Confita
What West Virginia actually decides
The freedom people notice first here is the kitchen. A home, farm, community or commercial kitchen may be used, as the department determines. West Virginia does not confine you to your own home kitchen, which is unusual and genuinely useful if you have access to a church hall or a shared space.
For nonpotentially hazardous homemade food there is no permit and no cap. The channel list is wide, including shipping across state lines, wholesale and online sales.
Two adjacent permits exist and most sellers will meet one of them. A Farmers Market Vendor Permit, $35 a year, applied for by 1 March to avoid a late fee, is required to sell potentially hazardous products at a farmers market, and it carries an annual kitchen inspection and a departmental label review. And from 12 June 2026 a new article 40 creates a Potentially Hazardous Cottage Food Vendor Permit for temperature-controlled cottage food made at home, with a kitchen inspection before the permit issues.
Training follows the same split. Nonpotentially hazardous homemade food needs none. The two permitted tracks require departmentally approved training plus a certificate of attendance from a good manufacturing practices course or better.
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 West Virginia 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 West Virginia
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.
- Breads
- Cakes
- Candies
- Honey and tree syrup
- Apple butter and molasses
- Nondietary jams and jellies
- Dehydrated fruits and vegetables
- Condiments that need no time or temperature control and no acidification
- Tomato sauce, tomato juice, and canned whole or chopped tomatoes
- Commercially harvested mushrooms
- Fresh uncut produce
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.
- Raw and cooked meat, foods containing meat, seafood, fish and poultry
- Pasteurized milk, dairy products including all desserts, and cheese
- Baked goods with custards, dairy or other temperature-controlled ingredients, such as meringue, custard or cream pies, cheesecake, cream-filled pastries and cream cheese frostings
- Cooked rice and pasta, cooked and canned beans, and cooked soybean products
- Raw seed sprouts, cut or prepared fresh fruits and vegetables including melons, tomatoes and salad greens, garlic-in-oil and fresh-herb-in-oil mixtures, and wild mushrooms
- Salsas, pickled products, fermented foods, sauces, barbecue and soy sauce, mustard, relish, mayonnaise and salad dressing
- Non-standard jams and jellies such as hot pepper, and pumpkin butter
- Acidified and canned foods generally, which need a process authority letter and a departmental label review. None of these is banned outright: each moves to a permitted tier
Where you are allowed to sell it
The researched record lists direct sales, farmers markets, online orders, delivery, in-state shipping, interstate shipping, retail or wholesale.
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.
