Confita
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.
The short version
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.
