Indiana Home Based Vendor Law: No License, No Sales Cap, No Refrigerated Food

Indiana did not build a permit program and then attach conditions to it. Ind. Code § 16-42-5.3-2 simply says a person may prepare and sell food products as a home based vendor if the person complies with the chapter, and § 16-42-5.3-3 lifts the food establishment requirements of Title 16 from that activity. Everything that follows is a condition on the exemption rather than a term of a licence, which is why there is nothing to renew and nobody to notify before you start.

Section 16-42-5.3-4 sets six conditions and they are cumulative. The product must be made, grown or raised by an individual at that individual's primary residence, including any permanent structure on the same property as the residence. It must not be a time temperature control for safety food. It must be prepared using proper sanitary procedures, which the statute itself spells out as proper hand washing, sanitizing the container or packaging, storing the product safely, working in a food preparation or packaging area in which animals are not present, and cleaning and sanitizing contact surfaces. It may not be resold. It may be sold in person, by telephone or through the Internet, and delivered to the end consumer in person, by mail or by a third party carrier. The chapter does not define time temperature control for safety food, and Ind. Code § 16-42-5.3-9 gives the state health commissioner power to develop guidelines on best safe food handling practices, disease control and potable water sources, so a vendor unsure whether a particular product falls inside the exclusion should take that question to the Indiana Department of Health rather than to a county office.

There is no revenue limit. Sections 1 through 13 of Ind. Code § 16-42-5.3 name no dollar figure at all. The $1,500,000 gross sales ceiling that circulates in Indiana discussions belongs to a different and much newer chapter, Ind. Code § 16-42-5.4, the community producer or homestead vendor scheme added in 2026, which trades that ceiling for the right to sell prepared foods and refrigerated meat raised on the property. If you are working under the 2022 cottage food chapter, the ceiling does not apply to you and neither does the meat allowance.

Labelling is prescriptive and is where most vendors slip. Ind. Code § 16-42-5.3-5(a) requires a label on packaged food or a sign on unpackaged food carrying the producer's name and address, the common or usual name of the product, the ingredients in descending order by predominance by weight, the net weight or volume by standard measure or numerical count, the date the product was processed, and in at least 10 point type the sentence: This product is home produced and processed and the production area has not been inspected by the Indiana Department of Health. NOT FOR RESALE. Subsection (b) then requires the vendor to post the label of each food product on the vendor's website.

Sales channels are open but shipping is fenced. Ind. Code § 16-42-5.3-6(a) prohibits shipping or delivering to an end consumer located outside Indiana, full stop. Subsection (b) requires a sealed package that lets the consumer determine whether the product has been tampered with, requires the vendor to keep a record of every shipping or delivery address for at least one year after the sale, and requires those records to be handed to the state department on request. Training is a one item list: Ind. Code § 16-42-5.3-7 requires a food handler certificate from an issuer accredited by the American National Standards Institute, a copy given to the state department or an end consumer on request, and a copy provided to the local health department in the county where the vendor's residence is located.

The same chapter carries three neighbouring exemptions that matter to anyone selling at a market. Section 16-42-5.3-10 exempts poultry products produced under Ind. Code § 15-17-5-11 and farm slaughtered rabbits, but requires them to be frozen at the point of sale at a farmers' market or roadside stand and merely refrigerated when sold on the farm where they were produced. Section 16-42-5.3-11(b) exempts an individual vendor of a farmers' market or roadside stand from food establishment requirements for eggs and whole uncut produce, with Ind. Code § 16-42-11 still applying to eggs. Section 16-42-5.3-1(b) defines the roadside stand narrowly: a structure, tent, stand, vehicle or trailer that is visible from a road and located not more than one hundred feet from the edge of the side of the road.

On local control, Indiana is unusually blunt. Ind. Code § 16-42-5.3-12 says that notwithstanding any other law, a local unit of government as defined in Ind. Code § 14-22-31.5-1 may not by ordinance or resolution require any licensure, certification or inspection of a home based vendor's foods. Ind. Code § 16-42-5.3-13 then makes local health officers food environmental health specialists subordinate to the state department and forbids them from enforcing the department's home based vendor rules more strictly than the department's own guidelines. A county health department that demands a cottage food permit in Indiana is acting outside its authority.

The exemption does not remove you from the state's food safety powers, it removes you from establishment licensing. Ind. 3-8(a) makes a home based vendor subject to sampling and inspection if the state department determines the product is misbranded under Ind. Code § 16-42-2-3 or adulterated, or if a consumer complaint has been received. Subsection (b) lets the department order production and sale to cease where it has reason to believe an imminent health hazard exists, until the hazard is addressed, and subsection (c) lets the commissioner's officers enter the vendor's facilities at reasonable times to inspect products, equipment, materials, containers and labelling.

Adulterated or misbranded food can be tagged and embargoed under Ind. Code § 16-42-1-18, for not more than fifteen days in the case of food, and moving or selling embargoed goods without permission is itself prohibited. Money penalties come from two directions: Ind. Code § 16-42-1-17(b) caps the state department's civil penalty schedule at one thousand dollars per violation per day, imposed only through an administrative proceeding under Ind. 5-3-8, which is also the route by which a vendor contests one. Selling adulterated or misbranded food in intrastate commerce is a Class A misdemeanor under Ind.

Code § 16-42-1-16(b), punishable under Ind. Code § 35-50-3-2 by up to one year and a fine of up to five thousand dollars, and a Level 6 felony if committed with intent to defraud or mislead, carrying six months to two and one half years and a fine of up to ten thousand dollars under Ind. Code § 35-50-2-7(b). Before any of that reaches a prosecutor, Ind. Code § 16-42-1-32 requires the commissioner to give the person notice and an opportunity to present their views orally or in writing, and Ind. Code § 16-42-1-33 lets the commissioner handle minor violations with a written notice or warning instead.