Georgia Cottage Food Rules for Home Kitchens

Georgia rebuilt its cottage food program from scratch in 2025. Governor Brian Kemp signed House Bill 398 on May 13, 2025 and it took effect on July 1, 2025, adding a new Article 19 to Chapter 2 of Title 26 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated at §§ 26-2-470 through 26-2-478. The old scheme, under which the Department of Agriculture issued a cottage food license, charged an annual fee and ran a pre-licensing inspection of the kitchen, is gone. The Department's own guidance is explicit that cottage food operators no longer need a license or pay a licensing fee to the state, and that with no licence there is no pre-licensing visit to the home.

The statute draws the line at the food itself rather than at a permit. O.C.G.A. § 26-2-470(2) defines a cottage food item as a non-potentially hazardous food or nonalcoholic beverage produced, and if packaged then packaged, at the producer's residential property, and it expressly excludes alcoholic beverages, foods containing cannabis, and raw milk. Paragraph (7) then lists what counts as non-potentially hazardous: baked goods such as loaf breads, rolls, biscuits and cakes, except those whose fillings require refrigeration or have high moisture content; jams, jellies and preserves, except fruit butters whose commercial sterility may be affected by reduced sugar or pectin levels; uncut fruits and vegetables; dried fruits; dry herbs, seasonings and mixtures; cereals, trail mixes and granola; coated and uncoated nuts; vinegars and flavored vinegars; dill pickles; confections; fudge; dry soup mixes; roasted coffee beans; dry pasta; and popcorn, popcorn balls and cotton candy. Anything that needs temperature control for safety falls outside the article entirely.

The biggest practical change is where the food may go. Before 2025 a Georgia cottage food operator could sell only direct to the end consumer. Section 26-2-472 now lets a cottage food production operation sell directly to a person, including online and by mail order, or to retail food sales establishments including grocery stores and restaurants, and it declares that compliant cottage food is "from an approved source" for the purposes of the department's retail food regulations. That last clause is what makes a grocery buyer willing to take the product. The store carrying it has duties of its own: it must post signage to the Department's specifications saying cottage food products are not subject to commercial food regulations or inspection, and under § 26-2-473(d) it must display the items in a separate section or a separate display case from non-cottage food items, conspicuously labelled as containing cottage food items exempt from state inspection.

Disclosure replaces inspection. Section 26-2-473(a) requires the business name, address and telephone number of the operator, together with the fixed statement about residential production and allergens in at least 10 point font. An operator who does not want a home address on a jar can ask the Department in writing for an identification number and use that instead, and the Department publishes the request form on its cottage food page. Subsection (b) says where the information goes: on the package label, on the container if sold from bulk, on a placard at the point of sale if neither, or on the web page where the item is offered. For telephone and custom orders § 26-2-473(c) allows the operator to skip the display and simply tell the customer the item was produced at a residential property exempt from state inspection and may contain allergens, keeping the rest of the information available on request.

Georgia also took most of this out of local hands. New O.C.G.A. § 36-60-33 bars a county or municipality from prohibiting or regulating cottage food items, and from stopping commercial delivery companies from delivering them. The one lever a local government keeps is in § 26-2-478: it may adopt an ordinance prohibiting cottage food operators from selling through third-party vendors inside its jurisdiction, but only at a hearing held at least 15 and not more than 45 days after notice is published in a newspaper of general circulation, and the ordinance does not take effect until the county or city notifies the Commissioner of Agriculture. Ordinary business licensing and zoning are untouched, so a home occupation permit may still be needed from the city or county.

One wrinkle to watch. The Department's older cottage food regulations at Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. Subject 40-7-19, which required a state licence and fee and allowed only direct sales to consumers, are still printed on the Secretary of State's rules site. The Department has said those rules will be amended and the portions inconsistent with House Bill 398 repealed, and that it is using enforcement discretion in the meantime where an old requirement is no longer supported by the statute. Where the rule and the statute disagree, the statute is the one in force. The consumer facing cottage food FAQ page on the Department's own website has not caught up either and still describes the pre-2025 licence and the old label wording.

§ 26-2-474 may adopt rules to carry out the article. 00 per violation. Operating as a cottage food operator outside the article is unlawful under § 26-2-471(a), which is the provision that bites if someone sells potentially hazardous food from a home kitchen rather than the shelf-stable list. Inspections are tightly bounded by § 26-2-476: the Department may inspect the residence only to investigate a consumer complaint, a report of foodborne illness or another public health emergency, the inspection is limited to the areas of the residence the operator actually uses, and except in emergencies it must be scheduled in advance.

An operator may also ask for an administrative warrant before an inspection. Nothing in the article displaces federal food law, tax law, or hunting and fishing law, and § 26-2-477 says so in terms.