Cottage foodies showcased their skills at the inaugural cottage food competition at the Southwest Florida Ag Expo. Participants took a virtual course offered by UF/IFAS Extension’s Homemade Entrepreneur program, where they learned about cottage food guidelines, labeling requirements, and safe food handling practices for home kitchens. Afterward, they applied this knowledge to create their cottage food products, which they entered into Creative Living’s new division.
What is Cottage Food?
In Florida, cottage food products include items like loaves of bread, cakes, jams, pies, and seasonings. Residents are permitted to produce and sell certain food products from their home kitchens without a food permit, provided their gross sales do not exceed $250,000 per year. To learn more about Florida Cottage Food, please visit: FDACS Cottage Food or https://www.fdacs.gov/Business-Services/Food/Food-Establishments/Cottage-Foods
Judging Criteria
Judges include Jennifer Hagen of UF/IFAS Extension Lee County, Dr. Stephanie Brown, UF/IFAS State Specialized Extension Agent in Food Science, and Josey Pearce Keener of UF/IFAS Extension St. Lucie County. Together the judges used the Danish judging system which evaluates each product individually based on how the item aligned with Florida’s cottage food guidelines. To read more about the Danish judging, please view Lee County’s Danish judging system Poster 2025.
Results
A total of 15 cottage food producers submitted 21 entries, which included pies, jams, fudges, cookies, and more.
Out of all the entries, 38% earned a blue ribbon. These contestants met all the required criteria but may have needed to make minor adjustments to perfect their product. For example, a product may have met all requirements but had the net weight blank on the product label.
Additionally, 48% of the entries earned a red ribbon. These products missed one or two significant elements of the judging criteria. Examples include, incomplete product labels lacking allergen information or missing ingredients, or the entry did not include a process description.
The remaining 14% received white ribbons, indicating they were missing major elements necessary to comply with Florida cottage food guidelines.
All participants received feedback regarding adjustments needed for their products, labels, or processes. If entrants have any questions, they are encouraged to reach out to the judges for clarification or guidance on how to improve their products.
Future Cottage Foodies
Are you a cottage foodie? If you have an interest in learning more about cottage food in general, then please contact us directly. However, if you want to participate in the cottage food competition next year, please visit the SW FL Ag Expo website at https://www.swflagexpo.com/ for information on the 2026 competition. We would be ag-citied to have you!
If you have any questions, please contact Josey at josey.keener@ufl.edu or Jennifer at jhagen@ufl.edu.
Featured image photo credits: UF/IFAS Photo by Tyler Jones; 2017 UF/IFAS Communications
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