Texas cottage food label requirements

That cap is new. Senate Bill 541 took effect September 1, 2025: the limit tripled from $50,000, the allowed-foods list flipped from a short whitelist to an "anything except" model, and for the first time you can sell to retail shops. If you're working from a guide written before late 2025, most of what you know is out of date.

The label Texas actually requires

Under Tex. Health & Safety Code § 437.0193 and the DSHS rules under it, every cottage food product you sell needs:

1. The name and address of your cottage food operation. You can substitute a DSHS-issued unique identification number for your home address. DSHS does not publish a fee for that registration, and cities and counties are barred from charging you a permit fee of their own. If you're selling out of a house you'd rather not print on a cookie bag, do this first.
2. The common or usual name of the product. "Chocolate chip cookies," not "Grandma's Famous Bites."
3. A declaration of major food allergens. DSHS lists eggs, tree nuts, soy, peanuts, milk, wheat, and sesame — the federal nine minus fish and crustacean shellfish, which Texas cottage food operations can't make anyway. Sesame was added by the FASTER Act on January 1, 2023. Declare allergens parenthetically in the ingredient list or in a separate "Contains" statement, and name tree nuts by species: "almonds," not "tree nuts."
4. The Texas disclaimer, word for word.

The exact disclaimer wording

THIS PRODUCT WAS PRODUCED IN A PRIVATE RESIDENCE THAT IS NOT SUBJECT TO GOVERNMENTAL LICENSING OR INSPECTION.

Print it as written. Don't paraphrase it, don't shorten it to "made in a home kitchen," don't drop the period. This is the string people get wrong most often, and an inspector or farmers market manager reads it literally.

Two additions apply to specific products:

• Refrigerated foods (TCS foods). If your product needs time and temperature control for safety, you must also print the date of manufacture and this statement in at least 12-point type: SAFE HANDLING INSTRUCTIONS: To prevent illness from bacteria, keep this food refrigerated or frozen until the food is prepared for consumption.
• Pickled and fermented products. These need a batch number on the label.

Net weight is not on the DSHS list, unlike Florida's. It becomes required the moment you leave cottage food, so most people add it from day one rather than redesign later.

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.

Texas is now unusual on trigger four. SB 541 created a "cottage food vendor" category, so you can sell shelf-stable products wholesale to a DSHS-registered shop or retail store for resale. But a retailer shelving your jar next to commercially manufactured products will often ask for a panel as a condition of carrying you, even though Texas law doesn't make them. Retail buyers are the most common reason a Texas maker ends 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 Texas

Since September 1, 2025, Texas uses an exclusion model. Anything not on the prohibited list is allowed, which is the opposite of how the law worked before. Eggs, honey, beverages, cheesecake, freeze-dried candy, and refrigerated items are all in scope now.

Prohibited under Tex. Health & Safety Code § 437.001:

If your product is on that list, cottage food law is not your path in Texas. Jerky makers in particular need a licensed commercial kitchen and, for meat, likely a state or federal grant of inspection. Once you're in 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

The online rule is the one people misread. Under § 437.0194 you may take orders and payment over the internet, but you or a household member or employee must personally deliver the food to the customer. You cannot drop it at the post office. You also have to make all required label information available to the buyer before you take payment. Your street address is the one element you can hold back until after the sale.

Mail order used to be allowed alongside internet orders. SB 541 struck "or by mail order" from § 437.0194 effective September 1, 2025, so internet orders are now the only remote channel Texas permits. If a guide still tells you that you can take mail orders, it predates the rewrite. Note that this is about how the order comes in, not delivery: personal delivery was required before and is still required now, under § 437.0194(b).

Interstate is a hard no, and the reason is jurisdictional: the moment a product crosses a state line it enters interstate commerce and FDA has authority over the whole operation that made it. A state exemption cannot exempt you from federal law. Ship one box of cookies to a cousin in Oklahoma and you've stepped outside the exemption for that shipment.

The cap, the permit, and the training

Texas does not license cottage food operations, and SB 541 tightened the preemption language so cities and counties can't require their own permits or fees either. What you must have is a basic food handler certificate from a program accredited under Health & Safety Code ch. 438, kept current. The $150,000 figure is gross income from food sales, not profit, and it's indexed to inflation going forward — confirm the current-year number with DSHS before you cut it close.

When you outgrow cottage food

The cap isn't the only exit. Any of these ends the exemption:

• You cross $150,000 in gross food sales.
• You want to ship by mail instead of driving orders around Houston.
• You want to sell out of state.
• You want to make jerky, ice cream, or anything else on the prohibited list.
• You want to say "high protein" on the bag.
• A grocery buyer says yes and 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 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.

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.

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

Texas rewrote this law in 2025 and indexed the cap to inflation, so the number and the food list can both move. Check before you print:

• Texas DSHS — Texas Cottage Food Production
• Texas Health & Safety Code Chapter 437
• SB 541, 89th Legislature (2025), full text

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