In the seven states with the loosest homemade-food laws in the country — places where you can legally sell tamales, pizza, and prepared meals cooked in your own kitchen — the number of confirmed foodborne-illness cases traced back to those sales is zero. Not low. Zero, according to the Institute for Justice, even in states that have allowed the practice for nearly a decade.
That single number tells you most of what you need to know about where cottage food regulation is heading. For years the argument against letting people sell home-baked and home-cooked goods was safety. The data didn't cooperate, the laws loosened, and a quiet home-kitchen economy grew up in the gap. Here are 22 numbers that map it — every one sourced, because in a sector nobody officially counts, the numbers are the whole story.
The quick version: All 50 states plus D.C. now allow home-kitchen food sales in some form, but the rules vary wildly — only 13 states earn a B or better on the Institute for Justice's scorecard, and more than half of all states have loosened their rules since 2022. Revenue caps now reach as high as $250,000 (Florida). And in the seven most permissive states, the number of confirmed foodborne-illness cases traced to these sales is zero.
Every state is in, but no two agree
Start with the headline: there is no such thing as a state where selling homemade food is flatly illegal anymore.
50 states plus D.C. now have at least one law authorizing the sale of food made in a home kitchen (Institute for Justice, Baking Bad, 2022).
The catch is that "a law exists" and "the law is any good" are different claims. When the Institute for Justice graded the landscape in its 2022 Baking Bad report, it found nearly 70 distinct programs across the states and scored each against 17 criteria — product types allowed, sales venues, revenue caps, permit and inspection burdens, and more. The national report card was not flattering.
Only 13 states earned a B or better on the scorecard; the rest of the country landed lower (Institute for Justice, Baking Bad).
At the extremes, Wyoming took the report's only A, on the strength of its sweeping Food Freedom Act, while Delaware landed the only F (Institute for Justice, Baking Bad). The practical takeaway for anyone selling across state lines, shipping to customers, or moving from one state to another: your rights change completely at the border, and "cottage food is legal now" is not a plan.
The revenue caps are climbing fast
If you tracked only one trend in this sector, track the caps. Most states limit how much a cottage food business can earn in a year before it has to graduate into a licensed commercial kitchen. Those ceilings have been rising — and in some states, disappearing.
More than half of all states amended their cottage food statutes or regulations after 2022 (National Agricultural Law Center).
Here is a sample of the recent moves, all documented by the National Agricultural Law Center:
| State | Old cap | New cap | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Texas | $50,000 | $150,000 | SB 541 (2025) |
| Nevada | $35,000 | $100,000 | — |
| Connecticut | $25,000 | $50,000 | — |
| Iowa | $35,000 | $50,000 | — |
| Virginia | $3,000 | $9,000 | — |
| Vermont | $125 / week | $30,000 / year | HB 401 (2025); switched from a weekly to an annual cap |
Three states — Delaware, Missouri, and New Hampshire — removed their revenue caps entirely.
The reforms aren't only about money, either. At least five states added provisions since 2022 allowing pH or water-activity testing so that more foods can qualify as shelf-stable, and North Dakota signed a further expansion (SB 2386) into law on March 21, 2025 (National Agricultural Law Center).
The direction is unmistakable, but so is the fragmentation. A cap of $250,000 in Florida and $9,000 in Virginia describe two completely different businesses operating under the same "cottage food" label.
Who's actually behind the home kitchen
The best portrait of cottage food operators themselves still comes from the Institute for Justice's Flour Power survey, the first national study of its kind.
775 producers across 22 states were surveyed. They are overwhelmingly women, disproportionately rural, and tend to have below-average household incomes (Institute for Justice, Flour Power).
That demographic profile is why cottage food policy gets framed as economic opportunity rather than hobby regulation. The survey's statistical analysis found that as a producer's annual cottage food sales rose, so did household income — the business was doing real financial work for the people running it, not just funding a side habit. For a home baker deciding whether the paperwork is worth it, that's the more useful finding than any single cap number.
The safety record that changed the debate
Return to the number this piece opened with, because it deserves the detail. In 2023 the Institute for Justice asked the seven states with the broadest homemade-food laws — California, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming — for every complaint and confirmed case of foodborne illness they could trace to a sale made under those laws.
Zero confirmed foodborne-illness cases were traced to homemade-food sales in any of the seven states (Institute for Justice, 2023).
What makes the result striking is the scope. These aren't jam-and-cookie states. Their laws permit perishable, temperature-sensitive foods — prepared meals, tamales, and the like — the exact category critics warned would cause outbreaks. Some of the laws had been on the books for close to ten years. The outbreak never came, and legislators noticed — it's reasonable to read that safety record as part of what gives lawmakers room to keep raising the caps.
Nobody knows the real size, and here's why
For all these numbers, the honest headline is that the cottage food economy is uncounted. There is no federal cottage food law, no national license, and therefore no central tally the way there is for restaurants or food manufacturers. Anyone who quotes you a precise nationwide revenue figure for cottage food is guessing.
The available evidence is state-level instead — breadcrumbs, really — and the clearest trail leads to Minnesota:
Within two years of a 2015 legal reform, Minnesota registered more than 3,000 cottage food producers. By 2020, that number had grown to 4,000 (Institute for Justice, Minnesota data).
Minnesota later raised its cap to $78,000 and began allowing producers to form LLCs and sell pet treats — the same expansion pattern playing out nationally, captured in one state's registry. Multiply that kind of growth across 50 states with wildly different rules and you understand both why the sector is clearly large and why no one can put a clean dollar figure on it.
What the numbers mean for your own kitchen
Two practical implications fall out of this data for anyone actually selling.
First, your state's cap is a moving target, and it's the number that can end your business overnight if you cross it without noticing. When a cap jumps from $50,000 to $150,000, that's headroom; when you're a strong holiday season away from your ceiling, it's a compliance cliff. Knowing your gross-sales-to-date against your current cap isn't a once-a-year tax question — it's something worth watching monthly. Ardent Seller includes a cottage food revenue-cap tracker built for exactly this, so you see how close you are to your state's limit before you sail past it rather than after.
Second, the rules that govern what you can sell and how you label it are state-specific and changing yearly, which makes a per-state reference more valuable than any national summary. Ardent Seller maintains a state-by-state cottage food hub covering caps, allowed products, and labeling requirements, and the app can generate compliant product labels from the batch data you're already tracking — so a rule change means updating a field, not redesigning your packaging.
The clearest signal across every dataset points the same way: more states, higher caps, broader product lists, and a safety record that keeps giving legislators room to loosen the rules further. If you've been treating a home-kitchen business as a legal gray area, the numbers say the gray is mostly gone. Create a free Ardent Seller account and you can track your sales, batches, and state cap in one place — and spend your energy on the baking instead of the bookkeeping.
Sources & methodology
Every figure above is drawn from primary or authoritative secondary sources, listed here with the claims each supports. Cottage food law is unusually fast-moving; the caps in particular changed repeatedly during 2024 and 2025, so treat any specific dollar figure as current-as-of-2025-2026 and verify before relying on it.
- Institute for Justice, Baking Bad: Legal Barriers for Starting a Business Selling Homemade Food (March 2022) — all 50 states plus D.C. have a homemade-food law; nearly 70 programs graded on 17 criteria; Wyoming's sole A; Delaware's sole F. The "13 states earned a B or better" figure is a count of that report's published per-program scorecard — states with at least one program graded B or higher.
- Institute for Justice, Flour Power cottage food survey (2017) — 775 producers across 22 states; producer demographics (predominantly women, rural, below-average income); the sales-to-household-income relationship.
- Institute for Justice, New Data Show Homemade Food for Sale Is Incredibly Safe (2023) — seven broadest-law states (CA, IA, MT, ND, OK, UT, WY); zero confirmed foodborne-illness cases.
- Institute for Justice, Minnesota homemade-food page — Minnesota's 3,000 (by ~2017) and 4,000 (by 2020) producer counts; current $78,000 cap; LLC and pet-treat allowances.
- National Agricultural Law Center, Cottage Food Laws: Recent Trends and Major State Changes — the "more than half of states changed since 2022" figure; specific cap changes for Texas, Nevada, Connecticut, Iowa, Virginia, and Vermont; cap eliminations in Delaware, Missouri, and New Hampshire; the pH-testing amendments; North Dakota's SB 2386 (March 21, 2025).
- Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Cottage Foods — Florida's current $250,000 gross-sales cap.
Data freshness note: the Institute for Justice survey (2017) and Baking Bad grades (2022) reflect the years they were published; grades in particular predate several of the 2024–2025 reforms and likely understate a handful of states today. The cap figures reflect changes documented through 2025. State agriculture and health departments are the authoritative source for any current number.
Related reading
- Florida Cottage Food Law Guide — the deep dive on the state with one of the nation's highest caps, including what "direct sales only" actually restricts once you're allowed to earn $250,000.
- Texas Cottage Food Law Guide — how the 2025 jump to a $150,000 cap changes what a Texas home baker can build without renting a commercial kitchen.
- Minnesota Cottage Food Law Guide — the state whose license registry offers the clearest window into how fast home-food businesses actually grow after a reform.
Free resources
Free companion downloads if you want to put any of this into practice:
- Cottage Food Revenue Cap Tracker — a ready-to-use tracker for watching your gross sales against your state's specific cap, so a strong season doesn't quietly push you over the line.
- Cottage Food Laws by State — a plain-language reference to the caps, permitted foods, and labeling rules that this roundup only summarizes at the national level.
This article summarizes cottage food statistics and law changes for general informational purposes and is not legal advice. Cottage food and homemade-food laws vary widely by state and change frequently — several of the figures above changed during 2025 alone. Before selling, verify your state's current sales cap, permitted products, labeling requirements, and permit or registration rules with your state department of agriculture or health, and consult a qualified attorney if you're unsure how the rules apply to you.