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.
Related reading
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. Free to use; please don't resell or redistribute.