Ohio cottage food label requirements

That last part is real. Ohio never wrote a dollar limit into its cottage food law. What it limits instead is what you can make, tightly, through a closed list of twenty product categories. The constraint is the food, not the money.

Ohio also runs two separate home food tracks, and confusing them is the most expensive mistake a baker here makes. Cottage food and home bakery are different legal categories with different rules, paperwork, and food lists. Both are regulated by the Ohio Department of Agriculture.

The label Ohio actually requires

Ohio Rev. Code § 3715.023(A) sets the list, and OAC 901:3-20-02 layers the federal labeling rules of 21 CFR Part 101 on top of it. Every cottage food product you sell needs:

1. The name and address of the business. Ohio offers no address-privacy substitute the way Texas does with a DSHS identification number. If you don't want your home address on a cookie bag, sort that out before you print.
2. The name of the food product. The common or usual name. "Chocolate chip cookies," not "Grandma's Famous Bites."
3. The ingredients of the food product, 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 of the food product. ODA's fact sheet asks for both U.S. Customary and metric, U.S. first.
5. The home-produced statement, in ten-point type, word for word.

Allergens aren't in § 3715.023, but they are required. OAC 901:3-20-02 pulls in "the food labeling requirements of 21 CFR Part 101," which carries the federal allergen rules, and ODA's fact sheet lists all nine: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame. Sesame joined under the FASTER Act on January 1, 2023. Declare them parenthetically in the ingredient list or in a "Contains:" statement immediately after it, and name tree nuts, fish, and shellfish by species — "walnuts," not "tree nuts."

The exact statement wording

This product is home produced.

Ohio Rev. Code § 3715.023(A)(5) requires that statement "in ten-point type." Print it as written. Don't paraphrase it, don't shorten it to "made in a home kitchen," don't set it in six-point type on the back seam.

One wrinkle: ODA renders it inconsistently across its own materials. The Revised Code prints it in sentence case with a closing period, as above. ODA's February 2024 fact sheet prints it both ways — title case in the requirements list, and the statutory sentence-case-with-period version in the sample label and the ten-point callout box. ODA's live cottage food page prints "This Product is Home Produced." — title case, with a period. The statute is the law, and ODA's own sample label uses the statutory string, so that's the version to print. If a county sanitarian working from another part of the fact sheet asks for title case, that's why.

Cottage food vs. home bakery: which track are you on?

This is the Ohio-specific question, and the answer decides everything else.

A cottage food production operation, per ORC 3715.01(A)(19), is a person producing non-potentially-hazardous food at home in an ordinary residential kitchen with a single stove or oven. ODA neither licenses nor inspects it. You follow the rules and start.

A home bakery is a registered bakery that happens to be in a house. ORC 911.02 charges $10 a year for it — a single oven of ordinary home kitchen design, in a home — against $200 for a standard bakery registration, renewed by September 30. ODA inspects against the state food safety code: cleanable non-carpeted floors, no pets, mechanical refrigeration at 45°F or below, and a coliform-negative water test on a private well. Section 911.02 was last amended by House Bill 96 of the 136th General Assembly, effective September 30, 2025.

So the trade is $10 and an inspection to unlock cheesecake, cream pie, pumpkin pie, fry pies, filled donuts, waffles, raw dough, egg noodles, cream cheese frosting, and pepperoni rolls. One detail: the home-produced statement is a cottage food requirement under § 3715.023(A)(5). A registered home bakery does not print it.

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.

Ohio inverts the usual pattern. Trigger three is nearly dead here because there is no cap, but trigger four is unusually live: ORC 3715.023(B) and OAC 901:3-20-02 expressly say a properly labeled cottage food product is acceptable for a licensed retail food establishment or food service operation to sell or serve. Ohio lets you into grocery stores and restaurants, and those buyers routinely demand a panel as a condition of shelf space even though Ohio law doesn't make them. Retail is how most Ohio makers end up needing one.

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 Ohio

Ohio uses a strict approved-list model. OAC 901:3-20-05(E) makes it a prohibition to "produce food items not expressly listed in paragraph (A) of rule 901:3-20-04." If it isn't on the list, you can't make it as cottage food. Treat silence as a no.

Allowed, per OAC 901:3-20-04: non-potentially hazardous bakery products; jams; jellies; candy (not fresh fruit dipped or covered in candy); flavored honey from an exempt beekeeper; fruit chutneys; fruit butters; granola, granola bars, and candy-dipped granola bars; maple sugar from an exempt maple syrup producer; popcorn, flavored popcorn, kettle corn, popcorn balls, and caramel corn (not popping corn); unfilled baked donuts; waffle cones, plain or candy-dipped; pizzelles; dry cereal and nut snack mixes with seasonings; roasted coffee, whole bean or ground; dry baking mixes in a jar; dry herbs and herb blends; dry soup mixes with commercially dried vegetables, beans, grains, and seasonings; dry seasoning blends; and dry tea blends.

Prohibited:

If your product is on that list, cottage food law is not your path in Ohio. Cheesecake and cream pie makers should look at home bakery registration first — that's the cheap door. Jerky, sauce, salsa, canned goods, and dairy makers are past both tracks and need a licensed commercial or shared-use kitchen. 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 out-of-state ban is explicit, and it's worth knowing where it comes from. It is not in the Revised Code. It's in the administrative rule: OAC 901:3-20-05(F) prohibits a cottage food operation from selling "cottage food products outside the state of Ohio." Same binding effect, different source — so if you're reading the statute and can't find it, that's why.

Retail resale is the flip side, and it's genuinely permissive. ORC 3715.023(B) provides that properly labeled products are acceptable for a licensed retail food establishment or food service operation to offer for sale. Most states slam that door. Ohio leaves it open.

The cap, the permit, and the training

Ohio is one of a small number of states with no cottage food revenue ceiling. You can operate at any volume as long as everything you make is on the approved list, you stay inside Ohio, and you label correctly. The enforcement lever isn't an audit of your books, it's OAC 901:3-20-03, which lets ODA pull product samples — and refusing is itself a prohibited act under 901:3-20-05(D). Zoning, signage, and traffic ordinances still apply to a home business like any other, and markets often add their own vendor requirements.

When you outgrow cottage food

With no sales cap, Ohio makers hit a different wall than makers in most states. Any of these ends the exemption:

• You want to make something that isn't on the twenty-item list.
• You want to sell to a customer in Kentucky, Michigan, Indiana, or Pennsylvania.
• A grocery chain says yes and asks for a panel.
• You want to say "high protein" on the bag.
• You list on Amazon.
• You need refrigeration — that's home bakery at minimum, and often a commercial kitchen.

Whichever comes 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 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 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 food labeling guide 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. Compare that to $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

Ohio moved its bakery registration fees in the 2025 budget bill, and the cottage food product list sits in administrative rule, which ODA can amend without the legislature. Check before you print:

• Ohio Department of Agriculture — Cottage Foods
• Ohio Department of Agriculture — Home Bakery
• Ohio Rev. Code § 3715.023, labeling and § 3715.025, restrictions
• OAC Chapter 901:3-20, cottage food rules
• ODA Division of Food Safety: (614) 728-6250, foodsafety@agri.ohio.gov

Last reviewed August 4, 2026. If you're reading this much later, confirm the product list and the statement wording first.