The cap counts products, not revenue
Almost every state caps what your business may earn. Colorado caps what each product may earn: $10,000 per product, per year.
The consequence is unusual and worth thinking through properly, because it rewards a shape of business that other states penalise. Your total is not limited. Sell $10,000 of strawberry jam and you have exhausted strawberry jam, not your allowance. Add apricot, add a chutney, add a granola, and each carries its own $10,000.
Read "product" carefully: it is per product or flavour, so variations count separately. That makes Colorado friendly to a maker with a broad range and awkward for one with a single hero item. If you have one product that sells, the cap arrives early, and the way past it is a second product rather than a bigger business.
Track sales per product from day one. A single combined revenue figure cannot tell you whether you are close to the limit, and reconstructing it afterwards from a year of market takings is miserable.
Train before you sell, not after
Colorado requires a food safety course recognised by the state health department before you start selling. Not within a grace period, and not eventually. Before.
Budget a couple of hours and a modest fee, and do it early: it is a prerequisite, so it can hold up a launch in a way that printing labels never will.
The required statement
Word for word:
This product was produced in a home kitchen that is not subject to state licensure or inspection and that may also process common food allergens such as tree nuts, peanuts, eggs, soy, wheat, milk, fish, and crustacean shellfish. This product is not intended for resale.
Two features to notice.
It enumerates the allergens inline. Colorado writes the list into the disclosure rather than leaving allergen declaration entirely to a separate statement. This does not replace declaring what is actually in your product; it is a cross-contact warning covering the kitchen.
It ends with "not intended for resale." That sentence is doing real work: it marks the boundary of the exemption. Colorado cottage food is direct-to-consumer, so a shop cannot buy from you and resell. If a retailer wants to stock you, that conversation starts with a different licence, not with a bigger label.
Where the Nutrition Facts panel comes in
Colorado does not require one. The FDA decides that, and most cottage food producers are exempt under 21 CFR 101.9(j)(1): annual gross sales of $500,000 or less, or annual gross sales of food to consumers of $50,000 or less, with nothing to file.
There is a Colorado-shaped trap here. The state cap is measured per product, and the federal thresholds are measured across your whole business. A maker with eight products each selling $9,000 is comfortably inside every Colorado limit and has $72,000 in food sales to consumers, which is past the federal $50,000 figure. The two are counted differently, and staying inside one tells you nothing about the other.
The exemption also ends the moment a nutrient content or health claim appears on the label, in labeling, or in advertising, whatever your sales.
What to do in Nutrifax
- Build or import each recipe and check the ingredient matches.
- Set the serving size from the reference amount for the category.
- Generate the panel in the FDA 2016 format, rounded per 21 CFR 101.9.
- Export a print-ready PDF or PNG, or tile an Avery 5163 sheet.
If you are running the several-products strategy the Colorado cap encourages, keep each recipe saved separately rather than as variations of one. Per-product records are what the state cap needs, and they are what makes generating a panel per product straightforward later.
Related pages
- Cottage Food Label Requirements by State
- When Nutrition Labels Are Required in the US
- US FDA Nutrition Label Requirements for Small Producers
- Serving Size and Rounding Rules (US FDA)
- FDA nutrition label generator
Sources
- Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment: Cottage foods
- Colorado Farm to Market: Cottage foods FAQ
- FDA: Small business nutrition labeling exemption guide
- eCFR: 21 CFR 101.9 (Nutrition labeling of food)
Disclaimer
Educational content only; not legal advice. Confirm current requirements with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, and confirm the final label against current regulations for your product and jurisdiction.