Under cottage food laws written for foods that don't need refrigeration, a pizza can't come out of a home kitchen: cheese, sauce and toppings make it a food that needs time and temperature control. Michigan's and Minnesota's laws read that way, and what you can sell there from home is the plain crust, as a baked good. North Dakota goes further: a cottage food that needs refrigeration can be sold frozen, with safe handling instructions and a statement that it was kept frozen, so a frozen cheese pizza works, but its law bars uninspected meat products, so pepperoni doesn't. Hot pizza for pickup is a different kind of business, closer to a small restaurant, and Utah licenses it at home with a microenterprise home kitchen permit: the local health department inspects the kitchen and issues a permit, and you can cook and sell hot food, pizza included, made and served the same day, picked up or delivered but not eaten on site, sold only to consumers, with a notice that the kitchen isn't a commercial one. In the example below, a Utah home cook starts Friday pizza nights under that permit.
The short version
- Cottage food laws like Michigan's and Minnesota's leave out pizza; plain crusts fit as baked goods.
- North Dakota: frozen cheese pizza with safe handling labels; no meat toppings.
- Hot pizza for pickup needs a home kitchen permit where one exists, or a licensed kitchen.
- Utah: a microenterprise home kitchen permit from the local health department, after an inspection.
- Utah's rules: made and served the same day, or within 72 hours with temperature logs; no eating on site.
- Sold straight to customers; never to a café or store.
- TaroStack keeps each night's orders and each batch of dough. More below.
Pizza, state by state
| Product | Michigan | Minnesota | North Dakota | Utah, with the permit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hot pizza for pickup | No | No | No | Yes, same day |
| Frozen cheese pizza | No | No | Yes, with labels | Within 72 hours, with logs |
| Pepperoni or sausage pizza | No | No | No | Yes, same day |
| Plain par-baked crusts | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Selling meals from home in general is in meal prep business license, and the frozen food rules in license to sell frozen food.
The rules
| Rule | Where |
|---|---|
| Utah: the permit | From the local health department, with an inspection before opening and the hours set in the permit (Utah Code 26B-7-416) |
| Utah: how it's sold | Same day, or within 72 hours with temperature logs kept 90 days and date marks; no eating on site; only to consumers; no HACCP processes; a notice to customers (26B-7-416(8)) |
| Michigan | Food that isn't time/temperature control for safety; baked goods that don't need it (MCL 289.1105(k)) |
| Minnesota | Food that isn't potentially hazardous (Minn. Stat. 28A.152) |
| North Dakota | Refrigerated cottage foods sold frozen with safe handling instructions; no uninspected meat products (N.D.C.C. 23-09.5-02) |
This is general information, not legal advice.
An example: Friday pizza nights in Logan
Cache Valley Pizza Night, a made-up home cook in Logan, Utah, has a wood-fired oven in the backyard and neighbors who kept asking to buy pizza. To sell it, the cook applied for a microenterprise home kitchen permit:
| Step | What it took |
|---|---|
| Permit | Application and fee to the local health department; Friday 5 to 8 p.m. on the permit |
| Inspection | The kitchen inspected the week before the first night |
| Same day | Dough made Friday morning; pizzas topped, baked and handed over that evening |
| Pickup only | Ordered ahead online, picked up at the gate; no tables in the yard |
| The notice | On the order page and the box: the kitchen is permitted but may not meet every requirement of a commercial one |
| Take and bake | Left off: selling frozen pizzas later in the week would mean the 72-hour logs |
A café downtown asked to buy frozen pizzas for its case; under the permit the cook can sell only to the people eating them, so the answer was no. What goes into a pizza's cost is in pizza shop business plan.
Get the checker
Download the home pizza checker. Two sheets: your products, whether each needs refrigeration, has meat or is sold hot, and how Michigan's, Minnesota's and North Dakota's cottage food laws and Utah's home kitchen permit treat it; and each state's rules as read for this article. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
Thirty pizzas between 5 and 8 is a stack of order slips, a dough count from the morning and a box of cash. A slip that falls behind the oven is a neighbor waiting at the gate.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps each night's orders and each batch of dough.
Orders. Each pizza order goes in for its pickup night, so the night's list is one screen.
Dough as a batch. The day's dough is a batch from its recipe, with its lot and how many balls it made.
True cost. Each pizza is costed from its recipe, the dough and the toppings at what they actually cost.
| The job | Order slips | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Friday's orders | Slips by the oven | Orders by pickup night |
| Which dough went into Friday's pizzas | Not recorded | Dough batches by lot |
| What a pizza costs | A guess | True cost from the recipe |
Orders, recipes and batches are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.