipped to the customer's home or delivered by the producer," and adds that for a buyer in another state "the seller must also follow the rules of the receiving state(s)."

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

Kansas law doesn't preempt your city or county, and MF3138 warns that market requirements "may be more stringent than state governmental regulations."

When you outgrow cottage food

Kansas has no cap, so the exits are product and channel:

• A grocery, restaurant, or craft mall wants to carry you.
• You want to make pickles, hot sauce, cheesecake, or jerky.
• You want to say "high protein" on the bag.
• You list on Amazon.

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 Kansas has moved by guidance more than statute: MF3138 is revised yearly. Check the current rules with the agency directly:

• KDA Food Safety and Lodging — Food Sales at Farmers' Markets & Similar Locations
• K-State Research and Extension / KDA — Foods Sold Directly to Consumers in Kansas, MF3138 (PDF)
• K.S.A. 65-689: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes, 65-689

This page was last reviewed October 30, 2026. If you're reading it much later than that, verify the allowed-food tables in the current MF3138 before you rely on them.