Nice to know that at least one good thing came out of the regular session.
Bee Boyd slid on a baking mitt, fittingly decorated with bees, before pulling open the oven door. They took a quick glance at the puffy, mounded toffee and chocolate chip cookies inside, announced, “They’re perfect,” and pulled them out to cool.
Staying at home in their Memorial apartment, Boyd sometimes repeats this process upward of 10 times in a day, churning out enough cookies to satisfy customers online and at places like the Houston Farmers Market. Along with their fiancé, Ty’Sun Ambres, Boyd runs All The Buzz Bakery as a cottage food business, meaning that it’s operated out of their home rather than a commercial kitchen.
For Boyd, a Navy veteran, the flexibility of this model worked best with their disabilities — even though they knew from the start that Texas law would limit their business. Currently, cottage food businesses can’t sell food that has to be refrigerated. They have to include home addresses on every food label. And perhaps most importantly, they can’t bring in more than $50,000 in revenue a year, not even accounting for expenses.
On Sept. 1, however, that is set to change. A new law signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in May will go into effect then, dramatically lessening restrictions on Texas home food businesses. Home bakers, pickle makers and jam sellers will now be able to bring in up to $150,000 yearly, and sell through third parties, such as local cafes and event venues. For people like Boyd, those changes could make all the difference.
“I definitely could not see a longevity in doing the cottage food law until recently,” Boyd said.
The new law, Texas SB541, lifts several of the long-standing restrictions on cottage businesses. Rather than listing what home cooks can sell, it now restricts a few categories of food — meat, seafood, raw milk, ice cream — and permits everything else.
“This movement is creating an opportunity for small, home and family-based businesses to grow and contribute to our economy while meeting the growing demand in their local market for fresh, homemade food products,” state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, who sponsored the new law, said in an emailed statement. “Providing regulatory relief and sensible rules is just good business.”
The updates follow years of advocacy from cottage food businesses. Texas passed its first law allowing home cooks to sell some of their wares commercially in 2011. Since then, the legislature passed at least two more laws expanding the limits, before landing on this more expansive version. Earlier cottage laws received pushback from the Texas Restaurant Association, but the organization did not oppose the most recent update.
Kelley Masters, who runs Homemade Texas and has advocated for cottage food makers since 2007, said she thinks this law hits almost all of the major priorities of home food businesses, with the exception of the fact that people still can’t ship their products.
“I hope that this gives enough runway for anyone in their cottage food business to either make it something that they can live off, or to provide enough of a foundation that they can then make that jump to commercial,” she said.
I’ve been following the cottage food movement since 2009, when a college friend who was also a home baker reached out to me about it. Their most recent legislative success was in 2019, when the law about pickling was updated to allow for vegetables other than cucumbers to be counted. This law here makes a lot of sense to me and is the kind of “government efficiency” that I can get behind. I had no idea this was going on before now, and I’m glad to see this update. Kudos to all involved.