Ohio home kitchens: 115 meals a week, no permit

Start with what Ohio does not have, because the confusion is imported from California. A full-text search of the Revised Code returns a single hit for the phrase "home kitchen", in R.C. 911.02, where it describes an oven "of ordinary home kitchen design" for bakery registration purposes. "Homemade food" and "home-based food" return no records at all, and "microenterprise" appears only in R.C. 329.11 and 329.14, which concern nonprofit microenterprise programs inside the individual development account scheme and have nothing to do with food. There is no MEHKO application, no county health department home kitchen permit, and no annual fee, because Ohio built the allowance into the exemption list of R.C. 3717.42(B) instead of into a permit.

The home restaurant allowance is division (B)(13), and it has four conditions, all of which must hold. The home must be owner-occupied. The meals must be served on the premises of that home, so this is a table in your dining room, not a delivery business. The number of meals served must not exceed one hundred fifteen per week. And the home must display a notice, in a place conspicuous to all of its guests, informing them that the home is not required to be licensed as a food service operation. The statute counts meals rather than guests or dollars, and it sets no price ceiling and no menu restriction, so unlike a cottage food operation this route may serve hot, potentially hazardous food. Note also what it does not require: division (B)(17)(b), the exemption for small wineries, obliges the owner to notify the director of its exempt status, and division (B)(13) contains no equivalent duty. The posted sign is the whole of the notice obligation.

For food that leaves the house, the number drops sharply. Division (B)(14) exempts an individual who prepares full meals or meal components, such as pies or baked goods, in the individual's home to be served off the premises of that home, if the number of meals or meal components prepared for that purpose does not exceed twenty in a seven-day period. Two details matter. It counts meal components as well as meals, so a tray of twenty-four pies for a wedding is already over the line. And it is written around an individual rather than a business, so the ceiling does not scale by adding household members to the paperwork.

Two further exemptions in the same list often fit a home cook better than either of the above. Division (B)(7) exempts a food service operation serving thirteen or fewer individuals daily, a headcount test rather than a meal count, which covers a small supper club or a standing meal delivery to a handful of clients. Division (B)(2) covers the owner-occupied bed and breakfast: no more than six available guest bedrooms, breakfast as the only meal offered, and no more than sixteen guests served. Division (B)(3) is Ohio's lemonade stand clause, exempting a stand run on the premises of a private home by one or more children under the age of twelve provided the food is not potentially hazardous. Division (B)(1) confirms the baseline that ordinary family cooking for household members and nonpaying guests is outside the chapter entirely.

Watch the interaction with the other half of Chapter 3717. R.C. 3717.22(A)(2) provides that an entity exempt under divisions (B)(1) to (9), (11) to (13), or (15) of R.C. 3717.42 is not a retail food establishment. Division (B)(14) is conspicuously absent from that cross-reference, so the twenty-meals-in-seven-days preparer is relieved of the food service operation licence without being written out of the retail food establishment definition in the same breath. Anyone building an off-premises meal business at the edge of that number should raise it with their licensor before scaling.

Above the caps, the licence is local. R.C. 3717.01(O) defines the licensor as a board of health approved under R.C. 3717.11, with the director of health and the director of agriculture acting as licensor in defined circumstances, and R.C. 3717.43(A) requires an application for a food service operation licence to go to the licensor for the health district in which the operation is located. A catering licence goes to the licensor for the district holding the applicant's base of operation, and a mobile licence issued by one Ohio licensor must be recognised by all the others. The licensing period runs from the first day of March to the last day of February under R.C. 3717.01(P).

C. C. 99 makes each day the violation continues a separate offense. C. C. 28 a third degree misdemeanor carries up to sixty days in jail and a fine of up to five hundred dollars, and a second degree misdemeanor up to ninety days and seven hundred fifty dollars. Because the exemptions are conditions rather than permits, the way most home cooks fall out of compliance is by drifting past a number: the one hundred sixteenth meal in a week under division (B)(13), the twenty-first meal or meal component in seven days under division (B)(14), the fourteenth individual served in a day under division (B)(7), or serving a paying guest somewhere other than the premises of the home.

Taking down the posted notice has the same effect, since displaying it is one of the four conditions of the (B)(13) exemption. Enforcement sits with the board of health for the health district where the home is located, which is also where the licence application would go.