Wyoming Cottage Food: Two Separate Licence Exemptions, and Only One of Them Carries a Cap

Most states run one cottage food statute. Wyoming runs two exemptions side by side inside its food licensing section, and they have different scopes, so the one you rely on decides what you may sell and where.

The older and simpler path is W.S. 35-7-124(e). It disapplies the licence requirement to food operators or kitchens in private homes that prepare food that is not potentially hazardous and prepare it for sale or use at farmers' markets, roadside stands, private homes and at functions, including but not limited to those operated by not for profit charitable or religious organizations. Nothing in that subsection caps sales, requires registration, requires a label or requires the buyer to be told anything. Its limits are the food and the venue. W.S. 35-7-110(a)(xxx) defines not potentially hazardous food as food that does not require time or temperature control for safety to limit pathogenic microorganism growth or toxin formation, and adds that the natural pH, or the final pH of an acidified food, must be 4.6 or less. That pH figure is the hard edge for anyone canning salsa, pickles or hot sauce at home.

The second path is W.S. 35-7-124(h), which disapplies the licence requirement to a producer selling food directly to the informed end consumer at a farmers market or through ranch, farm or home based sales under W.S. 11-49-103, and expressly imports the Wyoming Food Freedom Act definitions. That route is wider on food and narrower on scale. Under W.S. 11-49-102(a)(vi) a producer is someone who grows, harvests, prepares or processes food or drink products on property they own or lease, produces no more than 250,000 individual food or drink products a year, and takes no more than $250,000 in gross revenue a year from them. Cross either figure and you stop being a producer, and the exemption stops with you. The cap lives in the definitions section, not in the operating provision, and it is a fixed number with no inflation adjustment written into the act.

What counts as shelf-stable is spelled out generously. W.S. 11-49-102(a)(x) lists jams, uncut fruits and vegetables, pickled vegetables, hard candies, fudge, nut mixes, granola, dry soup mixes excluding meat based soup mixes, coffee beans, popcorn, and baked goods that do not include dairy or meat frosting or filling or other potentially hazardous frosting or filling. The list is expressly not exhaustive.

Wyoming is unusual in letting home-produced shelf-stable goods onto a shop shelf at all. W.S. 11-49-103(c)(i) allows the seller of eggs, dairy products or a homemade non-potentially hazardous food to be the producer, a designated agent, or a third party vendor including a retail shop or grocery store. The price of that channel is in W.S. 11-49-103(k): such food must not be displayed or offered for sale on the same shelf or display as food produced in a licensed establishment, and must be clearly and prominently labelled with the exact sentence "this food was made in a home kitchen, is not regulated or inspected and may contain allergens". A retail space selling homemade food that is separate from a commercial food establishment is carved out of the definition of commercial food establishment altogether by W.S. 35-7-110(a)(xxxi), alongside farmers markets and Food Freedom Act producers.

The boundaries are real. W.S. 11-49-103(c)(iii) and (c)(iv) confine transactions to Wyoming and exclude interstate commerce, so mail order across a state line is out even though shipping within Wyoming is fine. W.S. 11-49-103(d) bars homemade or uninspected food, apart from raw unprocessed fruits and vegetables, from being sold or used in any commercial food establishment or served or used there as an ingredient, which closes the wholesale-to-restaurant route. And a designated agent named in writing under W.S. 11-49-102(a)(xii), which may be a consignment model market or food freedom store, may handle marketing, transport, storage and delivery but may never take ownership of the product.

One thing this page does not say, because the statute does not: the Wyoming Food Freedom Act contains no clause preempting city or county regulation. Its exemption is written against state licensure, permitting, inspection, packaging and labelling requirements in W.S. 11-49-103(b), and W.S. 35-7-124(a) itself contemplates licences issued by a local health department. Zoning, home occupation rules and business registration at the municipal level are untouched by either exemption.

Skipping the licence when neither exemption fits is enforced through the Wyoming Food, Drug and Cosmetic Safety Act rather than through a cottage food penalty of its own. S. S. 35-7-113(a) makes a knowing and intentional violation a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for not more than six months, a fine of not more than $750, or both, rising on a subsequent conviction to imprisonment for not more than one year, a fine of not more than $1,500, or both. S. S. 35-7-123(b)(vi), order a person to cease immediately where there is probable cause to believe an imminent hazard to public health exists, with an Administrative Procedure Act hearing to follow within ten days of the order.

S. S. 35-7-114 allows the director to embargo an article. S. 35-7-124(b), a temporary food establishment licence costs $50, and no other category fee set by rule may exceed $100.