Michigan cottage food label requirements

That cap is new. 2025 Public Act 51, from House Bill 4122, took effect March 24, 2026. It doubled the limit from $25,000, added a higher $75,000 tier for high-priced products, opened internet and mail order and third-party delivery, and created a voluntary registration that lets you keep your home address off the label. If you're working from a guide that says $25,000 or "no online sales," it's out of date.

The label Michigan actually requires

MCL 289.4102(3) lists it. Every cottage food product you sell in Michigan needs all of the following:

1. The name and address of the business — or, if you register with the MSU Product Center, the name, telephone number, and registration number instead. That second option is the address-privacy route and it's new in 2026. Before PA 51, your home address went on every package.
2. The name of the cottage food product. The common or usual name. "Chocolate chip cookies," not "Grandma's Famous Bites."
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. MDARD is explicit that trade secrets don't get you out of this.
4. The net weight or net volume. Include the metric equivalent.
5. Allergen labeling as specified by federal labeling requirements. That's nine allergens: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame. Sesame was added by the FASTER Act effective January 1, 2023. Declare them parenthetically inside the ingredient list or in a separate "Contains" statement. MDARD specifically wants tree nuts named by species — "almonds," not "nuts."
6. The Michigan statement, word for word.

There's a seventh item that only applies conditionally: if any nutritional claim is made, appropriate labeling as specified by federal labeling requirements. Michigan wrote the trigger into its own statute, same as Florida did. Say "high protein" and the statute that exempts you from licensing turns around and demands the federal labeling that backs the claim up.

The exact disclaimer wording

Made in a home kitchen that has not been inspected by the Michigan Department of Agriculture & Rural Development

MCL 289.4102(3)(g) requires it "printed in at least 11 point font in a color that provides a clear contrast to the background." Eleven point is roughly 1/8 inch tall. MDARD says all capitals and mixed case are both acceptable.

One wording note, because people ask. MDARD's labeling page writes the department name with an ampersand, as above. The statute spells it out — "the Michigan department of agriculture and rural development." — with a period, in the lowercase style Michigan's compiled laws use for agency names. Either rendering satisfies the requirement. What you cannot do is paraphrase it, shorten it to "made in a home kitchen," or set it in 8-point grey. Hand-printed labels are fine with MDARD if they're legible and permanent.

For wedding and specialty cakes that don't carry a package, MDARD accepts the full labeling on the invoice delivered with the product.

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.

Michigan's cap is mid-range, so trigger three is a live risk here in a way it isn't in a no-cap state. A baker doing steady farmers market volume plus holiday orders can reach $50,000 faster than expected, and the day you cross it you're a licensed food establishment. Trigger one runs second, and Michigan already codified it in MCL 289.4102(3)(f).

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 Michigan

Michigan uses a safety-definition model: cottage foods must be non-potentially hazardous, meaning shelf-stable without time or temperature control. MDARD publishes a detailed list of what clears that bar, and it is more specific than most states'.

Allowed, per MDARD: breads, rolls, cookies, muffins, quick breads, and shelf-stable pies; celebration cakes; hard candies, lollipops, chocolate-covered non-hazardous foods, maple candy, coated and uncoated nuts, and freeze-dried candy without alcohol; fruit jams and jellies as defined in 21 CFR part 150, in glass jars; peanut butter and other nut butters; vinegar and flavored vinegars; granola, dry herb and spice mixes, dry bread mixes, and dried pasta; dehydrated whole or sliced fruits and vegetables, including chips; cultivated mushrooms; popcorn; roasted coffee; and flavoring extracts.

Prohibited:

If your product is on that list, cottage food law is not your path in Michigan. Salsa makers, jerky makers, kombucha brewers, and anyone selling cheesecake need a licensed commercial or shared-use kitchen and an MDARD food establishment license. 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 condition on those three new channels is the part people skim past. MCL 289.4102(4) permits internet, mail order, and third-party delivery sales only "if the cottage food operation provides an opportunity for a consumer to directly interact with the cottage food operation before the cottage food product is sold." The legislature defined that interaction as face-to-face or virtual — two-way electronic communication counts. A silent checkout page with no way to reach a human does not.

The other half of that same subsection: cottage food products may be sold or delivered only to a consumer in this state. Michigan wrote the geographic limit into the statute explicitly. That settles the interstate question here without needing to reach federal law, though the federal point stands too — 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 exemption cannot exempt you from federal law.

The cap, the license, and the training

Michigan does not license cottage food operations. There is no application form and no mandatory registration. What PA 51 added is a voluntary registration run by the MSU Product Center, which issues a registration number and lets you replace your home address on the label with your business name, phone number, and that number. The statute caps the one-time fee at $50.00.

On the cap: $50,000 is gross sales, not profit, and it applies until October 1, 2026. From that date forward MDARD may adjust the limits annually using an inflation factor based on the Detroit-area Consumer Price Index. Confirm the current-year figure with MDARD before you cut it close. The $75,000 tier is not a general alternative — it applies where the operation sells products at $250.00 or more per unit, which in practice means large custom cakes and high-end celebration work.

MDARD recommends the MSU Extension online cottage food course but does not require it. That's a genuine difference from states like Georgia and Illinois, where training is mandatory.

When you outgrow cottage food

Crossing $50,000 is not the only exit. Any of these ends the exemption:

• You cross $50,000 in gross cottage food sales.
• A shop wants to stock you — wholesale and consignment are both out.
• You want to ship to a customer in Ohio or Indiana.
• You want to make salsa, jerky, cheesecake, or anything else on the prohibited list.
• You want to say "high protein" on the bag.
• You list on Amazon.

Whichever comes first, the day after it happens you are a food manufacturer with an MDARD food establishment license, 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 picked. A discrete unit holding 200% to 300% of the RACC needs a dual-column panel.

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 in 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 file nothing at all.

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

Michigan has a cheap local option, and you should know about it

If you're a Michigan business, the MSU Product Center builds Nutrition Facts labels for Michigan-based clients at published rates: $100 for a standard vertical, tabular, or simplified panel, $125 for linear format, and $150 for a dual-column panel, per its fee schedule revised March 2024. Similar labels — three or fewer ingredient changes from one you've already had done within six months — drop to $75. You have to be a Product Center client, and turnaround varies with their queue.

That's a real alternative and we'd rather you hear it from us. Nutrillius builds an FDA-compliant Nutrition Facts panel from your recipe in about a minute for $39 one time, no subscription, no eligibility test, no queue. The Product Center is cheaper than a lab and comes with a human reviewing your work; we're faster and cheaper still. Either beats $1,609–$1,724 for a single lab-analyzed sample at Medallion Labs.

Verify this yourself

Michigan changed this law effective March 24, 2026 and indexed the cap to inflation starting October 1, 2026, so the number can move every year. Check before you print:

• MDARD — Michigan Cottage Foods Information
• MDARD — Cottage Food Labeling
• MCL 289.4102, full text — amended by 2025 PA 51, eff. March 24, 2026
• MCL 289.1105, cottage food operation definition

Last reviewed August 4, 2026. If you're reading this much later, confirm the cap and the disclaimer wording before relying on either.