Hawaiʻi calls cottage food "homemade food," and its rules are in the state food safety code, Hawaiʻi Administrative Rules chapter 11-50. If what you make doesn't need time or temperature control to stay safe, such as jams, cookies, granola or bread without cream fillings, you can make it in your home kitchen and sell it without a Department of Health food establishment permit, as long as you label it the way DOH requires and complete food safety training. Since August 24, 2025, the rules also cover pickled, fermented and acidified plant foods, and let homemade food be sold online, through shops, and wholesale to permitted food businesses. Below are the rules from DOH's own documents, a label, what to keep on paper, and where the exemption ends.
The short version
- Homemade food is food that doesn't need time or temperature control for safety, made in a home kitchen.
- No DOH food establishment permit, but you need food safety training from DOH or a DOH-approved course.
- Label every package: the DOH statement, the product's name, ingredients by weight, the major allergens, your name and contact details.
- Allowed: baked goods without custard or cream fillings, jams and jellies, granola, plant-based pickles and kimchi.
- Not allowed: dried meats and seafood (jerky, dried aku), melon-family fruits, vacuum packing, canning other than jams and jellies.
- Since August 2025: sell online, through shops and wholesale to permitted food establishments.
- You'll need a general excise tax license. TaroStack keeps the batch, lot and pH records. More below.
What counts as homemade food
DOH's Food Safety Branch sheet on homemade food products, the current version, puts it this way (DOH):
| Allowed | Not allowed |
|---|---|
| Baked goods without custard or cream fillings | Beef jerky, dried aku and other dried meats or seafood |
| Jams and jellies | Dried melons, and fruits of the melon family |
| Pickles, kimchi and salsa, from plant foods only | Dried tomatoes |
| Juice sold direct to the consumer | Vacuum-packed foods |
| Pickled, fermented or acidified plant foods at pH 4.2 or below, or water activity at or below 0.88 | Canned foods, except jams and jellies |
Products with cut tomatoes, such as salsa, must be kept at 41°F or below. And DOH is clear that it's your responsibility, as the producer, to make sure a pickled or acidified product meets the pH or water activity limit (DOH), which in practice means testing it and writing the result down.
What changed in 2024 and 2025
The legislature passed Act 195 in 2024, noting that what DOH calls homemade food products is what most states call cottage food, and directed DOH to widen the definition and allow homemade food to be sold in person or remotely, by phone or the internet, through an agent or a third party such as a shop or grocery store, and delivered by the producer, an agent, mail or shipping (Act 195).
DOH's amended rules took effect on August 24, 2025. They added pickled, fermented and acidified plant foods to the definition, and allow homemade food producers to sell their non-time-and-temperature-controlled products to third parties, online and wholesale (DOH release, DOH highlights).
The label
Every product has to be packaged the way it's sold, and labeled with five things (DOH):
- The statement "Made in a home kitchen not routinely inspected by the Department of Health".
- The common or descriptive name of the product.
- The ingredients, if there are two or more, in descending order by weight.
- The major food allergens: milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame.
- Your name and contact information.
For a home-baked macadamia shortbread, that's:
MACADAMIA NUT SHORTBREAD
Ingredients: flour (wheat), butter (milk), sugar, macadamia nuts, salt
Contains: wheat, milk, macadamia nuts
Made in a home kitchen not routinely inspected by the Department of Health.
[Your name or business] · [phone or email]
The ingredient order comes from the recipe's weights, which is one reason to keep your recipe in grams. How to work out allergens from a recipe, ingredient by ingredient, is in the allergen matrix template.
Training
Homemade food operators have to get food safety training from DOH or a program DOH approves; ANSI-accredited courses meet the requirement (DOH). Keep the certificate with your records.
Where you can sell
| Where | What DOH says |
|---|---|
| Fundraisers, craft fairs, farmers markets | Allowed; an organizer may still ask you for a Special Event permit, which DOH can review and sign off |
| Online | Allowed |
| Shops, grocery stores and other permitted food establishments | Allowed, wholesale, for non-TCS products |
| Restaurants using it on the menu | Allowed, with written disclosure that it's homemade food and the label available to diners on request |
DOH also points out that the FDA doesn't recognize homemade food products as an approved source (DOH). Selling to a customer in another state brings that state's rules and federal ones into it, so ask before you ship out of Hawaiʻi. This is general information, not legal advice; DOH's Food Safety Branch and your county have the last word.
Tax
Selling anything in Hawaiʻi means a general excise tax license, a one-time $20 fee, registered through Hawaii Tax Online. The GET is 4% on most sales, plus the county surcharge where your county has one (0.5% on Oʻahu, for example), and 0.5% on wholesale sales (Hawaiʻi DOTAX). Now that homemade food can be sold wholesale, that difference is worth knowing when you price for a shop.
The records worth keeping
DOH's sheet doesn't list records, but the rules put the proof on you: that a pickle is at pH 4.2 or below, that a label lists every allergen, that the jar a shop is asking about came from a particular day's batch. A simple set:
| Record | Why |
|---|---|
| Each batch: date, product, quantity, a batch or lot code on the label | So a complaint or a question points to one batch |
| Ingredients used, with their brands or lot codes | So a supplier's recall points to your batches |
| pH or water activity readings for pickled or acidified products, with the meter's calibration | The limit is yours to prove |
| Who you sold to wholesale, and what | So you can reach every shop that has a batch |
| Your training certificate | The one thing DOH requires you to have |
A fuller version of this, for any state, is in cottage food record keeping, and how to put a lot code on a jar or bag is in the lot number on food packaging.
When you outgrow it
The exemption stops at products that need refrigeration to stay safe (other than salsa held cold), dried meats and seafood, vacuum packing and most canning. Anything beyond that is made in a permitted kitchen, under a food establishment permit. That's also the usual next step when a grocery chain's buyer wants paperwork a home kitchen can't give.
Where this stops working
At the start, records are a notebook. Then the shop in Kailua takes 24 jars a week, the farmers market takes 40, a restaurant uses your chili pepper water, and you're making two kinds of pickles that each need a pH reading per batch. The notebook still has the readings, somewhere. What it can't do is answer, in a minute, which shops got the batch made with the vinegar the supplier has recalled, or how much the jars really cost now that the jars went up.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack doesn't print your label's ingredient statement or allergen list; those come from you and your recipe. What it keeps is everything behind the label. Recipes are by weight, so the ingredient order is plain. Each batch records which ingredient lots went in, and carries your own checklist fields: the pH reading, the meter checked, your initials. Every batch becomes a lot with its date, and lot labels print with the lot code. Shops and restaurants are customers, with delivery notes, and each delivery carries its lot, so a recall is one report: which batches used the vinegar, and which customers got them.
It works on a phone at the market with no signal. Lots, expiry and recalls are on every plan, from $49 a month; recipes and batch records are on Standard at $99. The first 30 days are free. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.