Maine licenses home food. A Home Food License from the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry costs $20, renewed each year, and comes after one initial inspection of your kitchen; there are no yearly inspections after that. It covers shelf-stable foods, baked goods, jams, candy, and canned goods like pickles and relishes once a process authority has reviewed them, and you can sell them from home and at retail stores. Foods that need refrigeration take a commercial license. Maine also has a second door: the Food Sovereignty Act lets a town adopt an ordinance under which the state doesn't enforce its food licensing on direct producer-to-consumer sales in that town, though meat and poultry stay under state inspection. In the example below, a Hallowell maker sorts six products. Below are the license, the label, food sovereignty, the example, and a free checklist.
The short version
- Home Food License from DACF: $20, renewed every year.
- One initial inspection before the license; no annual inspections.
- Shelf-stable foods only; anything that has to be refrigerated or frozen needs a commercial license.
- Canned shelf-stable products, such as pickles, relishes and barbecue sauce, are reviewed by the University of Maine Food Testing Services or another process authority before licensing.
- Sell from home and at retail stores.
- Label on foods sold outside the home: name, ingredients, net weight or count, and your name, address and ZIP.
- In a town with a food sovereignty ordinance, direct sales to consumers there can be governed by the town instead.
- TaroStack keeps each batch's lot and which stores it went to. More below.
The Home Food License
| Rule | What DACF's guide says |
|---|---|
| Foods | Shelf-stable, non-potentially hazardous |
| Not allowed | Products that must be refrigerated or frozen to control microbial growth |
| Selling | From home and at retail stores |
| Canned products | Reviewed by UMaine Food Testing Services or another acidified process authority before licensing |
| Kitchen | Smooth, cleanable surfaces; a two-bay sink, or one bay plus a dishwasher; fridge thermometer at 41°F or below |
| Water | A private well tested every year for coliform and nitrates |
| Pets | Allowed outside production; removed before you start, and surfaces sanitized |
| Inspection | Initial inspection only |
| Fee | $20, every year |
The guide is DACF's Home Food License 101. No license is needed to sell only fresh produce, eggs from a farm with fewer than 3,000 birds, or poultry under the 1,000-bird exemption. This is general information, not legal advice.
The label
| Line | What it says |
|---|---|
| Product | The common or usual name, such as "dill pickles" |
| Ingredients | In order of predominance |
| Net quantity | Net weight, net volume or count |
| Producer | Name, address and ZIP code |
No label is needed when you sell directly to the consumer from your home. Allergens aren't in DACF's list, but naming them is what a buyer with an allergy needs; how to work them out is in allergen matrix template.
Food sovereignty towns
Under the Maine Food Sovereignty Act, a municipality or plantation may adopt ordinances on traditional foodways and direct producer-to-consumer transactions, and the state recognizes them by not enforcing its food laws on the transactions the ordinance governs. A county can do the same in unorganized territories. DACF's fact sheet says meat and poultry are excluded and must still meet state law. Ordinances differ town by town, and food sold wholesale or into stores still follows state and federal law. Which foods need refrigeration is in TCS foods list.
An example: a Hallowell maker
Kennebec Kitchen, a made-up home food maker in Hallowell, Maine, I use in these examples, holds a Home Food License and sells at a farmers market and through a general store:
| Product | Allowed? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Wild blueberry jam | Yes | Shelf-stable |
| Whoopie pies with shortening filling | Yes | Shelf-stable baked goods |
| Dilly beans | Yes, after review | Canned: UMaine Food Testing reviewed the recipe first |
| Jam in a general store | Yes | Retail stores are allowed |
| Lobster rolls | No | Needs refrigeration |
| Cheesecake | No | Needs refrigeration |
The dilly bean recipe went to the University of Maine for review before the inspection, and the general store took its first case of jam in June. Summer visitors carry the year: by September Kennebec Kitchen had sold $26,600. How a home food business starts is in how to start a cottage food business.
Get the checklist
Download the Maine home food checklist. Three sheets: the label, each line with a column for yours; products, each with whether it's allowed and why; and sales by month. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
Selling into a store means cases, invoices and a store that wants to know which batch it got. Canned goods rest on their reviewed recipe. A notebook covers the market days, not the store's shelf.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps each batch's lot and which stores it went to.
Each batch dated. A batch of jam or dilly beans gets a lot with its production and best-before dates, and lot labels print with it.
The store as a customer. The general store has its own orders, and each order records the lots it got, so one recall report shows every store and customer a batch reached.
Recipes by version. The reviewed canning recipe is a version on a date, so each batch records the version it followed.
| The job | Notebook | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| A batch's date | Written on the jar | The batch's lot and dates |
| Which batch the store got | Not recorded | Recorded with each order |
| The reviewed recipe | A printout | A recipe version on a date |
Lots, batches, orders and lot labels 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.