Do You Need a License to Sell Baked Goods From Home in NY?

You do not need a license to sell baked goods from home in New York. The state runs a free Home Processor Exemption through the Department of Agriculture and Markets that lets you bake and sell approved shelf-stable items out of your home kitchen without the Article 20-C food processing license that restaurants and commercial manufacturers need.¹ There is no fee, no annual revenue cap, and no inspection of your kitchen. In exchange, you have to stay inside a specific list of allowed products, label everything correctly, and keep your sales within the state.

How the Home Processor Exemption Works

The exemption is authorized under 1 CRR-NY 276.4. It allows residents to produce approved foods using standard household equipment and sell them at retail or wholesale. You register once, get written confirmation from the state, and then operate under the exemption’s rules.¹

Because there is no revenue cap, you can grow the business as large as your kitchen allows. What you cannot do is expand the product line beyond the approved categories or start shipping across state lines. Cross either of those boundaries and you move into commercial food processing, which is a different operation entirely with inspected facilities and licensing fees.

What You Can Bake and Sell

Every approved item has one thing in common: it is shelf stable and does not need refrigeration. The list is broader than most people expect.¹

Approved baked goods include:

Breads, rolls, and cinnamon rolls, which may contain high-acid fruits, commercially dried fruits, or commercially dried herbs, but no vegetables
Bagels, biscuits, muffins, and scones, under the same fruit and herb rules
Cookies, brownies, baklava, and biscotti, though biscotti cannot be topped with chocolate or candy melts
Cakes, cupcakes, and cake pops, with no homemade buttercream or cream cheese frostings on cakes and cupcakes, and no chocolate or candy melts on cake pops
Doughnuts without cream fillings
Double-crust fruit pies only

Beyond baked goods, the exemption also covers fruit jams, jellies, and marmalades made from high-acid fruits; fudge and peanut brittle made with commercially roasted nuts; popcorn, caramel corn, and Rice Krispies treats without chocolate or candy melt toppings; granola, trail mix, and granola bars using commercially roasted nuts; repackaged commercially dried spices, herbs, soup mixes, dried fruit, dried pasta, roasted coffee beans, and dry baking mixes; and seasoning salt.¹

The frosting and topping restrictions trip up a lot of new bakers. You can sell a chocolate cake, but not one finished with homemade buttercream. You can sell caramel corn, but you cannot drizzle chocolate over it. These limits exist because those additions either introduce food safety risks or sit outside the state’s tested parameters.

What’s Off Limits

Anything that needs refrigeration is prohibited. So is anything with a vegetable in it, which surprises people more than any other rule on the list. Zucchini bread, carrot cake, and pumpkin pie all feel like standard home baking, but the state treats them as higher risk because of the moisture vegetables introduce.

You cannot sell:¹

Cheesecake, cream-filled pastries, cream pies, or meringue pies
Single-crust pies, custard pies, or nut pies
Baked goods containing vegetables
Products containing alcohol, meat, fish, or poultry
Anything without a pathogen kill step in the preparation

If a customer asks whether you can make something not on the approved list, the answer is no unless and until the Department of Agriculture and Markets adds it.

How to Register

Registration is free and handled by mail. Before you start, gather your full name and home address, the physical address of the kitchen where you will be baking (if different from your mailing address), a complete list of every product you plan to sell, and a sample label for each item.

Download the Home Processor Registration Request Form (FSI-898c) from the Department of Agriculture and Markets website, complete it, and mail it with your labels and product list to the department’s Division of Food Safety and Inspection.² If your home uses a private well, include a recent water test showing negative results for coliform bacteria; the test must be no more than three months old.

You cannot legally start selling until the department reviews your application and sends written confirmation. Most rejections come from applicants trying to sell products that are not on the approved list, or from labels missing required elements, so check both carefully before you mail the packet.

Labeling Your Products

Every item has to be pre-packaged in your home kitchen before it leaves the house. You cannot bring loose cookies to a farmers market and bag them at your table.¹

Each label must include:

The common name of the product, such as “Chocolate Chip Cookies”
A complete ingredient list in descending order by weight
The net quantity of contents
Your name and full address
A home kitchen disclosure such as “Made in a Home Kitchen” in a font size of at least 1/16 of an inch

The label must also clearly identify any of the nine major food allergens recognized under federal law: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame.¹ You can either name the allergen in parentheses next to the ingredient, like “flour (wheat),” or add a “Contains” statement immediately after the ingredient list.³ For tree nuts, name the specific type, such as almonds, pecans, or walnuts. Allergen disclosure is one of the few places where a mistake creates real legal exposure, so it is worth getting right the first time.

Where You Can Sell

You can sell directly to consumers or wholesale to local businesses. Approved venues include your home, farms and farm stands, farmers markets and green markets, craft fairs and flea markets, home delivery, and internet sales within New York State.¹

The wholesale option gets overlooked. If a local coffee shop wants to carry your muffins, the exemption allows it. The shop follows its own resale rules; on your end, the arrangement is straightforward.

No Sales Outside New York

Every sale has to stay inside the state. You cannot ship to a customer in New Jersey or Connecticut, even if the order came through your own website. Shipping across state lines puts you into interstate commerce, which triggers federal FDA jurisdiction, and a private residence does not qualify as a registered food facility under federal regulations.⁴ There is no legal pathway to sell home-processed food out of state.

Taxes on Your Baking Income

Most food sold for off-premises consumption in an unheated state is exempt from New York sales tax, and pre-packaged baked goods from a home processor generally qualify. New York Tax Law Section 1105(d) taxes food sold by restaurants for on-premises consumption but exempts food sold unheated, in the same form commonly found in grocery stores, and intended for consumption away from the seller’s location.⁵ If any product you sell is taxable, register for a Certificate of Authority through New York Business Express before your first taxable sale.⁶ Registration itself is free.

Your baking income is federally taxable no matter how small the amounts. Report revenue and expenses on Schedule C of your personal return. On top of income tax, you owe self-employment tax of 15.3 percent (12.4 percent Social Security, 2.9 percent Medicare) on your net profit. Because no one is withholding, the IRS expects quarterly estimated payments if you expect to owe $1,000 or more for the year. For 2026, those payments are due April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 15, 2027.⁷ Missing them triggers an underpayment penalty.

Insurance and Local Zoning

A standard homeowners policy excludes business activities. If a customer has an allergic reaction or gets sick from something you sold, your homeowners insurer will almost certainly deny the claim. Product liability policies written for cottage food businesses typically run a few hundred dollars a year and are worth pricing out before you start selling in volume.

The state exemption also does not override local zoning. Your city, town, or village may have home occupation rules that restrict business activity in residential areas, limit signage, regulate customer traffic to your home, or require a separate local permit. These rules vary widely across New York’s municipalities. Call your local zoning or planning office before you invest in packaging, labels, or a farmers market schedule. One phone call can spare you a conflict that would shut the business down after you have already spent the money.

1
Department of Agriculture and Markets. Home Processing
2
New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets. Home Processor Registration Request Form
3
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Food Allergies
4
eCFR. 21 CFR 1.227 – What Definitions Apply to This Subpart?
5
New York State Senate. New York Tax Law 1105 – Imposition of Sales Tax
6
New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. How to Register for New York State Sales Tax
7
Taxpayer Advocate Service. Making Estimated Payments