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

What Vermont actually decides

Act 42 of 2025 built this and the shape is unusual: the exemption costs nothing but it has to be claimed. File it in the Department of Health online portal each year before 15 January and attest that you completed the annual training. The first filings under the new law were due 15 January 2026. Miss the date and you are not exempt, whatever your sales look like.

The training is free, from the Department of Health, and genuinely annual. You do it once before you start manufacturing and again every year after. That is a lighter requirement than a paid certification but a heavier one than the usual once-every-three-years arrangement, so it needs a recurring reminder rather than a one-off.

The cap is $30,000 of gross annual receipts from cottage food sales. Above it you need a licence: Home Bakery at $100 a year, or food manufacturing at $175 for receipts of $10,001 to $50,000 and $275 above that. A separate exemption covers non-bakery food processors up to $10,000.

The product list is wider than a baked-goods rule. Candy, jams, jellies, dry herbs, trail mix, granola, flavoured vinegar, popcorn, coffee and dry tea all qualify, as do home-canned pickles, vegetables or fruits at an equilibrium pH of 4.6 or lower. The sanitation rule asks for wash, rinse and sanitize in three separate compartments, and a manual sanitizing step is still required even if you use a dishwasher.

What you can sell in Vermont

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.

• Non-potentially hazardous baked goods
• Candy
• Jams and jellies
• Dry herbs
• Trail mix, granola, cereal and mixed nuts
• Flavoured vinegar
• Popcorn
• Coffee beans and dry tea
• Home-canned pickles, vegetables or fruits at an equilibrium pH of 4.6 or lower or a water activity of 0.85 or less, using recipes approved by the National Center for Home Food Preservation or reviewed by a food processing authority
• Any other good the Commissioner defines in rule or policy. The list is open, and the Department will review a product on request through its Cottage Food Product Review Request Form

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 food needing time or temperature control: meat, poultry, fish, shellfish and crustaceans, eggs, milk and dairy
• Cooked plant-based foods such as rice, beans and cooked vegetables, plus baked potatoes, mushrooms, raw sprouts, tofu, soy-protein foods and untreated garlic-and-oil mixtures
• Baked goods that must be kept cold, such as quiche, cheese danish and cheesecake
• Dehydrated meats
• Dehydrated fruits and vegetables, which the Department treats as a specialized process needing special equipment
• Anything made in a rented kitchen, even a licensed commercial one
• Prepared meals, or food to be cooked later at an event, which is a Home Caterer licence rather than an exemption
• Maple syrup and maple products, which sit outside the chapter entirely

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.

Paperwork, training and inspections

The researched record does not list a general permit for this tier. The exemption is free but it is not automatic: file it in the online portal each year before 15 January and attest that you completed the annual training. The first filings under the new law were due 15 January 2026. Cottage food must be produced or packaged solely in the home kitchen of your private residential dwelling or a kitchen on your own property. Restaurants and other licensed food establishments may not buy from you, because they may only buy from licensed food manufacturers. Selling sealed, labelled cottage food at a farmers market is fine, but a stand that prepares or serves food needs a Temporary Food Service licence at $125 for a single event or $230 for the calendar year, and prepping at home first means a Home Caterer licence at $155 a year. Crossing $30,000, or making prepared food for direct sale, means a licence, and a licence application needs a product list, private-water test results, wastewater documentation and a passed opening inspection, submitted at least 30 days before you open.

Training is required: License Exempt Food Processors and Cottage Food Operators Online Training. Free, from the Department of Health, and it must be redone every year: once before you start manufacturing and annually after. You attest to it on the annual exemption filing. Vermont is one of the few states where an exempt operator carries a hard, recurring training duty.

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.

• Wash, rinse and sanitize in three separate compartments. A plastic tub can be the third if you have a two-compartment sink, a manual sanitizing step is still required even if you use a dishwasher, and you check the sanitizer with test strips.
• No bare hand contact with ready-to-eat food: gloves, tongs or other utensils.
• Keep a thermometer in the refrigerator so it stays at 41 degrees Fahrenheit or below.
• Keep the food you sell separate from food for your household or pets, and prepare it when nothing else is going on in the kitchen.
• Keep small children and pets out of the kitchen while you are preparing food for sale, and test a private well every year for total coliform and E. coli at a certified lab.

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.

• 2025-07-01: Act 42 created the cottage food operator exemption at $30,000 gross receipts and raised the general food processor exemption to $10,000, replacing the old test of average gross retail sales not exceeding $125 a week for home bakery products. It also added the annual exemption filing and the training attestation. The Department adopted a Manufactured Food Emergency Rule the same day to match, so operators had to comply immediately.
• 2026-01-15: The final adopted Manufactured Food Rule replaced the emergency rule. It is the current authority for the required statement, the 10 point contrasting-colour requirement, the label element list and the annual training.

Start this weekend

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

• Diarise 15 January. The exemption is free but it lapses if you do not file it each year.
• Redo the training annually. It is once before you start and then every year, not every three.
• Check your pH if you are home canning. Equilibrium 4.6 or lower is the line.
• Set up three compartments for wash, rinse and sanitize, and keep test strips for the sanitizer.
• Watch $30,000 in gross receipts. Above it you are into a $100 or $175 licence.