Virginia cottage food label requirements

The tradeoff for that missing cap is the tightest sales restriction in this series. Virginia lets you make money without limit and then tells you exactly three places you may stand while doing it.

The label Virginia actually requires

Section 3.2-5130(C)(3) requires a label on the principal display panel, or a sign displayed with the product if the package is too small to bear one, showing:

1. The name, physical address, and telephone number of the person preparing the food product. A person, not a brand. Physical address, not a PO box.
2. The date the food product was processed.
3. The Virginia disclaimer, word for word.

That's the statute. VDACS layers on more in its own guidance, and you should follow it: VDACS's home kitchen exemption FAQ tells exempt producers to include "standard labeling information on the product label (name of product, net weight statement, name and address of the manufacturer, list of ingredients and subingredients, and possibly nutritional information)." Note the attribution — the ingredient list and net weight come from VDACS guidance and general Virginia food law, not from the exemption text itself.

Neither the statute nor the FAQ imposes a separate allergen declaration on exempt home kitchens. Put one on anyway. Federal law names nine: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame, the last added by the FASTER Act on January 1, 2023. A "Contains" statement is the cheapest liability protection on a package. Name tree nuts and fish by species: "walnuts," not "tree nuts."

The exact disclaimer wording

NOT FOR RESALE — PROCESSED AND PREPARED WITHOUT STATE INSPECTION.

All capitals, exactly as printed in the Code of Virginia. Two details people get wrong. First, the Code sets that connector as an em dash, not a hyphen; a hyphen is what most label software gives you by default. Second, subdivision (C)(3) prints the string with a closing period and the acidified-foods subdivision (C)(4) prints the identical string without one. Use the version with the period and you satisfy both.

One more difference between those two subdivisions: the sign-instead-of-a-label alternative exists only in (C)(3). If you're working under (C)(4) with acidified vegetables, the statute requires a label affixed to the principal display panel of the container. There is no small-package sign option. A jar too small for a full label still needs a full label.

If you're selling honey from your own hives under subdivision (C)(5), the required statement is different:

PROCESSED AND PREPARED WITHOUT STATE INSPECTION. WARNING: Do Not Feed Honey to Infants Under One Year Old.

Note the mixed case in the warning half. It's written that way in the statute.

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.

Virginia has no cap on baked goods and candy, so trigger three rarely fires here. Trigger four is what gets Virginia makers, and it gets them fast: the exemption bans internet sales, shipping, and any sale to a business. The moment you want a website that takes orders, you are out of the exemption and into a permitted operation, which is a labeling change, not just a paperwork change.

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 Virginia

Virginia uses a strict approved-list model, and the list is written into the statute. If your product isn't named, it isn't covered.

Allowed under § 3.2-5130(C)(3), provided it doesn't require time or temperature control after preparation: candies; jams and jellies that are not low-acid or acidified low-acid; dried fruits; dry herbs; dry seasonings; dry mixtures; coated and uncoated nuts; vinegars and flavored vinegars; popcorn; popcorn balls; cotton candy; dried pasta; dry baking mixes; roasted coffee; dried tea; cereals; trail mixes; granola; and baked goods.

Two narrower exemptions sit alongside it:

A note on how to read the section, because getting this wrong in front of a market manager is expensive. Subsection A is the requirement — it's the clause saying a food establishment must be inspected and permitted. Subsection B covers denial and suspension. Subsection C is the one you want: it opens "The provisions of subsections A and B shall not apply to:" and then lists the exemptions. Cite (C)(3), not (A)(3). If you point an inspector at (A)(3) you are pointing them at the rule that says you need a permit.

Prohibited: anything not named above, and anything requiring time or temperature control. That rules out meat and poultry products, Grade A dairy, cheesecake, cream and custard pies, canned low-acid vegetables, salsa above pH 4.6, prepared meals, catering, pet treats, and anything over 0.5% alcohol by volume. VDACS states plainly in its home food processing guidance that products containing meat or poultry generally may not be made in a home kitchen and that catering is not allowed out of a private home kitchen.

If your product is on that list, the exemption is not your path. You need either a licensed commercial kitchen or a VDACS-permitted home food processing operation, and either way you become a food manufacturer under federal law — full labeling, including a Nutrition Facts panel, unless you qualify for the small business exemption below. VDACS's own guidance for permitted home processors already tells applicants to include a Nutrition Facts panel when a nutrient or health claim is made, and it still lists eight allergens rather than the current federal nine, so don't take that document as your allergen authority.

Where you can sell

This is statutory, not agency preference. Subdivision (C)(3) conditions the exemption on products being "sold in person in the Commonwealth to an individual for his own consumption and not for resale or consignment" and sold "at the private home, at a temporary event that operates for a period of no more than 14 consecutive days, or at a farmers market." VDACS puts the same thing more bluntly in its FAQ: product "may not be shipped from the business to a customer by mail or other parcel courier," and "a business cannot offer their products for sale online."

You may advertise online. You just can't sell online.

This is the distinction most Virginia guides flatten, and flattening it costs makers customers for no reason. Both (C)(3) and (C)(4) end with an express carve-out: nothing in the subdivision "shall prohibit a resident selling a food product in accordance with this subdivision from advertising such food product on the Internet." That is in the statute, not in guidance.

So a website, an Instagram account, a Facebook page, a product gallery with prices, a listing that says which farmers market you'll be at on Saturday — all fine. What you may not do is take the order or the money online, or ship. The transaction has to happen in person, in Virginia. Build the storefront that drives people to your booth; don't build the checkout button.

"In person in the Commonwealth" ends the interstate question before the federal one starts. Some states leave a geographic gap in the text; Florida's § 500.80 has none at all. Virginia wrote one in. And separately, 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 permit, and the fee

Virginia asks less of an exempt home kitchen than almost any state: no fee, no course, no registration, no scheduled visit. Section 3.2-5130 preserves the Department's authority to inspect a private home if a consumer complaint is received, which is the only realistic way VDACS ends up at your door. For acidified vegetables, VDACS strongly advises having your process reviewed by a competent process authority and completing Better Process Control School. That's a FAQ recommendation, not a condition of the exemption — but pH 4.6 is a botulism line, so take it seriously.

When you outgrow cottage food

Virginia's graduation path is unusually well defined, because there's a middle step most states don't have. Any of these ends the exemption:

• A customer asks you to ship, or you build a site that takes orders.
• A coffee shop or farm store wants to stock you.
• You want to make anything not on the statutory list.
• You cross $9,000 on pickles or salsa.
• You want to say "low sugar" on the jar.

The middle step is a permitted home food processing operation. You apply to VDACS, get zoning approval from your county or city, and submit a kitchen diagram, a contamination prevention plan, an allergen cross-contact plan, recipes and process steps, and a complete label for each product. VDACS inspects, then issues a permit. There's an annual operating fee, billed after your first inspection; later inspections are unannounced. Neither VDACS's how-to guidance nor its program page states the amount, so confirm the current fee with VDACS before you budget for it. Once permitted you may sell at home pickup, deliver to customers and events, sell at farmers markets, sell over the internet with shipping by USPS, UPS, or FedEx, and sell wholesale to restaurants and retail stores. You're limited to the products in your approved application, and new recipes need VDACS sign-off first.

That permit is the moment your labeling obligations change. You're a food manufacturer, labeling under 21 CFR 101.9, with a serving size pulled from the RACC table in 21 CFR 101.12 rather than one you chose. 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 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: not an importer, fewer than 10 full-time equivalent employees, fewer than 10,000 units a year, and 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.

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

Section 3.2-5130 has been amended repeatedly, most recently in 2022 and 2024, and the acidified-foods cap moved in the process — plenty of guides still print the old, lower figure. Check before you print:

• VDACS — Home and Commercial Kitchen-Based Businesses
• VDACS — Virginia's Home Kitchen Food Processing Exemptions (FAQ)
• Va. Code § 3.2-5130, full text
• VDACS — Home Food Processing Operations guidance

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