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

What Minnesota actually decides

The tier split is the thing to get right. Tier 1 covers gross annual sales of $7,665 or less and costs nothing. Tier 2 runs from $7,666 to $78,000 and costs $50 a year, plus $2.50 if you pay online. Registration is mandatory before any sale at all, so there is no "try it at one market first" allowance here.

Training comes before registration, not after, and the course depends on the tier. Tier 1 takes the free MDA online cottage food course and exam and retakes it every year. Tier 2 takes a commissioner-approved safe food handling course through University of Minnesota Extension and retakes it every three years, or immediately on moving up from Tier 1. A certified food manager certificate does not substitute, because MDA wants training specific to the cottage food law.

One honest caveat on that annual Tier 1 retake. The statute requires the course before registering and sets no cadence; the yearly retake appears only on MDA pages. Follow MDA, but know the two sources differ.

August 2027 rewrites a lot of this. The two tiers collapse into one flat $30 annual fee, the fee exemption disappears, and eligibility narrows to an individual, a sole proprietorship, a single-member LLC, or an LLC owned by two people at the same residence. Holding a food handler licence under section 28A.04 will disqualify you, which is counterintuitive enough to be worth checking against your own setup.

One caveat on the sourcing. The agency's own page did not spell out the training requirement or the current sales cap figure, so those came from the statute and secondary sources rather than from Minnesota Department of Agriculture 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 Minnesota

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.

• Acidified or acidic home-canned and home-processed fruits, vegetables and pickles
• Fermented foods
• Vinegar
• Condiments
• Baked goods
• Candy and confections
• Dried, dehydrated and roasted items, including beans, herbs, nuts and seeds
• Freeze-dried non-potentially hazardous fruits and vegetables, herbs, candy and gelatin
• Icings, frostings and sugar art
• Jams, jellies, preserves and fruit butters
• Hulled hemp seeds, hemp seed oil and hemp seed powder as ingredients in human food
• Home-processed baked or dehydrated pet treats for dogs and cats only, which run on a separate track at Minn. Stat. section 25.391. The real boundary is the definition, not the list: non-potentially hazardous food, plus home-canned pickles, vegetables or fruits at a pH of 4.6 or less or a water activity of 0.85 or less

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.

• Anything that originated from an animal or aquatic species, raw or cooked, such as charcuterie boards, baked salmon, dehydrated beef jerky or pickled eggs
• Foods made from milk such as yogurt, ice cream or butter, unless the milk product is part of a baked good like cookies made with butter
• Cooked plant food, such as cooked rice or steamed green beans
• Raw seed sprouts, cut melons, cut fresh tomatoes, cut leafy greens, and garlic-, vegetable- or herb-based oil mixtures such as pesto
• Foods containing cannabinoids, which Minn. Stat. section 34A.01 subd. 4 excludes from the definition of food
• Cheesecake, fresh cut fruit as a topping or garnish, and chocolate-covered fresh fruit
• Fresh fruit or vegetable juice that is not heat treated
• Eggrolls, spring rolls and tamales, and cream cheese or flavoured butters sold alongside baked goods

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 Cottage Food Producer Registration (Minnesota Department of Agriculture) before you sell; the listed cost is No fee for Tier 1, gross annual sales of $7,665 or less. $50 a year for Tier 2, $7,666 to $78,000, plus a $2.50 processing fee if you pay online.. Registration is mandatory before any sale, at any volume. There is no licence or permit. MDA must register you within 30 days and a registration is deemed accepted after 30 days, but MDA advises allowing three to four weeks. It mails a card with a unique registration number that may be printed on the label in place of your home address. You cannot register if you hold a food handler licence. Human cottage food may not be shipped or delivered through the mail or a third-party shipping service; cottage pet treats already may be, including out of state, which is why the channel list here is human-food-only. From 1 August 2027 the two tiers collapse into one flat $30 annual fee.

Training is required: Tier 1 is a free MDA online cottage food course and exam. Tier 2 is a commissioner-approved safe food handling course through the University of Minnesota Extension Food Safety Program.. Training comes before registration. Tier 1, gross sales of $7,665 or less, retakes MDA's free course and exam every year; Tier 2, $7,666 to $78,000, retakes the Extension course every three years, or immediately on moving up from Tier 1. The Extension course charges a fee and runs online or in person. A certified food manager certificate does not substitute: MDA says the training has to be specific to the cottage food law. Whether the Tier 1 annual retake is statutory could not be confirmed: subd. 5(b) requires the course before registering and sets no cadence, and the annual retake appears only on MDA's pages.

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.

• Cottage food may be made in a home kitchen or in a commercial kitchen, as long as local ordinances allow it.
• Do not make, sell or store cottage food in your home while anyone in the household is sick.
• Keep pets out of the food preparation area while you are making cottage food. If a pet gets in, clean and sanitize the food preparation surfaces.
• Nothing may be prepared on site at a market or a community event. Dispensing from a bulk container at a market needs access to a handwashing station and no bare hand contact, and hand sanitizer is not a substitute.
• The statute itself sets no home kitchen hygiene rules: no water test, no separate storage, no separate equipment. The four rules above come from MDA guidance and its required training, and the enforceable backstop is the general adulteration ban at Minn. Stat. section 31.02.

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.

• 2027-08-01: The two registration tiers collapse into one flat $30 annual fee, and the $7,665 fee exemption is struck. Eligibility narrows at the same time to an individual, a sole proprietorship, a single-member LLC, or an LLC owned by two individuals at the same residence, and holding a section 28A.04 food handler licence now disqualifies you.
• 2027-08-01: The free Tier 1 MDA course disappears and the commissioner-approved safe food handling course applies to every cottage food producer.
• 2027-08-01: Delivery opens up. Cottage food may be delivered by the person who prepared it, by mail, or by commercial delivery, and the clause requiring internet sales to be handed over in person by the preparer is struck. MDA says the mail route stays within Minnesota, which is not in the amended text.
• 2027-08-01: A new subdivision 8 indexes the $78,000 sales cap to the Consumer Price Index every two years, using July 2025 as the base month and year.

Start this weekend

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

• Register before your first sale. There is no volume below which this is optional.
• Work out your tier first, because it decides the course you take and the fee you pay.
• Do the training before registering. It is a precondition, not a follow-up.
• Diarise the retake: yearly for Tier 1, every three years for Tier 2, and immediately if you move up.
• Check your business structure against the 2027 eligibility rules, especially if you hold a 28A.04 licence.