Confita
What Ohio actually decides
Ohio runs one of the lightest cottage food rules in the country. There is nothing to register, nothing to pay and no inspection, and the Department of Agriculture sets no home kitchen hygiene rules for cottage food at all. If someone has told you about carpet, pets, a 45 degree refrigerator or an annual well water test, they are describing the Home Bakery tier. It is a real thing, it just is not this.
What Ohio does instead is keep a list, and the list is unusually literal. Popped popcorn is in, including kettle corn and caramel corn. Unfilled baked donuts are in, filled ones are not. Candy is in, fresh fruit dipped in candy is not. Granola bars dipped in candy are in, as long as any fruit in them was commercially dried. Jams and jellies are in unless they are freezer or sugar-free versions. Reading the list carefully is genuinely the work here.
The adjacent tier matters more than it first appears. A Home Bakery registration costs $10, renews every 30 September, follows an ODA inspection, and covers the potentially hazardous baked goods cottage food cannot touch, which is where cheesecake, cream pie, pumpkin pie and fry pies live. Selling those at a farmers market also needs a Retail Food Establishment licence from your local health department.
One packaging rule exists and it is easy to miss: reduced oxygen packaging, which covers vacuum sealing and modified atmosphere, is prohibited. Local zoning can still restrict home-based retail even though no food licence is required.
One caveat on the sourcing. The agency's own page did not spell out the name of the programme, the allowed-food list or the prohibited-food list, among other details, so those came from the statute and secondary sources rather than from Ohio Department of Agriculture directly. Everything else on this page was read off an official source on September 9, 2026. If one of those points decides your case, ask them.
The short version
What you can sell in Ohio
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.
- Jams, jellies, fruit chutneys and fruit butters, but not freezer or sugar-free versions.
- Candy, but not fresh fruit dipped, covered or otherwise combined with candy
- Granola, granola bars, and granola bars dipped in candy, where any fruit is commercially dried
- Flavoured honey from an exempt beekeeper, where at least 75 percent of the honey comes from their own hives
- Maple sugar from an exempt maple syrup producer, where at least 75 percent of the sap is collected by that processor
- Popped popcorn, including flavoured popcorn, kettle corn, popcorn balls and caramel corn
- Unfilled baked donuts, waffle cones including candy-dipped ones, and pizzelles
- Seasoned dry cereal and nut snack mixes
- Roasted coffee, whole beans or ground, flavoured included
- Dry baking and cookie mixes, dry herbs and herb blends, and dry seasoning blends
- Dry soup mixes containing commercially dried vegetables, beans, grains and seasonings
- Bakery products that are not potentially hazardous. ODA’s own examples are cookies, brownies, cake, bread, fruit pie and cobbler
