Tennessee cottage food label requirements

Tennessee doesn't really have a cottage food law in the usual sense. It has the Tennessee Food Freedom Act, which is broader: no permit, no license, no registration, no inspection, no food safety course, and no ceiling on what you can earn. The old TDA domestic kitchen licensing program that Tennessee guides used to describe is gone — the rules chapter behind it, 0080-04-11, has been repealed. If a page tells you to apply for a domestic kitchen license, it's describing a program that no longer exists.

The label Tennessee actually requires

Section 53-1-118(b) lists what a producer has to disclose. On a packaged product, all of it goes on the label:

1. The producer's name, home address, and telephone number. The statute says home address. There is no privacy substitute the way Texas offers a DSHS identification number, and no PO box option.
2. The common or usual name of the product. "Sourdough boule," not "Nana's Best."
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. The Tennessee disclosure statement, word for word.

If your product needs time and temperature control for safety — anything you'd tell a customer to refrigerate — you also have to include the production date. That's a fifth element, added when the 2025 amendment brought refrigerated foods into the law.

Two things are conspicuously absent. Tennessee does not require net weight, and it does not require a separate allergen declaration. The mandated statement handles allergens by warning that the product may contain them. That is a lower bar than federal law, and it is a bad idea to stop there. Add net weight and a "Contains" statement anyway: federal law covers nine allergens — milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame, with sesame added by the FASTER Act on January 1, 2023 — and the day you leave this exemption you'll need both. Naming tree nuts, fish, and shellfish by species ("pecans," not "tree nuts") is the federal convention.

The exact disclosure wording

This product was produced at a private residence that is exempt from state licensing and inspection. This product may contain allergens.

Two sentences, sentence case, both ending in periods. Tenn. Code Ann. § 53-1-118(b) specifies no minimum type size and no contrast requirement, which is unusual — Florida requires 10-point, Washington 11-point. That is not permission to hide it. Print it legibly and don't paraphrase, don't drop the second sentence, and don't swap in another state's wording.

Tennessee also lets you deliver this information without a label in some situations. For bulk containers, a label on the container works. At a farmers market or a booth, a placard at the point of sale works. For internet sales, the information has to be on the product's webpage. For telephone and custom orders, you disclose the private-residence status and the allergen warning verbally, and provide the rest on request. Prepackaged retail products still need the label.

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.

Tennessee is one of the exceptions on trigger four. Section 53-1-118(b)(1) expressly permits sales through "an agent of the producer or a third-party vendor, such as a retail shop or grocery store" for products that don't contain dairy, meat, or poultry. So retail is legal here. What isn't guaranteed is shelf space: a buyer putting your jar next to commercially manufactured goods routinely asks for a panel as a condition of carrying you, and Tennessee law doesn't stop them from asking. Trigger three is close to irrelevant in this state, because there is no cap to cross.

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 Tennessee

Tennessee uses an exclusion model. Anything not carved out of the definition of "homemade food item" in § 53-1-102(19)(B) is allowed, including refrigerated and time/temperature-controlled foods since July 1, 2025. Baked goods, jams, acidified and fermented products, dried goods, bottled condiments, and dairy-containing items are all in scope. Everything has to be made at your own private residence — a rented community kitchen takes you out of the exemption.

Excluded from the exemption:

If your product is on that list, the Food Freedom Act is not your path. A jerky maker, a fishmonger, or a raw-milk dairy needs a licensed facility, and for meat and poultry likely a state or federal grant of inspection. Once you're operating out of a commercial kitchen 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

Tennessee is one of the most permissive states in the country on channels. For a product with no dairy, meat, or poultry in it, you can sell in person or remotely, and delivery can be handled by you, an agent, a third-party vendor, or a third-party carrier. That means shipping is allowed, and so is a shelf in a grocery store.

Products containing dairy, meat, or poultry are locked down. Those must be sold by the producer to the consumer and delivered by the producer. No third-party vendor, no carrier. If you sell anything requiring temperature control, § 53-1-118(b) also requires you to hold it at temperature during transport.

Interstate is a hard no, and here the statute says so directly: § 53-1-118(c) provides that the exemption does not apply to sales of homemade food items outside Tennessee. The reason is jurisdictional as well as statutory. The moment a product crosses a state line it enters interstate commerce and FDA has authority over the operation that made it, and a state exemption cannot exempt you from federal law.

The cap, the permit, and the training

That column is not a typo. Tennessee charges nothing and asks for nothing up front. TDA states plainly that the department does not issue permits or licenses or conduct inspections for products made under this law. The trade-off is that you're on your own for food safety, and the Department of Health can still investigate a reported foodborne illness — that's the one carve-out in § 53-1-118(a).

Section 53-1-118(d) preempts local government: a county or city cannot prohibit or regulate your homemade food sales. Ordinary local rules on zoning, signage, parking, and business registration still apply, and so do state and local tax obligations, which § 53-1-118(c) expressly preserves.

When you outgrow cottage food

With no cap, no fee, and retail sales allowed, Tennessee makers usually leave the exemption by choice rather than by force. Any of these ends it:

• You want to ship or sell out of state.
• You want to make jerky, sell fish, or bottle raw milk.
• You want to produce somewhere other than your own home — a shared commercial kitchen included.
• You want to say "high protein" on the bag and stand behind it.
• A regional grocery chain says yes and its compliance team asks for a panel.

Whichever comes first, the day after it happens you are a food manufacturer, and food manufacturers label under 21 CFR 101.9. Your label 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 — and 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

Tennessee rewrote this law in 2025, and the rewrite is what brought refrigerated foods in. It could move again. Check before you print:

• Tennessee Department of Agriculture — Tennessee Food Freedom Act
• Tenn. Code Ann. § 53-1-118, full text
• Public Chapter 431 (HB 130 / SB 484), 2025, bill text
• UT Extension PB1909, "Tennessee's Food Freedom Act — Non-TCS vs TCS Homemade Food Items", published January 26, 2025

Last reviewed August 4, 2026. If you're reading this much later, confirm the excluded-foods list and the statement wording before you rely on either.