Confita
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.
The short version
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.
