Two things changed in 2025
House Bill 398 took effect on 1 July 2025.
- It removed the state licensing requirement. Georgia previously required a cottage food licence from the Department of Agriculture. That requirement is gone.
- It removed the sales cap. The old ceiling was $5,000, which was among the lowest in the country and made Georgia a difficult state to build anything in. There is now no cap.
If you are reading guidance written before mid-2025, including a fair amount of what still ranks well, it will tell you to get a licence and stay under $5,000. Both are out of date.
The Department of Agriculture currently lists its cottage food regulations document as under revision. What follows is the rule as published; check the department's page before you commit to a large print run.
The label rule is unusually exact
Georgia tells you which typeface to use. Almost no other state does.
The required statement, verbatim:
MADE IN A COTTAGE FOOD OPERATION THAT IS NOT SUBJECT TO STATE FOOD SAFETY INSPECTIONS
Four formatting requirements attach to it, from Rule 40-7-19-.09:
- Font: Times New Roman or Arial. Not a similar serif. Not your brand face. One of those two.
- Size: 10-point minimum.
- All capital letters, as written above.
- A colour that contrasts with the label background.
The font rule is easy to break by accident. If you have picked a font for your jars, or bought a template that came with one, the instinct is to set every word on the label in it, and the statement is the one place you cannot. It goes in Times New Roman or Arial whatever surrounds it. Treat it as a regulatory element sitting on your label, and design around it.
The rest of the label
- Your business name and physical address. A PO box does not satisfy this. If you would rather not publish your home address, the Department of Agriculture issues an ID number you can use instead. Ask for that rather than inventing a workaround
- The common name or description of the product
- Every ingredient, heaviest first, including sub-ingredients
- The net weight or volume
Georgia says the sub-ingredient part out loud where other states leave it implied. If your cookie contains commercial chocolate chips, the components of those chips generally have to appear in your ingredient list. Read the label on what you buy and carry its contents through into yours.
Georgia writes the claim rule onto the label rule
Most states are silent about nutrition information and leave you to discover the federal position on your own. Georgia's own labelling rule lists nutritional information as required if nutritional claims are made, which is the federal rule restated in the state's own text.
That makes the trade explicit, and it is the same trade everywhere:
- Make no nutrient content or health claim, and you need no Nutrition Facts panel
- Make one, and you need the panel
A claim is not only what appears on the jar. The federal exemption at 21 CFR 101.9(j)(1) is lost if a nutrient content or health claim, or other nutrition information, appears on the label, in labeling, or in advertising. Your website copy, your market signage, and your social posts are all in scope. "Low sugar", "high in fibre", "a good source of protein", and "keto friendly" all count.
With no cap, the federal figures take over
With the $5,000 cap gone, nothing in Georgia law limits how large a cottage food operation can grow. The next limits you meet are federal ones.
The (j)(1) exemption holds while annual gross sales are $500,000 or less, or annual gross sales of food to consumers are $50,000 or less. Past that there is a second route, at 21 CFR 101.9(j)(18). It covers a product where the business averages fewer than 100 full-time equivalent employees and sells fewer than 100,000 units of it in 12 months, and it requires an annual notice to the FDA. When nutrition labels are required in the US covers both.
Removing the state ceiling makes that a live question. A producer who would once have stopped at $5,000 can now reach the federal figures, and Georgia has no renewal or annual filing at which anyone would notice.
Producing the panel
Nutrifax builds the Nutrition Facts panel from your recipe against USDA FoodData Central and the Canadian Nutrient File, in the FDA 2016 format, rounded per 21 CFR 101.9. Import or build the recipe, verify each ingredient match, set the serving size from the reference amount for the category, and export a print-ready PDF or PNG.
Set the panel in the FDA's prescribed typography. That is its own specification and has nothing to do with the Times New Roman or Arial rule governing the Georgia statement.
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
- Georgia Department of Agriculture: Cottage food
- Georgia Rules and Regulations: Chapter 40-7-19
- FDA: Small business nutrition labeling exemption guide
- eCFR: 21 CFR 101.9 (Nutrition labeling of food)
Disclaimer
Educational content only; not legal advice. HB 398 took effect on 1 July 2025 and the Department of Agriculture lists its cottage food regulations as under revision, so this area is changing. Confirm current requirements with the Georgia Department of Agriculture, and confirm the final label against current regulations for your product and jurisdiction.