Free tool · for home bakers & cottage-food sellers
Cottage Food Allergen & Label Worksheet
Type one recipe the way you actually write it and get back the two lines a cottage-food label needs: a full ingredient statement in descending order by weight, and a Contains statement for the nine major allergens. Your recipe is written in cups; the label has to be ordered by weight, and that mismatch is an easy way for a home-kitchen label to end up in the wrong order. Type your recipe the way you actually write it, flag each ingredient's allergens once, and this free single-sheet worksheet converts everything to grams, ranks the ingredients heaviest first, assembles the finished ingredient statement, and writes the Contains line for the nine major allergens. It opens on a worked example, so you can see it working before you touch it.
Take it with you — free, no signup
Direct download. No email, no account — just the files.
What it does
- Converts cups, ounces, pounds and grams to a single weight, then ranks your ingredients heaviest first — the order a label has to be in.
- Assembles the finished ingredient statement into one cell you copy straight onto the package, sub-ingredient parentheses and all.
- Builds the Contains line from your own allergen flags, across the nine major allergens — milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame.
- Includes the seven label elements most states ask for, as a checklist that counts how many you have accounted for — your own state's extra requirements are not included.
- Comes pre-filled with a fictional cookie so nothing opens blank, and a short quick-start PDF explains the ordering rule and the three allergen flags people miss.
- Opens in Excel, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice — no macros, no signup, nothing saved anywhere but your own file.
Own it, don't rent it
Need it for every product, and for the batches too?
This free sheet handles one product at a time. The full Cottage Food Compliance Pack adds the rest — an ingredient allergen master shared across your whole range, the published label elements for all 50 states and Washington, D.C. (each state's entry dated and source-linked), ingredient-lot and batch logs, and a recall trace that runs both ways, from a supplier lot forward to every batch and buyer it reached or from a batch code back to every lot inside it. Thirteen tabs in one owned workbook (Excel, Google Sheets, or LibreOffice), plus four guides.
A one-time purchase you keep and reuse for as long as you sell — the structured workbook between a blank spreadsheet and food-compliance software priced for a factory.
A record-keeping and label-drafting template, not legal, regulatory, or food-safety advice, and not a determination that any label complies with anything. The example product is fictional. Your own state adds to the seven core elements and usually prescribes the exact disclosure wording — Ardent Seller publishes a free 50-state cottage food guide and a free live revenue-cap tracker at ardentseller.app/resources. Free to use; please don't resell or redistribute.