What Foods Can I Sell from Home in Tennessee?

Tennessee's approach to home food production is different from most states. Instead of publishing a list of approved products, the Food Freedom Act works on a "prohibited list" — anything not explicitly banned is legal to produce and sell from your home kitchen.

That's an unusual amount of freedom, but the boundaries around it are strict. Here's what falls on each side of the line.

Shelf-Stable Products (Non-TCS)

These are foods that don't need refrigeration to stay safe. They get the broadest sales channel access under the law — you can sell them in person, ship them within Tennessee, and wholesale them to retail stores:

• Baked goods: Breads, cookies, muffins, biscuits, pastries, fruit pies, low-moisture frosted cupcakes
• Candies and confections: Fudge, brittles, pralines, chocolate-dipped items (if the chocolate coating creates a shelf-stable product)
• Jams, jellies, and preserves: Fruit-based spreads with a finished pH of 4.6 or lower
• Acidified and pickled foods: Pickles, relishes, hot sauces, chutneys, salsas (equilibrium pH ≤ 4.6)
• Dried goods: Herbs, spices, dried fruits and vegetables, tea blends
• Granola, trail mixes, and snack mixes
• Honey: Up to 150 gallons annually without a separate honey permit
• Roasted coffee beans

The key factor is water activity and pH. Products with low water activity (Aw ≤ 0.92 for heat-treated and packaged items, or Aw < 0.88 for raw/unpackaged items) and sufficiently low pH qualify as non-TCS without formal testing.

Perishable Products (TCS) — Added in 2025

House Bill 130 expanded the law on July 1, 2025 to allow certain perishable foods from home kitchens. These carry tighter restrictions — in-person, direct-to-consumer sales only:

• Pasteurized dairy: Butter, yogurt, kefir, hard cheeses (raw milk is banned)
• Eggs: From flocks under 3,000 hens
• Cheesecakes and cream-filled pastries: Custards, cream pies, meringue-topped items
• Cooked poultry: Chicken pot pies, rotisserie chicken, poultry soups — limited to 75 lbs per transaction, using birds from the federal 1,000-bird exemption or state-inspected sources

TCS foods must be held at 41°F or below (cold) or 135°F or above (hot) at all times. Anything in the danger zone for more than two hours gets discarded.

What's Explicitly Banned

These ingredients cannot appear in any home-kitchen food product under the Food Freedom Act:

• Raw (unpasteurized) milk and raw milk products
• Red meat: Beef, pork, lamb, and wild game
• Fish and shellfish of any kind
• Alcohol above 0.5% ABV
• Cannabis or THC-infused products

If your recipe includes any of these, you need a TDA-licensed commercial kitchen — no exceptions.

How Classification Actually Works

If you're making something with multiple ingredients and you're not sure whether it's shelf-stable, the classification comes down to two measurements: water activity (Aw) and pH. The University of Tennessee Extension publishes the tables used to evaluate these:

For heat-treated and packaged products, Aw ≤ 0.92 makes it non-TCS regardless of pH. Between 0.92 and 0.95, you need a pH of 4.6 or below. Above both thresholds, a process authority has to evaluate it.

For unpackaged or raw products, the thresholds are tighter: Aw < 0.88 for automatic non-TCS status, with stepped pH requirements up to Aw 0.92.

Getting this wrong doesn't mean a fine — it means your product might not be safe at room temperature. If you're working with acidified or canned products, having a process authority verify your recipe is worth the cost even though the law doesn't require it.

The Sales Channel Connection

What you can sell determines where you can sell it. Non-TCS products open up online sales, shipping within Tennessee, and wholesale to retailers. TCS products are locked to in-person handoffs — no mail carriers, no third-party delivery, no grocery store shelves.

And regardless of category, no home-kitchen food can be sold to restaurants for use in their menu. A restaurant could display your prepackaged jams in a retail gift area, but they can't use your jam as an ingredient in their dishes.

Our Tennessee Cottage Food & Home Food Business Guide includes the full classification decision tree, city-by-city zoning rules, and a product classification worksheet to help you map every item in your lineup to the right legal category and sales channel.

See more Tennessee guides →