Kentucky cottage food law (2026): what you can sell and label

What Kentucky actually decides

Kentucky gives you two tracks and the one you need depends entirely on what you make. A home-based processor covers dried herbs and spices, candy, jams and jellies, sorghum and maple syrup, breads and fruit pies. Registration on form DFS-250 is mandatory before you sell, costs $50, and is unusual in that no licence or permit is issued and no number comes back to print on the label. You register, and that is the transaction.

A home-based microprocessor is the other track, and it exists for acid foods, acidified products, formulated acid foods and low-acid canned goods. That one needs a DFS-251 application, an approved recipe, and the Food Processing School run by the UK Cooperative Extension Service. Home-based processors need no training at all: neither the statute nor the regulation imposes one.

The cap is $60,000 of gross income a year and it applies to both tiers. It is written into the statute and is not adjusted for inflation, so it does not move. Above it you are no longer a home-based processor and need a Commercial Food Manufacturing Permit, which requires a permitted or certified kitchen, so a home kitchen cannot be used at all.

Two recent changes are worth knowing. The honey exemption rose from 150 to 500 gallons a year in June 2025 and stopped being limited to honey sold off the farm, which is a separate and more generous track for a honey seller. And from July 2026 home-based processors may make and sell pork lard and tallow-based products.

One caveat on the sourcing. The agency's own page did not spell out the permit or registration, so those came from the statute and secondary sources rather than from Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, Department for Public Health, Food Safety Branch directly. Everything else on this page was read off an official source on September 11, 2026. If one of those points decides your case, ask them.

What you can sell in Kentucky

Straight from the official record. Read these as categories rather than a menu, because one recipe can cross the line on its own: a filling that needs refrigeration, a pH that needs testing, or a process that needs an authority to sign it off.

• Dried herbs, spices and nuts
• Candy made without added alcohol and with no bare-hand contact
• Dried grains
• Whole fruit and vegetables, and mixed greens
• Jams, jellies, preserves and fruit butter
• Sweet sorghum syrup
• Maple syrup
• Bread, including breads containing vegetables or fruit as an ingredient
• Fruit pies, cakes and cookies
• Pecan pies
• Dried or freeze-dried whole fruits or vegetables, granola made with dried grains, trail or snack mix, and popcorn plain or seasoned
• Pork lard or tallow-based cosmetic products, since 15 July 2026. The statutory list is illustrative, not closed: the boundary is that the food is not potentially hazardous

What is outside the rule

If your product is on this list, the answer is not "ask nicely". It is a different licence, a different kitchen, or both.

• Acid foods, acidified food products, formulated acid food products and low-acid canned foods, which belong to the microprocessor tier
• Crème filled pies, custard and custard pies
• Pies with a meringue topping
• Cheesecake
• Cream, custard or meringue pastries
• Raw seed sprouts
• Garlic-in-oil products
• Pureed baby foods. Vacuum packaging in anything other than a mason-type jar is also prohibited

Where you are allowed to sell it

The researched record lists direct sales, farmers markets, online orders, delivery.

One channel being open does not open the rest. Shipping, delivery and wholesale each turn on the product and where it is going, so check the route you actually plan to use.

Paperwork, training and inspections

The researched record lists Home-based processor registration, form DFS-250 before you sell; the listed cost is $50. No licence or permit is issued and no number comes back to print on the label, but registration is mandatory before you sell: KRS 217.136(11) says a home-based processor shall be registered with the cabinet, giving the name, the physical address where production happens, and a list of the products. The microprocessor tier is a different thing altogether: a DFS-251 application, an approved water source, a University of Kentucky Food Processing School certificate, written scheduled processes from a processing authority, and a $50 annual certification that must be posted at the processing site and at the point of sale. The microprocessor workshop price of $50 and the $5 per recipe approval come from the University of Kentucky extension rather than the cabinet, because every chfs.ky.gov page refused automated fetches.

No training is recorded as universally required. Home-based processors need no training at all: neither KRS 217.136 nor 902 KAR 45:090 imposes one. Microprocessors must complete the Food Processing School run by the UK Cooperative Extension Service, or a school meeting 21 C.F.R. 114.10, and repeat it every three years or whenever they add or change a product.

Only on a complaint is what the record says about inspections. Confirm what that means for your product and your local authority, because the two can differ.

Kitchen rules people miss

None of these fit on a label, which is exactly why they get skipped. Read them before the first batch, not after.

• Wash your hands with soap and water regularly while you are making products for sale, and wash, rinse and sanitize every food contact surface, piece of equipment and utensil before each use, keeping them all in good repair.
• Keep children under twelve and pets or other animals out of the kitchen while you are processing.
• Stop all domestic activity in the kitchen while you are processing: no family meal preparation, no dishwashing, no washing or drying laundry. Do not produce, package or handle products while you have a contagious disease or illness.
• You have to be a Kentucky resident, and jams or jellies processed in under ten minutes go into a jar sterilized by ten minutes of boiling water, plus a minute for every 1,000 feet of elevation.
• The regulation and the statute disagree about inspection. 902 KAR 45:090 section 3(9) says inspection of a home-based processor facility happens on complaint, recorded on form DFS-252, while KRS 217.136(7) says the cabinet may inspect the facility annually. Nobody appears to run the annual visit, but the statute permits it. Microprocessors are inspected at least once every four years.

What changed, and when

A dated change means an older checklist can be confidently wrong. Read the instrument itself at the official source before you trust anything written before these dates.

• 2025-06-27: The honey exemption rose from 150 to 500 gallons a year and stopped being limited to honey sold off the farm. That is a separate exemption from the home-based processor sections, and a more generous track for a honey seller.
• 2026-07-15: Home-based processors may now make and sell pork lard or tallow-based cosmetic products alongside food, and the KRS 217.136(3) label rules apply to those cosmetics too. The same act deleted the obsolete subsection telling the cabinet to build a registration system, so registration is now a flat standing duty. 902 KAR 45:090 has not caught up and says nothing about cosmetics.

Start this weekend

In this order, so the label is the last thing you check and not the first thing you guess.

• Work out your tier first. Anything acidified or canned is microprocessor, which is a different application and a real course.
• File the DFS-250 and pay the $50 before you sell. Expect no number back, because none is issued.
• Track gross income against $60,000. It is fixed in statute and does not move with inflation.
• If you sell honey, look at the separate exemption. It went to 500 gallons in June 2025.
• Keep children under twelve and pets out of the kitchen while you are processing.