New hampshire cottage food label requirements

Two 2025 laws rewrote this section. HB 304 (2025 ch. 28, effective July 13, 2025) removed the gross-sales cap and reorganized the labeling rules. HB 505 (2025 ch. 193, effective November 12, 2025) brought freeze-dried foods under licensing. If your guide predates them, its cap is wrong. 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 New Hampshire actually requires

RSA 143-A:12, V and He-P 2310.01(d) together require every packaged homestead food product to carry:

1. The name, physical or e-mail address, and phone number of the homestead food operation. The statute allows an e-mail address in place of a physical one. The DHHS rule asks for the operation's address.
2. The name of the homestead food product.
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. The statute says "allergy information"; He-P 2310.01(d) says the name of each major food allergen unless it already appears in an ingredient's common name. 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 product code with a batch number or date of manufacture, under He-P 2310.01(d), so a batch can be pulled in a recall.
6. The New Hampshire exemption statement, word for word.

DHHS's homestead FAQ also asks for net weight, volume, or count in both US customary and metric units. The statute and rule don't list it, but federal labeling does, and you'll need it the day you leave homestead food.

One shortcut exists for sales from your home or your own farm stand only: the label may replace the ingredient list with a QR code or website address, as long as a physical sign at the display lists the ingredients in order. That option is not available at farmers markets, retail stores, or anywhere else.

The exact disclaimer wording

This product is exempt from New Hampshire licensing and inspection.

That is RSA 143-A:12, V(c)(1). He-P 2310.01(d) requires it in at least the equivalent of 10-point font, in a color that clearly contrasts with the background. If you hold a Class H homestead license instead of operating under the exemption, the statement changes to this, under V(c)(2):

This product is made in a residential food production area licensed by the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services.

Use the one that matches your status. Don't paraphrase either, and don't put the exempt statement on a product you're selling to a restaurant, because that sale requires the license.

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.

New Hampshire is the exception on trigger four. An exempt homestead operation can sell at retail food stores, and a licensed one can sell to restaurants, online, by mail order, and to wholesalers and distributors. The law doesn't require a panel for any of that. But the moment your granola sits on a grocery shelf next to commercial brands, the buyer tends to ask for one, and a distributor almost always will.

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 New Hampshire

New Hampshire uses an exclusion model. RSA 143-A:12 defines homestead food products as "all foods except potentially hazardous food," so anything that is not potentially hazardous is in scope. Potentially hazardous food means food that requires temperature control for safety, and the statute specifically includes low-acid canned foods in that definition.

Allowed, per the statute and DHHS guidance:

Prohibited from a homestead kitchen:

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 New Hampshire that is mostly the refrigerated-dessert makers, the canners, and anyone bottling a drink.

Where you can sell

New Hampshire splits homestead operations into two tiers by sales channel, not by revenue.

RSA 143-A:12, II exempts operations "selling food, excluding potentially hazardous food, from the homestead residence, at the owner's own farm stand, at farmers' markets, or at retail food stores" from licensure and routine inspection, though DHHS "may inspect when the department has reason to suspect an imminent health hazard." Paragraph III requires a license under RSA 143-A:13 for operations that sell "to restaurants or other retail food establishments, over the Internet, by mail order, or to wholesalers, brokers, or other food distributors who will resell the homestead product."

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

Before HB 304, the tier line was a dollar figure. Now it is purely about who you sell to. A baker selling only at markets and corner stores can grow without limit and never hold a license; a baker who takes one online order needs the Class H license first.

The local layer is real in New Hampshire. DHHS's homestead FAQ notes that 15 self-inspecting cities and towns may impose additional requirements or prohibit homestead operations altogether, so check with your town's health officer before you start.

When you outgrow cottage food

With no sales cap, New Hampshire makers don't age out on revenue. They leave the homestead exemption for one of these reasons:

• You want to sell online, by mail, to a restaurant, or through a distributor, which needs the Class H license.
• You want to ship out of state.
• You want to make cheesecake, a low-acid canned product, or a beverage.
• A grocery buyer or distributor wants a Nutrition Facts panel.
• 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 New Hampshire amended this section four times in 2025 alone. Before you print labels, check the current rules with the agency directly:

• NH DHHS — Homestead Food Operations
• RSA 143-A:12: Homestead Food; License Required
• He-P 2300: DHHS food protection rules, including He-P 2310.01 (exempt homestead labeling)

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