Cottage Food Labels in Virginia: The Cap Depends on What You Make

There is no single Virginia cap

Ask what Virginia's cottage food limit is and the honest answer is that it depends entirely on what you make. This is an exemption structured by product category rather than by revenue, and the categories have genuinely different ceilings.

• Baked goods, jams, candy, and dried foods: no revenue limit
• Acidified vegetables and pickles: capped at $9,000 a year
• Honey: capped by volume, at 250 gallons a year

The category you sit in matters more than almost anything else here. A baker in Virginia has no ceiling at all. A pickle maker has one of the tightest in the country, and it is a fifth of what Washington allows and a fraction of Florida's.

The practical consequence is for anyone selling across categories. Cucumber pickles and a jam are not one allowance; they are two separate rules applying at once, and the pickles will hit their limit while the jam is still unconstrained. Track those lines separately.

No registration and no VDACS inspection are required to make and sell within these limits, which is what makes the category boundaries the whole of the regulation.

The statement, and where it goes

NOT FOR RESALE PROCESSED AND PREPARED WITHOUT STATE INSPECTION

Note the absence of punctuation between the two halves. Several third-party guides insert a dash there; the statute does not have one. Reproduce it as written.

Virginia specifies placement, which few states do. It goes on the principal display panel, the face of the package a customer sees first on the shelf. Not the back, not the underside, not tucked beside the ingredients.

That is a design constraint rather than a formatting one, and it is the harder kind. Your front panel is where your product name and your brand live, and Virginia requires it to share that space with a sentence about state inspection. Lay the front out around the statement rather than trying to fit the statement in afterwards.

There is relief for small packaging. Where the package is too small to carry it, the statement may go on a sign displayed with the product instead, alongside the processor's name, address, telephone number, and the processing date. That turns a labelling problem into a display one, which on a small jar is usually the easier of the two.

The "NOT FOR RESALE" half also marks the scope of the exemption: this route is direct to the consumer, and a shop cannot buy from you to resell.

The rest of the label

• The name, physical address, and telephone number of the person preparing the food
• The date the product was processed
• The name of the product
• A net weight statement
• The ingredients and sub-ingredients

Two of those are unusual enough to be worth flagging.

A telephone number. Virginia is one of very few states to require one. If you work from home, that is a personal number going onto a package a stranger takes away, so consider a separate line or a business number before you print a thousand labels.

A production date, which means the label cannot be entirely pre-printed. Leave a field, print per batch, or date-stamp at packing.

Where the Nutrition Facts panel fits

Virginia does not require one, and does not decide the question. The FDA does.

Most home 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, and nothing is filed to claim it.

Virginia's unlimited categories make this more live than in a capped state. A Virginia baker faces no state ceiling whatsoever, so the federal thresholds are the only ones in play, and passing $50,000 in food sales to consumers is an ordinary outcome for a busy bakery rather than a remote scenario. Nothing in the Virginia exemption will mark that moment.

The exemption also ends on any nutrient content or health claim on the label, in labeling, or in advertising, regardless of sales.

What to do in Nutrifax

1. Build or import the recipe and check each ingredient match against what you buy.
2. Set the serving size from the reference amount for the category.
3. Generate the panel in the FDA 2016 format, rounded per 21 CFR 101.9.
4. Export a print-ready PDF or PNG, or tile an Avery 5163 sheet.

Because the required statement claims prime space on the front panel, work out where the Nutrition Facts panel sits before you commit to artwork. On a small jar, the front carries the statement and the back carries the panel, the ingredients, your address, your phone number, and the date, which fills up quickly.

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

• VDACS: Virginia's home kitchen food processing exemptions
• VDACS: Home and commercial kitchen-based businesses
• FDA: Small business nutrition labeling exemption guide
• eCFR: 21 CFR 101.9 (Nutrition labeling of food)

Disclaimer

Educational content only; not legal advice. Category limits and exemption terms change. Confirm current requirements with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and confirm the final label against current regulations for your product and jurisdiction.