Santa Rosa County cottage food businesses

Last updated: August 17, 2026

SANTA ROSA COUNTY, Fla. — Santa Rosa County officials are clarifying what residents can and cannot sell from their homes after questions surged about Florida’s cottage food law and local zoning rules.

The county said it sent letters to some cottage food business owners to alert them to possible zoning problems, but Planning and Zoning Director Shawn Ward emphasized that no citations have been issued and no one has been shut down.

“So food cottages basically allow you to bake goods, label goods, sell goods and things like that from your home or out of your home,” Ward said.

The clarification follows a recent case involving Austin Williams, who said he was told he could no longer sell baked goods from a cart in his front yard. The county shared a letter that went to several residents operating what it described as “front porch businesses,” citing specific land development code restrictions.

Ward said the county’s focus is not the food itself, but land-use issues tied to where and how sales are happening.

“Yeah, so it actually has nothing to do with the food. What we look at specifically is whether or not it’s in the county right of way. What are your setbacks? How does it affect your neighbors? You know, is there parking going on? Are people parking in the street to get to your food cart? Just different things of that nature. So we’re looking more at land use than we are specifically food related,” Ward said.

Ward said that since the earlier story aired, residents have called, emailed and spoken before county commissioners about concerns over cottage food laws.

Cher Maize, whose mother runs the Black Water Farm Stand in Bagdad, said the attention raised questions about whether they could keep operating.

“We had a lot of questions about our operating this farm stand here in Baghdad, which was sad because we have a great, the neighborhood just gathers here on Saturdays, so we didn’t want that to end and a lot of the neighbors didn’t want that to end,” Maize said.

Maize said they temporarily paused operations on their own because they wanted to ensure they were following the law.

“We paused, by ourselves, because we have been very adaminent about following the Florida cottage food laws from the very beginning, from packaging, to ingredients to everything, its a lot of work,” she said.

After speaking before commissioners, Maize said she and her mother were given the all-clear to continue operating without concern.

Asked why the farm stand could continue while Williams was told he needed to change his operation, Ward pointed to a distinction between selling agricultural products grown at home and selling baked goods made inside a home from a cart near the street.

“So agricultural food carts, if you grow the food there at your house, cucumbers, tomatoes, things like that, you want to put them out and you want to sell them, you can certainly do that, that is preempted by the state of Florida, the difference is with the food cottages is the baked goods, so those are things you would bake in your house and you would take and stick out by the street in a food cart, and at that point it is not allowed under the Santa Rosa County land development code,” Ward said.

Ward said other communities are reviewing local land development codes to see what flexibility they can allow for cottage food businesses. For now, he said that is not a discussion happening in Santa Rosa County.

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