Who the Alaska homemade food law covers
The Alaska law does not use the term "cottage food". It calls it "homemade food": a food or drink prepared or processed in your private home kitchen, or in a private or commercial kitchen you lease. You are the "producer", the person who grows, prepares, processes or makes and packages it.
The Department of Environmental Conservation can still investigate foodborne illness, unsafe sanitary practices and misbranded or adulterated food, and it can order an unsafe practice to stop.
Which foods you can sell
Almost any food or drink qualifies, including perishable foods that need time or temperature control for safety, like cream pies or cheesecake. The law only lists what you can't sell under it:
- Seafood, including fish, shellfish and other aquatic animals
- Game meat
- Oil rendered from animal fat
- Controlled substances
- Meat and meat products, unless federal law allows the sale
Meat here means cattle, sheep, swine, horses and goats. Food made with meat or meat products is allowed under the exemption only as far as federal law permits.
Eggs get a small break: a store or other third-party vendor may sell your eggs, while other perishable homemade food must be sold by you, the producer.
Where and how you can sell
Every sale happens in Alaska, at one of the places the law lists. Interstate commerce is out.
| Way of selling | Allowed? |
|---|---|
| Farmers markets and agricultural fairs | Yes |
| Your farm, ranch, home or office | Yes |
| A place you and the buyer agree on | Yes |
| Through a retail shop or grocery store | Yes for shelf-stable food and eggs, with a sign and separate shelf |
| Perishable food through a store or agent | No, you sell it yourself |
| Restaurants and other commercial food establishments | No, except raw fruits and vegetables |
| Sales to other states | No |
A store selling homemade food keeps it off the shelves with inspected food and shows a sign saying the food was made in a home kitchen, may contain allergens and is not regulated or inspected (permitted meat aside). If that retail space sells perishable homemade food and is tied to a commercial food establishment or also sells inspected food, it needs its own door, its own register and separate coolers and freezers.
Selling food without a package
A loaf on a market table or a pie handed over at your door needs no label. Before the sale, you or the third-party seller tell the buyer two things:
A small printed card with these details makes this easy at a busy stall.
When you outgrow the homemade food law
Selling seafood, supplying restaurants or shipping to customers in other states? Then the exemption no longer covers that food, DEC regulates it like any other food business, and the federal label rules apply: ingredient list, net quantity, allergens and usually a Nutrition Facts panel.
FDA Food Labeling Requirements →