Cottage food label requirements in Tennessee

Last checked 5 August 2026 · Informational only, not legal or food-safety advice. Verify anything important with Tennessee Department of Agriculture, Food Safety before you print a run of labels.

What goes on the label

1. The product name, in words a customer would use.
2. Every ingredient, heaviest first.
3. The major allergens, called out separately from the ingredient list.
4. Who made it: your name or your business name.
5. How to reach you.
6. The date it was made.

What the label has to say

As published for Tennessee, read on 5 August 2026:

This product was produced at a private residence that is exempt from state licensing and inspection. This product may contain allergens.

This is published as fixed text, so reproduce it exactly rather than rewording it.

The detail

Both sentences are one required disclosure — the allergen sentence is not optional and is not a substitute for naming allergens. Under the Tennessee Food Freedom Act (T.C.A. 53-1-118) homemade food is exempt from state labelling law ONLY IF this disclosure and the other conditions are met, so the exemption is conditional on the label, not instead of it. Must also be provided: producer's name, home address and telephone number; the food's common or usual name; ingredients in descending order of predominance; and for potentially hazardous / TCS items, handling information. The disclosure need not be on a sticker: it may be on a label affixed to the package, a label on a bulk container, a placard at the point of sale if the item is neither packaged nor from a bulk container, or the webpage if sold only online. For telephone or custom orders the seller may disclose verbally instead but must have the rest available on request. Section 8 of the act preempts counties and municipalities from regulating homemade food, so there is no local desk. Public Chapter 431 (HB 130, effective 1 July 2025) opened the act to time/temperature control for safety foods and did NOT change this sentence.

Make one

Free, nothing saved, no account. It fills in Tennessee's wording for you and prints a sheet.

What it is What is in it, heaviest first Make the labels

Where to verify all of this

Rules change, and this page can lag behind them. Before you rely on any of it:

• The rule itself
• Tennessee Department of Agriculture, Food Safety