Kentucky cottage food label requirements

Kentucky runs two programs, and guides routinely blur them. A home-based processor makes shelf-stable foods in a home kitchen, registers for $50, and can sell online and by delivery. A home-based microprocessor is a farmer who grows the main ingredient, makes canned and acidified products like salsa and pickles, and may sell only at farmers markets, certified roadside stands, or the farm. The $60,000 cap and the label are the same for both; almost everything else differs.

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 Kentucky actually requires

KRS 217.136(3) says a home-based processor "shall label each of its food or cosmetic products and include the following information on the label":

1. The name and address of the home-based processing operation. The Food Safety Branch's guide specifies street address, city, state, and zip. There is no ID-number substitute.
2. The common or usual name of the product.
3. The ingredients, in descending order of predominance by weight. Sub-ingredients count. If your chocolate chips contain soy lecithin, that has to show up.
4. The net weight and volume by standard measure, or numerical count.
5. The Kentucky statement, word for word, in 10-point type.
6. The date the product was processed.
7. Allergen declaration. The statute doesn't list it, but 902 KAR 45:090 requires allergen information under 21 U.S.C. 343(w), and the Branch's label guide treats it as mandatory. Federal law covers nine: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame. 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."

A product missing any of these is "deemed misbranded" under KRS 217.136(4), which is the hook the Branch uses to pull product. Microprocessor labels carry the same seven elements, and the Branch reviews a draft before you may market the product.

The exact disclaimer wording

This product is home-produced and processed

KRS 217.136(3)(e) requires it "in ten (10) point type." The statute prints no period inside the quotation marks and no capitals beyond the first word; the Branch's March 2021 summary adds that it should be in a color that contrasts with the background.

Don't paraphrase it, don't turn it into "homemade," and don't shrink it to fit a jar lid. Inspectors read this string literally, and a label without it makes the product misbranded by statute.

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.

Kentucky writes trigger one into its own guidance. The Branch's labeling guide says Nutrition Facts panels "generally are not required," then lists the words that change that: free, low, reduced, fewer, high, less, more, lean, extra lean, good source, and light. Use one and "nutrition information must be declared in a 'Nutrition Facts' statement." With a $60,000 cap and no retail channel, triggers one and three are what actually bite here.

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 Kentucky

Kentucky uses an approved-list model. KRS 217.015(56) lists what a home-based processor may make, 902 KAR 45:090 Section 2 adds to it, and KRS 217.136(2) draws a hard line at anything acidic or canned.

Allowed for a home-based processor:

Prohibited for a home-based processor:

The microprocessor program is the pressure valve. If you grow the predominant ingredient on your own farm, you can attend the University of Kentucky's Home-Based Microprocessor workshop ($50), have each recipe approved by a processing authority ($5 per recipe), certify annually ($50), and make salsa, pickles, relishes, and low-sugar jams at home. If you don't farm, those products are off the table.

If your product is on that prohibited list and you don't qualify as a microprocessor, cottage food law is not your path. Sauce and salsa makers are the big group. You'll need a licensed commercial or shared-use kitchen with a Cabinet food manufacturing 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

KRS 217.136(5) says products "may only be offered for sale directly to consumers within this state, including from the home-based processor's home, whether by pick-up or delivery, at a market, roadside stand, community event, or online." The Food Safety Branch reads "delivery" narrowly: its summary says you may take orders and payment "in person, electronically, or via internet or phone," but "all items shall be provided in person, directly to consumers," and "Home-based processors are not permitted to ship items." If a carrier-shipped channel matters to your business, get the Branch's current answer in writing before you build on the statute's wording.

Microprocessors are tighter. KRS 217.137(2) limits their products to "farmers markets, certified roadside stands, or on the processor's farm," and 902 KAR 45:090 bars them from retail food establishments and interstate commerce.

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 $60,000 figure is gross income from product sales, written into the definitions at KRS 217.015(56) and (57) since 2019 Ky. Acts ch. 181. It is not indexed. You must be a Kentucky resident, register before your first sale, and list every product you intend to make; registrations run to March 31 and renew by invoice. The Cabinet can order you to stop production if it believes an imminent health hazard exists, and a label that omits a required element makes the product misbranded whether or not anyone complains.

When you outgrow cottage food

Crossing $60,000 is not the only way out of cottage food. Any of these ends the exemption:

• You hit the sales cap.
• A store or a restaurant wants to carry you.
• You want to ship by carrier or sell out of state.
• You want to make salsa, hot sauce, or anything canned without farming the main ingredient.
• 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 Kentucky has moved recently: 2026 Ky. Acts ch. 52 (SB 73) amended KRS 217.136 and 217.015 effective July 15, 2026, mainly to add lard and tallow cosmetics, and two 2026 House bills that would have repealed KRS 217.136 (HB 756) or added roasted coffee (HB 678) died in committee. Before you print labels, check the current rules with the agency directly:

• Kentucky Food Safety Branch — Home-Based Processing
• Food Safety Branch — Labeling Requirements for Home-based Processors (PDF)
• KRS 217.136: Home-based processors
• 902 KAR 45:090
• UK Extension — Home-Based Processing and Microprocessing

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