Confita
What Texas actually decides
Texas does not license cottage food. There is nothing to buy and no inspection to pass, and the Department of State Health Services says plainly that local health departments cannot require one either. What decides whether you are inside the rule is the food itself and how much of it you sell.
SB 541 changed the shape of that test on 1 September 2025. The old law listed what you were allowed to make. The new one flips it: any food qualifies except the named exclusions, which are meat and poultry, seafood, ice and frozen desserts, low-acid canned goods, anything containing CBD or THC, and raw milk. The income cap tripled to $150,000. Foods needing temperature control became possible for the first time, if you register first.
Two registrations exist and neither one is a licence. Registering with DSHS is mandatory before you sell anything time and temperature controlled. The second is voluntary: it gives you a unique identification number you can print instead of your home address, which is why most people bother. The food handler course is the one thing genuinely required before you produce anything at all.
The cap adjusts for inflation every year and DSHS has not published the 2026 figure, so treat $150,000 as the floor of what you are allowed rather than a number to plan a year around. Start with the DSHS page below, then check your city and county, because zoning and market permits sit outside this law entirely.
One caveat on the sourcing. The agency's own page did not spell out the permit or registration or the current sales cap figure, so those came from the statute and secondary sources rather than from Texas Department of State Health Services 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 Texas
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.
- Any food, except the prohibited categories
- Baked goods
- Candy
- Jams, jellies, and preserves
- Acidified canned goods
- Fermented vegetable products
- Pickled fruits and vegetables
- Dried fruits, herbs, and spices
- Time and temperature control for safety (TCS) foods, if registered with DSHS
- Cottage foods sold at wholesale to a cottage food vendor (non-TCS only)
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.
- Meat, meat products, poultry, or poultry products
- Seafood, including fish, shellfish, and their products
- Ice or ice products, including shaved ice, ice cream, frozen custard, popsicles, and gelato
- Low-acid canned goods
- Products containing cannabidiol or tetrahydrocannabinol
- Raw milk and raw milk products
