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Checked 2026-09-08 · Source linked below

Cottage food laws in Mississippi

What you can sell from your home kitchen in Mississippi, how much of it, where you can sell it, and what has to go on the label — with the government source for every line.

Blake Boykin

Researched and maintained by Blake Boykin, Founder, Boykin Web Management. Last checked 2026-09-08.

We are not lawyers. Confirm anything here with Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) before you produce or sell. Fields marked Not confirmed are open questions, not zeros. How we source this.

Mississippi

Moderate

Mississippi Cottage Food Law · Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH)

The limits

Sales cap
$35,000 per year (raised from $20,000 by House Bill 326 in 2020)
You can sell
Non-potentially-hazardous foods not requiring time/temperature control: baked goods (breads, cakes, cookies, pies, donuts, bagels, tortillas), candies, condiments (mustards, nut butters, pickles, vinegars), dry goods (cereals, dried fruit, mixes, pasta, spices), fermented foods, pastries, preserves (jams, jellies), and snacks
You cannot sell
Perishable/potentially-hazardous foods requiring refrigeration

Getting set up

Permit / registration
No — Mississippi does not require registration, a license, or a permit from MSDH to operate a cottage food business
Cost
None
Training
No — not required, though MSDH recommends it, especially for producers making acidified or pickled products
Kitchen inspection
Only on complaint — MSDH does not proactively inspect cottage food operations absent a complaint
Labeling
Name and address of the cottage food operation, product name, ingredients listed in descending order of predominance/weight, net weight or volume, allergen information per federal labeling requirements, nutritional information if a nutritional claim is made, and the statement, in at least 10-point type: "Made in a Cottage Food operation that is not subject to Mississippi's food safety regulations."

Where you can sell

Permitted venues
Direct-to-consumer only — home sales, farmers markets, roadside stands, and special events
Online sales
No for actual sales — House Bill 326 (2020) permits online and social media advertising of cottage food products but does not permit completing sales online, and shipping is not permitted. Orders must be completed in person, direct to the consumer.
Delivery in state
No — mail order is prohibited; sales must be direct/in-person
Shipping out of state
No

The fine print

Statute
Miss. Code Ann. § 69-7-109; originally enacted via SB 2553 (2013), amended by HB 326 (2020)
Recent changes
House Bill 326 (2020) raised the cap from $20,000 to $35,000 and permitted online advertising. It remains the controlling change: repeated reform attempts have failed, including proposals to raise the cap to $59,000 with an ANSI-accredited training requirement (failed March 9, 2025) and 2026 proposals to remove or raise the cap and to permit online sales and wholesale delivery. Verify current session activity before relying on the $35,000 figure long-term.
Notes
Automated fetch of the MSDH page and its linked "Cottage Food Operations: Questions and Answers" PDF could not retrieve readable text (PDF binary issue); details above are corroborated via Mississippi State University Extension Service publications and the Forrager legal database, which are consistent with each other on the $35,000 cap, no-registration policy, and online-advertising-only rule. Recommend a manual follow-up read of the MSDH Q&A PDF before publishing.
Source https://msdh.ms.gov/page/30,0,77,620.html|Checked 2026-09-08

Confirm with Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) before you produce or sell. Rules change, and several states amended theirs in the last year.

Questions that apply in every state — pricing, insurance, labeling, pet treats, sales caps — are answered in the full FAQ.

Knowing the rules is the easy part

The harder part is selling without a place of your own to sell from.

  • Your buyers are Messenger threads, not customers

    There is no export and no list, so there is no way to tell 400 past buyers that holiday pre-orders open Friday. Every season starts from zero.

  • Marketplace listings do not rank on Google

    Three years of posting can leave you with no searchable presence at all, while the people searching for what you make land on whoever does have a page.

  • Every order costs you a conversation

    Price, pickup time, allergens, payment, three follow-ups — by hand, per order. That is the real ceiling on how much you can sell, and it has nothing to do with how fast you bake.

The longer version, plus what to run your business on, is on the main reference page.

Free, before you decide anything

The sale happens in person. Everything before it does not.

Mississippi requires the sale itself to be face to face — which makes your website the place people find you, see what is available this week, check allergens, and reserve a pickup before they ever hand you money. The rules limit the checkout, not the storefront.

Tell me what you make and I will build you a sample site — real and clickable, not a mockup. You see it first, and owe nothing if it is not right for you.

  • Built around Mississippi's labeling and disclosure rules
  • Order cutoffs and pickup windows, so nothing oversells
  • Yours to keep — your domain, your customer list

No cost and no obligation. You see the sample first and decide from there.