Confita
What Nebraska actually decides
Registration costs nothing but it is genuinely mandatory, and it wants specifics: your name, address and telephone number, the food safety course you took and when you finished it, and proof of well testing for nitrate or bacteria if you use well water. That means the course and the test both happen before you register, not after.
The course requirement is flexible about provider. A nationally accredited food safety and handling course counts, so does a certified course at a culinary school, so does whatever course your county, city or village requires for a food handler permit, and so does a department-approved course. You are unlikely to need to buy something specific.
LB 262 in July 2024 was the substantive change. It carried the cottage food provisions into the Nebraska Pure Food Act and, importantly, allowed time and temperature controlled foods such as cheesecake and cream-filled pastries to be sold directly to consumers in person. It also closed the gap that had let a mobile trailer making product on site use the exemption.
Two operational limits sit alongside that. Every product is prepared in a private home, and nothing may be made on site at the point of sale. Drinks made at home may be dispensed, which is a narrow but useful allowance at a market.
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 Nebraska Department of Agriculture directly. Everything else on this page was read off an official source on September 13, 2026. If one of those points decides your case, ask them.
The short version
What you can sell in Nebraska
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.
- Baked goods
- Traditional jams and jellies, as long as they are made with pectin
- Candies and confections, chocolate-covered strawberries included
- Dried herbs and dry mixes
- Freeze-dried food, as long as the underlying food is not excluded
- Ice cream, cheese, cheesecake and pudding made with licensed, approved-source dairy, kept refrigerated or frozen
- Cream pies, custards and cream-filled pastries
- Cooked-egg items such as egg burritos and cheese Runzas, with no meat
- Drinks prepared at home and dispensed with no more on-site preparation than adding ice
- Any other unadulterated food not on the statutory exclusion list
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.
- Any part of an animal, vertebrate or invertebrate, or an animal byproduct: meat, lard, tallow, bone broth, bone meal
- Fluid milk or milk products as the Grade A Pasteurized Milk Ordinance defines them, including milk, cream, sour cream and yogurt
- Raw eggs
- Unpasteurized juice
- Infused oils and infused honey
- Sprouts of every kind
- Low-acid canned food and hermetically sealed acidified food, which rules out a sealed barbecue sauce
- Tofu, tempeh and similar meat substitutes, and kimchi, kombucha and similar fermented foods
Where you are allowed to sell it
The researched record lists direct sales, farmers markets, online orders, delivery, in-state shipping.
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.
