South Carolina Cottage Food: No Permit, No Sales Cap, and Grocery Stores Are Fair Game

The scope test is the food, not the money. Section 44-1-143(A)(1) covers an individual operating out of that individual dwelling who prepares, processes, packages, stores and distributes nonpotentially hazardous foods, and subsection (A)(4) then defines potentially hazardous food in detail: raw or heat-treated animal food, heat-treated plant food, raw seed sprouts, cut melons, cut leafy greens, cut tomatoes, garlic-in-oil mixtures, and any food flagged Product Assessment Required by the pH and water-activity table printed in the statute. Anything on that list is out. The 2022 amendment also wrote two specific exclusions into the definition itself: aluminum canned goods and charcuterie boards are not home-based food production, whatever their pH.

Where you may sell is unusually broad for a cottage food law. Subsection (E) allows sales directly to a consumer, expressly including online and by mail order, and also to retail stores including grocery stores. That retail channel arrived with 2022 Act No. 208, which also declared home-based food to be "from an approved source" for Regulation 61-25 purposes, the finding a permitted restaurant or store needs before it can stock the product. A store that carries the goods must post clearly visible signage saying home-based food products are not subject to commercial food regulations. South Carolina Department of Agriculture guidance adds that a restaurant may serve home-based food or use it as an ingredient only under a variance approved by SCDA, with a consumer advisory carrying the same statutory sentence.

The label is where the statute is prescriptive. Subsection (D) requires the name and address of the operation, the name of the product, the ingredients in descending order of predominance by weight, and a conspicuous statement in all capital letters, in a colour contrasting with the background, reading: PROCESSED AND PREPARED BY A HOME-BASED FOOD PRODUCTION OPERATION THAT IS NOT SUBJECT TO SOUTH CAROLINA'S FOOD SAFETY REGULATIONS. If you do not want your home address printed on jars going out to strangers, subsection (D)(1) requires the department to issue you an identification number to use instead, on request. That SCDA identification number is the only registration in the scheme and it is voluntary; the department states plainly that it issues no permits, licences, certificates or registrations to home-based food producers.

The kitchen still has to meet a checklist. Subsection (C) requires a department-approved water supply, a separate storage place for ingredients used in foods intended for sale, a properly functioning refrigeration unit, a sink with adequate hot water for cleaning and sanitising utensils and equipment, adequate utensil and equipment storage, handwashing facilities separate from the utensil-cleaning facilities, a working toilet, no evidence of insect or rodent activity, and department-approved sewage disposal, either on-site or publicly provided. Subsection (B) adds conduct rules during production: direct supervision of anyone else handling the food, no animals or pets in the production area, no domestic activities in the kitchen while food for sale is being handled, and exclusion of anyone with a communicable disease, an infected wound, or an acute respiratory infection.

The fifteen-hundred-dollar figure in subsection (G) is a floor, not a cap, and it is the single most misread part of the law. An operation whose net earnings stay under that amount is not covered by Section 44-1-143 at all, which means the labelling and sanitation provisions do not bind it. SCDA reads that exemption narrowly in its July 2025 Home-based Food Production Law Guidance, version 1.4: a producer below the threshold may make and sell the same items but may not sell through retail locations and must be physically present, selling directly to the end consumer. Above fifteen hundred dollars there is no upper limit at all, so a South Carolina home baker can scale without ever crossing into a permit requirement, as long as the food itself stays nonpotentially hazardous.

Two wrinkles are worth knowing. First, subsection (I) says the section applies "in the absence of a local ordinance to the contrary," so a South Carolina city or county can regulate home food production more tightly than the state does, and zoning and business-licence rules apply regardless. Second, the 2024 restructuring of DHEC left a second, narrower home-based food statute on the books. Section 46-57-20, added by 2023 Act No. 60 and effective 1 July 2024, re-enacted the pre-2022 version: candy and baked goods only, direct sales only with no wholesale, a "NOT FOR RESALE" label, a five-hundred-dollar floor, and an express statement that the food is not from an approved source. Both sections are printed as current law. SCDA, which now administers both the retail food programme and this one, applies Section 44-1-143 by name in its 2026 Home-based Food Production fact sheet and in its guidance document, so that is the operative text for producers today.

12(A)(12), which lists home-based food production operations preparing non-time/temperature control for safety foods in a private residence kitchen for sale directly to the end consumer. 11(A) says no person shall operate one without a valid permit. 12(C) preserves its authority to investigate a complaint against an exempt operation, require corrective action and issue orders. Penalties sit in Section 46-57-70: a person who after notice fails to comply with a Department of Agriculture regulation is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not more than two hundred dollars or thirty days, and a separate civil penalty of up to one thousand dollars a day for each violation applies to a violation of a rule, regulation, permit condition or order. Mislabelling is the most common exposure, since the all-capitals disclosure sentence and the ingredient list are statutory requirements, not guidance.