Massachusetts cottage food label requirements

Two things make Massachusetts different from its neighbors. There is no statewide disclaimer sentence to copy. And the permit comes from your city or town's Board of Health, not from the state, so fees, forms, and label review vary from one town line to the next. There are five situations where the answer on a nutrition panel flips, and they're below, after the part you actually came for.

The label Massachusetts actually requires

A retail residential kitchen has to meet 105 CMR 520.000, the state's general food labeling regulation, under 105 CMR 590.009(D)(3)(a). The Department of Public Health's Residential Kitchens Q&A boils that down to a short list. Every prepackaged product you sell needs:

1. The name of the residential kitchen. Your business name or your own name.
2. Address and/or phone number. DPH's Q&A says "address and/or phone number," so a phone number alone can satisfy the state layer. Your Board of Health may ask for more; check before you print.
3. The ingredient list, in descending order by weight. Sub-ingredients count. If your chocolate chips contain soy lecithin, that has to show up. DPH's Q&A describes the order as "by volume," but the standardized recipe you must keep on file lists ingredients by weight, and federal ingredient labeling under 21 CFR 101.4 orders by weight. Use weight.
4. Allergen declaration. DPH lists "allergens" as a required element. 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."
5. A sell-by date, if required. DPH's words are "sell-by date, if required." For shelf-stable baked goods most boards don't require one; some do.
6. The product name. The common or usual name is a basic element of any food label under 21 CFR 101.3, and every board's label review expects it.

Net weight is not on DPH's residential kitchen list. Federal labeling requires it, your Board of Health may ask for it, and it becomes mandatory the moment you leave the residential kitchen, so most people add it from day one.

The exact disclaimer wording

Massachusetts has no required disclaimer. Neither 105 CMR 590.009(D) nor DPH's residential kitchen guidance contains a "made in a home kitchen" sentence, and we are not going to invent one for you.

What you will find are town-level requirements. Because every Board of Health reviews labels under its own permit, some boards ask for a home-kitchen statement on their application and some don't. If yours does, use the exact wording on that town's form. If a guide gives you a single "Massachusetts disclaimer" in quotation marks, it is quoting one town, not the state.

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.

In Massachusetts trigger four is the one that arrives first, and it arrives in an unusual way. The state allows a residential kitchen to sell wholesale, but only with a separate DPH food processing license under 105 CMR 500.015. The day you take that license to sell to a cafe or a grocery, you are a licensed food manufacturer, and the buyer will expect a label that looks like every other product on the shelf.

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 Massachusetts

Massachusetts uses an exclusion model built on one line: 105 CMR 590.009(D)(2)(b)1 allows "only non-potentially hazardous foods and foods which do not require refrigeration" in a retail residential kitchen, unless your board grants a variance. Anything that passes that test is in. Your board may require a laboratory report showing a pH of 4.6 or below, or a water activity of 0.85 or below, before it agrees that a product passes.

Allowed (DPH Residential Kitchens Q&A):

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 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. In Massachusetts that means the pickle makers, the hot sauce and barbecue sauce makers, and anyone whose cheesecake is the whole business.

Where you can sell

The retail permit means "sale to the ultimate consumer," which is how 105 CMR 590.001 defines retail. DPH's Q&A states that "the use of brokers, wholesalers, and warehouses by residential kitchen operators to store, sell, and distribute foods prepared in residential kitchens is prohibited," and that only household members may work in the operation. On out-of-state sales DPH is direct: residential kitchen products "may not be sold out-of-state (in interstate commerce), because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not recognize these foods as originating from an approved source."

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

This is the state where the brief for every other page breaks down. The regulation is statewide, but enforcement is municipal. Your Board of Health decides the application form, the fee, whether it wants a ServSafe or allergen awareness certificate, and what it wants on the label. One town's permit does not travel. If you sell at a market in another town, 105 CMR 590.009(C) lets the host board verify that you comply, by accepting your own board's reports or by inspecting with them.

Massachusetts is also the state most likely to change. House bill H.140 and Senate bill S.69 in the 2025–2026 session would exempt direct-to-consumer cottage food producers from licensing and create a voluntary state registration. As of this review the Senate version sits in Senate Ways and Means; nothing has passed.

When you outgrow cottage food

With no sales cap, Massachusetts makers don't age out on revenue. They leave the residential kitchen for one of these reasons:

• You want to sell to a shop, cafe, or grocery, which needs the DPH wholesale license.
• You want to ship out of state.
• You want to make sauce, pickles, cheesecake, or anything else on the prohibited list.
• You want employees who don't live in your house.
• 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 Massachusetts has a cottage food bill moving through the Senate. Before you print labels, check the current rules with the agency directly, and then with your town:

• Massachusetts DPH — Residential Kitchens
• Massachusetts DPH — Residential Kitchen Questions and Answers
• 105 CMR 590.009(D): Special Requirements, residential kitchens
• Senate Bill S.69 (2025–2026), cottage food

This page was last reviewed October 30, 2026. If you're reading it much later than that, verify the regulation and your town's label requirements before you rely on either.