Last verified: October 23, 2026. I’m a Texas home baker, not a lawyer — laws change, so always confirm with the South Carolina Department of Agriculture (SCDA) before you sell.

SOUTH CAROLINA COTTAGE FOOD AT A GLANCE

Annual sales cap: None — South Carolina’s Home-Based Food Production Law (S.C. Code § 44-1-143) sets no cap on sales or earnings. If a website tells you the cap is $15,000, it’s quoting outdated law — that number disappeared from the statute years ago.

License or permit: Not required — no license, no permit, no registration, and no mandatory application of any kind to produce food under this law. (SCDA’s words, not just mine.)

Kitchen inspection: Not required — a home-based food production operation is not a retail food establishment and is exempt from the retail food rules (Regulation 61-25). The law instead lists sanitation conditions your kitchen has to meet.

Food handler course: Not required — no course or certificate. Everyone helping you does have to know and follow safe food handling practices.

Shipping: Online and mail-order sales are allowed; SCDA’s guidance says delivery is only within South Carolina.

Stores and wholesale: Grocery stores and other retail stores may sell your packaged products (the store posts a sign saying home-based products aren’t subject to commercial food regulations). Selling into a distributor isn’t one of the law’s listed channels. A restaurant may serve your food or use it as an ingredient only with an SCDA-approved variance.

Tiny-seller note: If your operation nets less than $1,500 a year, the law’s provisions — including the labeling rules — don’t apply to you at all. The trade-off: you must sell in person, directly to the consumer, and you can’t sell through retail stores.

WHY SOUTH CAROLINA IS ONE OF THE FRIENDLIEST STATES IN THIS WHOLE SERIES

No permit. No sales cap. Mail-order sales. Grocery store shelves. South Carolina’s Home-Based Food Production Law is quietly one of the most generous in the country — and since 2022 it covers any food that isn’t potentially hazardous, not just a short list of baked goods and candy.

Like Maryland, South Carolina also offers a privacy option almost no other state has: if you don’t want your home address on every label, you can request an SCDA identification number and print that instead. And because there are no licenses or applications at all, your startup paperwork is basically… your label.

There are real catches, and they’re specific: your city or county can override the state law with its own ordinance; a handful of foods are flatly out (cheesecake lovers, brace yourselves); and cream cheese icing sits in a genuine gray area inside SCDA’s own guidance book — more on that below, because I won’t pretend it’s clearer than it is.

WHAT YOU CAN (AND CAN’T) SELL

Everything has to be non-potentially hazardous — shelf-stable food that doesn’t need refrigeration to stay safe. For borderline recipes, the statute itself has a pH and water-activity table that makes the call. SCDA’s guidance lists as allowed:

Allowed: Shelf-stable cakes, cookies, and cupcakes; yeast breads and sourdough made with a commercially prepared starter; candy, including fudge, caramels, brittles, hard candy, and cotton candy; popcorn; jams, jellies, preserves, and high-acid fruit curds made from standardized, science-based recipes using high-acid fruits (peaches, cherries, apricots, plums, apples, pears, citrus fruits, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries); high-acid pie fillings; dried herbs, spices, spice mixes, and teas; dried, dehydrated, and freeze-dried fruits and vegetables (details below); roasted coffee, roasted in your home kitchen; roasted nuts; granola and trail mix; edible cookie dough made with commercially heat-treated flour; and honey produced in your home kitchen.

The frosting fine print (this matters for cookie decorators and cake bakers): Buttercream is allowed — use a standardized recipe, and if eggs are used they must be commercially pasteurized. Italian buttercream and Swiss meringue need commercially pasteurized egg whites. Royal icing must be made with meringue powder or pasteurized egg whites — raw, non-pasteurized egg whites are never allowed. Cream cheese icing is the gray area: one chapter of SCDA’s guidance allows cakes iced with cream cheese icing that’s commercially prepared or made from a standard recipe classified as non-TCS, while another chapter lists cream cheese and caramel icings as not allowed. Because SCDA’s own book points both ways, ask before you sell cream-cheese-iced goods — SCDA and Clemson Extension answer producer questions at sccottagefood@clemson.edu.

Freeze-dried foods — allowed, with two exclusions: Freeze-dried fruit, freeze-dried vegetables (including mushrooms), and freeze-dried hard candy are all on SCDA’s allowed list, as long as the drying happens in your home kitchen. The exclusions: melons and tomatoes are not allowed, even dried. SCDA also adds a sanitation caution worth taking seriously — drying and freeze-drying don’t reliably kill germs, so careful handling before drying matters.

Not allowed: Anything that needs refrigeration to stay safe (casseroles, meats, seafood, ice cream); cheesecake in every variety; cream, custard, meringue, pumpkin, sweet potato, and vegetable pies; bottled beverages, cold brew coffee, kombucha, and kefir; pickles, salsa, relish, hot sauce, BBQ sauce, and other acidified or fermented foods; low-acid canned foods and anything in aluminum cans (the statute names those itself); charcuterie boards (also named in the statute); fresh fruit tarts; quick breads made with fresh, frozen, or canned fruits or vegetables, and muffins with chunks of fresh or frozen fruit or vegetables (purée baked into the batter is fine); carrot cake, unless it’s from a dry commercial mix with nothing added; sourdough starter itself, in any form — the bread is allowed, the starter isn’t a product; raw milk as an ingredient; anything with CBD; and pet treats, which live under a completely separate feed law.

Kitchen rules that come with the law: Keep a clean, sanitary setup — department-approved water (a private well needs yearly coliform testing), separate storage for your business ingredients, a working refrigerator, a sink with enough hot water for washing and sanitizing, separate handwashing facilities, a working toilet, no sign of pests, and approved sewage disposal. No pets in the production area while you’re working, no regular household kitchen activities while food for sale is being made, and anyone sick stays out of the kitchen.

SOUTH CAROLINA LABELING REQUIREMENTS

South Carolina law (§ 44-1-143) requires every packaged product to carry a label with:

  1. Your operation’s name and address — or the privacy alternative. Either the name and address of your home-based food production operation, or — if you’d rather not print your home address — the SCDA identification number you can request from the department. The ID number application is voluntary (it’s Appendix F of SCDA’s guidance book).
  2. The standard name of the product — like “Chocolate Chip Cookies.”
  3. Ingredients in descending order of predominance by weight.
  4. This exact statement, verbatim, printed in all capital letters in a color that clearly contrasts with the label background: PROCESSED AND PREPARED BY A HOME-BASED FOOD PRODUCTION OPERATION THAT IS NOT SUBJECT TO SOUTH CAROLINA’S FOOD SAFETY REGULATIONS.
  5. An allergen statement (required by SCDA under the law’s federal-compliance rule): name the food source of each major allergen in the product — wheat, soy, milk, egg, fish, shellfish, peanuts, tree nuts, sesame — naming the specific type for tree nuts, fish, and shellfish (like walnuts, pecans, or shrimp) — or include a disclaimer that any major food allergen may be contained in the food.

Three label traps to skip: (1) Older labels and blogs start the statement with “NOT FOR RESALE–” — that wording was removed from the law in 2022; don’t copy it. (2) South Carolina’s label list does not include net weight — some checklists import it from other states. (3) No Nutrition Facts panel is required, and SCDA says no health claims may be made for home-based foods.

WHERE YOU CAN SELL IN SOUTH CAROLINA

Directly to consumers: from home, at farmers markets and events, online, and by mail order — with one limit from SCDA’s guidance: deliveries go only to addresses in South Carolina.

To retail stores, including grocery stores: stores may sell your products in their original packaging, and your products count in law as coming from an “approved source.” The store has to post a clearly visible sign saying the home-based food products are not subject to commercial food regulations. (That’s the store’s job, but it’s worth knowing so you can point a new store account to the rule.)

To restaurants — only with a variance: a restaurant can serve your food or use it as an ingredient only if SCDA approves a variance. The restaurant applies, not you, and the variance has to include telling customers the food was prepared in a home kitchen, using the same statement that’s on your labels.

Two local warnings: First, the state law applies only where there’s no local ordinance to the contrary (§ 44-1-143(I)) — check your city and county ordinances before your first sale, because a local rule can change the answer. Second, individual markets and stores can set their own vendor policies, which may be stricter than the state law.

YOUR 3 STEPS TO START

  1. Check your products against the non-potentially hazardous test — and the SCDA lists. Shelf-stable is the whole game. If your signature product is cheesecake, a cream pie, or pickles, it needs a commercial kitchen instead. If it’s a frosted cake, follow the frosting rules above (standardized recipe, pasteurized eggs) — and email SCDA/Clemson before selling anything cream-cheese-iced.
  2. Build your label — and decide about the ID number. Four statutory items plus the allergen statement, the big statement in all caps in a contrasting color. If you’d rather keep your home address off your packages, apply for the voluntary SCDA ID number first and print it in place of the address.
  3. Sell — in person, online, by mail within South Carolina, or through stores. No permit or application stands between you and your first sale. Just remember the local-ordinance check, and keep mail orders inside state lines per SCDA’s guidance.

Keep exploring: see the Cottage Food Laws by State hub (https://cottagebakersupply.com/cottage-food-laws-by-state/) for every state’s rules, and the free tools page (https://cottagebakersupply.com/tools/) — the Cottage Label Generator and the Cottage Cost Calculator — built for home bakers.

OFFICIAL SOUTH CAROLINA SOURCES

This guide is for informational purposes only and isn’t legal advice. Cottage food laws change — I last verified this page on October 23, 2026. When in doubt, ask the South Carolina Department of Agriculture.

Just add sprinkles!