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

What Wyoming actually decides

The Wyoming Food Freedom Act exempts compliant homemade food from state licensure, permitting, inspection, packaging and labelling requirements. Agency assistance, consultation or inspection survives only at your own request. No sampling licence is required to hand out samples, which is a small thing that matters at a market.

The cap is the part worth reading carefully, because there are two and they hide inside the definition of "producer". No more than 250,000 individual food or drink products a year, and no more than $250,000 in gross revenue a year from them. A high-volume, low-price product can hit the unit ceiling well before the dollar one.

Since July 2023, third-party vendors including retail shops and grocery stores may sell eggs, dairy and non-potentially hazardous homemade food at their own retail location, and designated agents may facilitate your transactions. That is a wide channel list for an exemption-style law, and it is the main reason Wyoming reads differently from its neighbours.

The product boundary is the definition rather than a list: any homemade food or drink needing no time or temperature control for safety. Meat is the firm exclusion, since beef, pork, lamb and goat must be slaughtered, processed and labelled in a state or federally inspected plant, and wild game may not be sold at all under separate Wyoming law.

What you can sell in Wyoming

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 homemade food or drink that needs no time or temperature control for safety. The definition, not a list, is the boundary
• Jams, uncut fruits and vegetables, and pickled vegetables
• Hard candies and fudge
• Nut mixes, granola and popcorn
• Coffee beans
• Dry soup mixes, other than meat based
• Baked goods without dairy or meat frosting or filling, or any other frosting or filling that needs temperature control
• Raw milk and products made from raw milk, plus eggs and dairy products
• Poultry and poultry products, where you slaughter no more than 1,000 of your own birds in a calendar year, buy or sell no poultry other than your own, and the product is not adulterated or misbranded
• Domestic rabbit meat, and farm raised fish other than catfish
• Live animals, and portions of live animals sold before slaughter for future delivery
• Potentially hazardous homemade food, but sold only by you or a designated agent, never by a third-party retailer

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 products generally. Beef, pork, lamb and goat are slaughtered, processed and labelled in a Wyoming state or federally inspected meat plant
• Wild game, animals, birds or fish, which Wyoming law prohibits selling or bartering
• Catfish, which is amenable to the federal Meat Inspection Act
• Homemade or uninspected food served in, or used as an ingredient by, a commercial food establishment, except raw unprocessed fruits and vegetables, eggs and dairy products
• Food prepared or finished on site at a farmers market, which makes it a temporary food stand needing a licence. Cooking a home-prepared product and handing out samples is the only exception
• Anything sold outside Wyoming or involving interstate commerce
• Products from an out-of-state producer sold in Wyoming

Where you are allowed to sell it

The researched record lists direct sales, farmers markets, online orders, delivery, 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.

Paperwork, training and inspections

The researched record does not list a general permit for this tier. None. Compliant homemade food is exempt from state licensure, permitting, inspection, packaging and labelling requirements, and the Act preserves agency assistance, consultation or inspection only at the producer's own request. No sampling licence is required to hand out samples. The channel split is the dangerous part: a third-party vendor such as a retail shop or grocery store may sell only non-potentially hazardous food, eggs and dairy products, so a shelf placement that is legal for cookies is illegal for a chilled item. Online ordering is allowed for delivery within Wyoming, and delivery means a transfer at a farm, ranch, farmers market, home, office or any agreed location. Posting a parcel is not affirmed anywhere, and interstate is answered no twice.

No training is recorded as universally required. The Act requires none and no Department of Agriculture page states one.

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.

• Wyoming sets no home kitchen rules. The Act is an exemption rather than a code: no hygiene rule, no water test, no pets rule, no children rule and no storage rule, in the statute or in the Department's guidance. Food is prepared in a private home kitchen that is not licensed, inspected or regulated.
• Food may not be prepared or finished on site at a farmers market. Doing so makes it a temporary food stand needing a licence, and samples are the only exception.
• A retail space selling potentially hazardous homemade food that is attached to a commercial food establishment, or that offers any inspected product, needs physical separation with its own door and till, signs marking inspected and uninspected space, and separate coolers, freezers and storage.
• Catering is limited to a private home.

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.

• 2023-07-01: Designated agents may facilitate a producer's transactions. Third party vendors including retail shops and grocery stores may now sell eggs and dairy products as well as non-potentially hazardous homemade food at their own retail location, and must themselves inform the end consumer. The retail labelling line was extended to dairy products, and the Department of Agriculture may not set a food and health inspection standard more stringent than the USDA's.
• 2024-07-01: Added a custom slaughter facility definition and provisions letting a producer sell meat from their own cattle, sheep, swine or goats with a written warning to the buyer, but only once the governor certifies that federal law permits direct-to-consumer sales of uninspected meat. That certification has not been made, so no meat may be sold under it.
• 2025-07-01: Re-enacted the producer-raised meat provisions with tightened wording: all conditions must be met, sale may be on or off the producer's premises, and the warning statement is delivered or displayed. The federal trigger is unchanged, so the meat provisions remain dormant.

Start this weekend

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

• Count units as well as dollars. 250,000 individual products is a real ceiling for a cheap, high-volume item.
• Use the third-party vendor route if a shop wants to stock you. It has been allowed since July 2023.
• Hand out samples freely. No sampling licence is required here.
• Keep meat out unless it went through an inspected plant, and keep wild game out entirely.
• Ask the Department for help if you want it. Inspection and consultation happen only at your request.