Do You Need a License to Sell Microgreens in New Hampshire?

No, when you grew them, they are raw, and you are selling them from your own farm stand or roadside market.

Most states in this series answer by naming produce. Ohio writes "unprocessed" into the Revised Code. Michigan writes "whole, uncut". Florida writes "raw or natural state". New Hampshire does none of that. There is no produce exemption here, and no sentence saying fresh vegetables sit outside the licensing law.

What there is instead is a definition. RSA 143-A:4 makes it unlawful to operate a food service establishment or a retail food store without a license. It does not license the sale of food generally. So everything turns on whether you are one of those two things, and RSA 143-A:3, VII answers that for a farm stand directly: a retail food store "does not include ... roadside markets or farm stands."

Raw microgreens are food. A genuine farm stand is not a retail food store. The duty in 143-A:4 never attaches, and there is nothing to apply for.

There is a wrinkle an honest page shows rather than buries. Paragraph IV of the same section, defining food service establishment, does list a "roadside stand". Read literally the two paragraphs pull opposite ways on the same structure, and which one you land in decides whether you owe anything.

Then the other New Hampshire fact, which catches people who did everything else right. Fifteen cities and towns license and inspect their own food establishments instead of the state. Sell in one of them and the office deciding your case is not in Concord.

The federal layer applies on top. See the FDA Produce Safety Rule page.

Where the line falls

The desk that decides is DHHS Food Protection, on 603-271-4589 and dhhs.foodprotection@dhhs.nh.gov, unless your town is on the list below. Its Food Establishments page uses broad wording about anyone who will "manufacture, process, store or distribute food". That describes the program, not the legal test. The controlling duty is still RSA 143-A:4 and the definitions in 143-A:3.

The two paragraphs, read side by side

Taken alone, paragraph IV looks like it swallows every farm stand in the state. It does not, for two reasons.

The first is context. Paragraph IV is a food service definition, and the rest of its list is about food prepared for sale or service and operations handling potentially hazardous food. A grower handing over a clamshell of raw radish greens is preparing nothing and serving nothing. On unprocessed farm-grown produce, the better reading is that paragraph IV's roadside stand is the stand that cooks or serves, not the one that sells a raw crop.

The second is that paragraph VII is specific and negative. It names farm stands and takes them out, and a general list containing a similar phrase does not usually beat an express carve-out aimed at exactly your fact pattern.

So the practical answer is no for a real farm stand selling a real farm's raw crop. The exclusion works on a narrow set of facts: your greens, raw, from your farm, sold by you. What matters more than the wording is whether you still match that description by the end of the season.

Cutting, washing, packing, storing, aggregating other growers' produce, or adding food preparation all push you towards an establishment classification. On those facts, get a written classification from DHHS Food Protection before you operate, and ask your municipal health office first if you are in a self-inspecting town. A verbal "you're probably fine" is not worth the lease you signed.

The fifteen towns that license instead of the state

New Hampshire's sub-state layer is municipal rather than county, and it is a displacement rather than an extra layer. Under RSA 143-A:5, I and II, fifteen self-inspecting cities and towns license and inspect their own food establishments in place of DHHS departmental licensure. Same shape as Pennsylvania's seven county health jurisdictions: a grower inside one of them starts with the local office, not the state agency.

That list is published by DHHS in its self-inspection PDF, and the count of fifteen is corroborated on the department's homestead materials.

Read the names and the commercial point is obvious. Manchester and Nashua are the two largest cities, Portsmouth, Dover and Exeter cover the Seacoast, Concord is the capital, and Keene anchors the Monadnock region. The state's densest demand and its most locally-governed food regulation overlap heavily.

Separately, RSA 147:1 lets town health officers make sanitary and health regulations for licensing restaurants and other food-serving establishments, subject to DHHS approval, and every municipality can impose its own zoning, home-occupation and site-plan conditions. No countywide microgreens licensing program exists anywhere in the state.

If you do get licensed, what it costs

Licensing is not a disaster here, which is worth knowing before you contort a business model to avoid it. When the duty triggers, the instrument is a Food Service License under the Food Service Licensure Act, RSA 143-A, detailed in He-P 2300.

State license fees across all classes run $100 to $875 a year, fixed by class, not a percentage of sales, and not inflation adjusted. No revenue threshold turns the license on or off, because the RSA 143-A trigger is the kind of establishment, not the money.

The F-7 farm store category is designed for something close to what you are doing: no preparation area, no running water, only locally grown or produced foods. If a town or a buyer pushes you towards a license, that is the category to discuss, and because the fee does not move with revenue the calculation is simply whether $150 a year buys channels worth more than $150.

One naming point. Do not call the farm stand position a cottage food permit. Homestead licensing is a separate program for a defined list of home-produced foods, and borrowing that vocabulary sends the conversation somewhere unhelpful.

Homestead food, and the cap that was removed

New Hampshire's cottage food equivalent is the homestead food operation at RSA 143-A:12. It does not cover you, for two independent reasons.

The first is the kitchen: a homestead operation is limited to non-potentially-hazardous foods made in the primary residence's home kitchen or a compliant residential food-production area. Growing racks are not a home kitchen.

The second is decisive. The product list is exhaustive, and it is baked items, double-crusted fruit pies, candy and fudge, packaged dry products, acid foods, and jams and jellies. Raw fresh greens are simply absent.

That matters because of a change that has been widely repeated. The old maximum-gross-sales cap was removed by HB 304, effective 13 July 2025, and non-exempt homestead licensure now turns on the channel, sales to restaurants, retailers, internet, mail order, wholesalers, brokers or distributors, rather than on revenue. It is a real liberalisation and it is not yours. Removing a cap from a list your product is not on changes nothing.

Same for the newer bill. As checked on 7 August 2026, SB 418 is no longer pending, having been signed by the Governor as chapter 246. It addresses municipal licenses, restrictions and exclusions for homestead food products, so it moves a regime raw microgreens already fail on the product definition.

Food safety, inspections and the certified manager

The Department of Agriculture, Markets and Food runs a Produce Safety Program that treats fruits and vegetables grown for human consumption as produce, and identifies raw agricultural commodities commonly consumed raw as covered produce. It lists sprouts separately, which is the state-level confirmation that microgreens should not be described, regulated or labeled as sprouts. A raw agricultural plant commodity under Agriculture oversight is an approved source. DHHS applies when the premises or the activity is a covered food establishment. That is the Agriculture and DHHS split in two sentences.

Inspections, if you are licensed. He-P 2305.01 requires an inspection before a provisional or full license, on a change of ownership or location, on a class upgrade, after construction for occupancy, and at renewal when DHHS determines one is warranted from history and public health. Complaints and corrective-action verification also trigger visits. No universal "every X months" frequency is published, so assume neither a schedule nor an absence of one.

Inspections, if you are not licensed. An excluded farm stand is not licensed for raw produce, but RSA 143-A:5 lets DHHS inspect an otherwise exempt establishment when it suspects an imminent health hazard. Being outside the license is not being outside the law.

The certified manager, and the exemption inside it. A licensed establishment needs a certified food protection manager, but He-P 2303.02 exempts category F-3 retail stores with no preparation area and F-7 farm stores. The two categories most likely to fit you are the two that do not carry the duty. Where it applies, an initial licensee has 45 days after the initial inspection, and an establishment with five or fewer food employees needs one certified manager who is available rather than continuously present. For the farm stand position, no state food-handler card requirement was found at all.

The rest of the floor. A licensed establishment complies with He-P 2300 and the 2017 FDA Food Code incorporated by He-P 2303.01: approved sources, sanitation, a compliant water and wastewater system, inspections, and plans or HACCP where applicable. For covered produce the federal Produce Safety Rule still governs worker hygiene and training, equipment and building sanitation, biological soil amendments, animal intrusion, agricultural water and postharvest handling.

The federal numbers, from FDA rather than a state page. The three-year 2023 to 2025 values are $34,324 for the not-covered farm test and $686,476 for the qualified exemption, from the FDA column headed "Average 3 Year Value for 2023 - 2025". The single-year 2025 values printed beside them, $35,247 and $704,950, are a different measure. And $34,324 is a federal produce-safety coverage threshold, not a New Hampshire license exemption. Nothing in RSA 143-A turns on it.

Free help exists. The Produce Safety Program offers a free, confidential farm survey to determine your Produce Safety Rule status, with UNH Extension providing workshops and one-on-one assistance. Program contact: 603-271-3551, 1 Granite Place South, Suite 211, Concord, NH 03301. UNH Extension's Heather Bryant is on 603-787-6944 and publishes an am-I-covered resource. A formal "free readiness review" under that exact name is not published; ask the Program whether it will run one for your farm.

Water

If you are licensed and on a private, non-public source, this is a real requirement. Submit laboratory results with the initial application and with each renewal, covering bacteria, nitrate and nitrite, taken no more than six months before the application, by a DES-accredited lab, with results not exceeding drinking-water maximum contaminant levels. A public or non-community system instead supplies its PWS identification and compliance status. Farm stores are expressly exempt from submitting water-system documentation, which follows from the F-7 definition having no running water at all.

For federal covered non-sprout produce, agricultural-water requirements are risk-based, and FDA's compliance dates for pre-harvest agricultural water run through 5 April 2027 for very small businesses. Do not apply the sprout spent-irrigation-water test to microgreens; different rule, different crop. UNH Extension publishes a water-use and records resource with contact 603-862-3426.

Labeling

Label rules bite when you are a licensed food-processing or packaging operation. He-P 2309.04 then requires every packaged food label to show:

The metric requirement is the one people miss: New Hampshire wants both unit systems, so a bag printed only in ounces is short. For a single-ingredient pack that resolves to the crop or mix name, your business identity and address, net weight in oz and g, and a legible lot and date code. Federal identity, net-quantity and place-of-business rules sit alongside these, and you should seek FDA advice before making any nutrient, organic, pesticide-free or health claim.

On "Keep Refrigerated": not published. The checked rule identifies no mandatory refrigeration legend for raw packaged microgreens. If the product is held as time and temperature control for safety food, the rule requires 41 degrees Fahrenheit or below, and a voluntary statement is prudent but is no substitute for controlling temperature. Ask DHHS Food Protection on 603-271-4589 for a written determination.

Tax, and the one New Hampshire does not have

A sale of raw microgreens is not subject to a general New Hampshire sales tax, and no seller's permit or resale certificate is required for it. There is no general sales tax to collect.

The food-adjacent state tax is the 8.5 percent Meals and Rooms Tax on restaurant meals costing $0.36 or more. Raw packaged produce is not a restaurant meal. If you also sell taxable prepared meals, a salad assembled at the stall for example, get the Meals and Rooms operator license before doing so.

One more definition is worth knowing, though it is a property and land-use provision rather than a food-license one. RSA 21:34-a defines agriculture and farming to include the production and storage of fruit and vegetables, and treats a farm roadside stand as agricultural rather than commercial if at least 35 percent of its product sales by dollar volume come from products produced on the stand owner's farm or farms. That is the number to remember if you plan to resell other growers' produce alongside your own. Current-use assessment under RSA 79-A can then apply to qualifying farm land, and the statutory board may set a minimum acreage of 10 acres or less, so confirm parcel eligibility with your local assessor.

Business setup

A sole proprietor using their exact legal personal name needs no trade-name filing. A different business name requires a registered trade name. These are entity and naming choices, not a microgreens permit.

Details are on the Secretary of State's business FAQs and LLC fee page. Confirm town clerk and zoning requirements separately for a home-based business, since that is where New Hampshire actually regulates you.

Selling channel by channel

Farmers markets. No universal farmers-market microgreens permit exists. State Agriculture guidance for market vendors says commodity-specific rules apply, and that "local" or "native" labeling may be used only for New Hampshire-grown or produced products, so name the farm and source accurately. The market can still require an application, vendor fee, certificate of insurance, proof of origin, product list, safety compliance and temperature controls. The farm stand exclusion waives none of that, nor local health requirements. If the market sits in one of the fifteen self-inspecting communities, confirm that health office's position first, and get approval before any sampling or preparation beyond handing over raw packaged greens.

Restaurants. Wholesale changes the risk profile more than the statute. Use a written product specification, invoice and lot traceability, cold-chain delivery records and product liability cover. The buyer may require you to hold a Food Service License, or to document why the exclusion applies. Do not self-classify a packing or processing facility as exempt without DHHS confirmation. He-P 2300 classifies wholesalers and distributors of temperature-controlled food as F-4 and keeps a separate food-processing category, and that classification determines both your license and your inspection pathway.

Grocery and co-ops. Buyers commonly want vendor onboarding, a UPC or item setup, GS1-compatible case and lot coding, recall contacts, defined shelf life and date coding, proof of liability insurance, delivery and temperature terms, and sometimes a food safety plan or third-party audit. These are commercial conditions, not statutes. The NH Wholesale Producer Directory exists to identify suppliers vetted for wholesale readiness, which tells you what buyers here expect.

Online and CSA. Intrastate, raw microgreens stay raw produce, and shipping does not turn them into homestead food. Note the contrast: homestead products sold online or by mail order are expressly licensed under RSA 143-A:12, one more reason not to borrow that category. Use temperature-controlled logistics where your specification calls for it, retain lot and destination records, and publish truthful origin and handling information. Crossing a state line adds the destination state's food establishment, produce, tax and plant-health rules on top of FSMA and FDA misbranding law, and no universal interstate microgreens permit is published, so ask the destination agency first.

Home growing and zoning

Growing microgreens is agriculture, but a home operation still has to satisfy municipal zoning, home-occupation, building, fire, wastewater and nuisance rules. For a small grower here, that is where the real regulatory weight sits.

RSA 674:32-b protects an existing lawful agricultural activity and permits change and expansion with technology and markets. But a new or significantly expanded stand involving on-site public transactions can still face a special exception, building permit or site-plan review, particularly on traffic, parking and safety grounds. Ask your town planning and code-enforcement office before installing racks, customer pickup or exterior signage.

A commercial kitchen is triggered by food preparation or processing, or by a food-establishment classification, not by growing raw produce. What clearly moves you past raw microgreens is washing or processing in a commercial food facility, ready-to-eat salad mixes, dehydration or freeze-drying, fermentation, acidification, heat processing, or anything DHHS classifies as a food processing plant. A new or remodelled establishment needs a floor-plan review at least 45 days before construction, conversion or remodelling, plus commercial refrigeration, sinks and the other listed infrastructure. Treat the 45 days as a planning constraint, not a formality.

Right to farm applies, with limits. RSA 432:33 protects an agricultural operation that has run at least a year, and was not a nuisance when it began, from being declared a nuisance solely because the surroundings changed. It does not protect activity found injurious to public health or safety under RSA 147:1 or 147:2, and it waives nothing in food safety, zoning, building, fire or licensing law.

Insurance

The checked food laws impose no general product liability insurance requirement on a raw-microgreens farm. Workers' compensation is required once an employer is covered by the workers' compensation statute, and commercial auto applies to business vehicles. General liability, product and recall, crop and property, refrigerated-stock and cyber coverage are advisable risk controls, not license conditions, and no state-specific minimum limit is published. Ask a New Hampshire licensed insurance producer using your actual employment and vehicle facts, and treat any limit a buyer demands as that buyer's contract requirement, not as a fact about New Hampshire law.

What New Hampshire does not publish

The market

New Hampshire had an estimated 1,415,342 residents on 1 July 2025, up 2.7 percent from the 2020 estimate base. It is a small, dispersed state, so a statewide delivery promise is the wrong shape for a business here.

The right shape is a corridor. Manchester, Nashua, the Seacoast and Concord, plus the college and tourism routes, carry the denser chef, specialty-grocery and direct-consumer demand. Lay that over the licensing map from earlier and notice that Manchester, Nashua, Concord, Portsmouth, Dover and Exeter are all self-inspecting. The places worth selling in are disproportionately the places where a town, not the state, answers your licensing question. Plan the regulatory conversations by delivery route rather than drawing one line to Concord.

Grocery is a real channel here rather than an afterthought: it accounted for 47.4 percent of New Hampshire local-food sales in 2022 according to the NH Food Alliance. That share justifies serious attention to retail and co-op placement, and it carries the buyer-readiness discipline above, so treat a co-op listing as a project rather than a phone call. Competition is local and real: Liberty Tree Farm in Westmoreland sells microgreens direct and will not be alone, so plan on a differentiated mix, reliable weekly availability and a defined delivery radius.

The strategic read follows from the structure of the law. Because the exemption is definitional, your protection lasts exactly as long as your description of yourself does. Stay a farm stand and you owe nothing. Build a wash and pack room for restaurant accounts and you have changed the facts the exclusion depends on, at which point $150 a year for an F-7 or F-3 license is a cheap way to stop worrying. Treat the license as an option to exercise deliberately when you go wholesale, not as a failure state to avoid.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I need a license to sell microgreens in New Hampshire? A: Not for your own raw crop at your own farm stand or roadside market. RSA 143-A:3, VII says a retail food store does not include roadside markets or farm stands, and RSA 143-A:4 only licenses food service establishments and retail food stores.

Q: But the same statute lists a "roadside stand" under food service establishments. Which wins? A: Read paragraph IV with the rest of its own list, about food prepared for sale or service and potentially hazardous food, and the farm stand exclusion fits raw farm-grown greens better. It is a genuine tension though, so if you are cutting, washing or packing, get a written classification from DHHS Food Protection on 603-271-4589 first.

Q: I sell in Manchester. Who do I ask? A: Manchester. It is one of fifteen self-inspecting cities and towns that license and inspect their own food establishments instead of DHHS, with Bedford, Berlin, Claremont, Concord, Derry, Dover, Exeter, Keene, Merrimack, Nashua, Plaistow, Portsmouth, Rochester and Salem.

Q: Can I use the cottage food law? A: No. RSA 143-A:12 covers baked items, double-crusted fruit pies, candy and fudge, packaged dry products, acid foods and jams. Raw greens are on none of them, and the sales cap HB 304 removed in July 2025 belonged to that law, not to you.

Q: Is there a sales figure that keeps me exempt? A: No. The RSA 143-A trigger is the kind of establishment, not revenue, and fees are fixed by class from $100 to $875. The $34,324 you may have read is a federal produce-safety coverage threshold, not a state license exemption.

Q: Do I collect sales tax? A: No. There is no general sales tax on a raw microgreens sale, and no seller's permit or resale certificate is needed. The 8.5 percent Meals and Rooms Tax applies to restaurant meals of $0.36 or more, which raw packaged produce is not.

Q: What if I want to sell a living tray? A: Under food law it is the strongest version of the farm stand case. Whether it is separately nursery stock needing a plant dealer license could not be verified, so ask the Division of Plant Industry on 603-271-3551 about your crop and sales method rather than assuming either answer.

Q: Do I need a food handler card or a certified manager? A: For the farm stand position, no card requirement was found. If you become licensed, He-P 2303.02 exempts F-3 retail stores with no preparation area and F-7 farm stores from the certified food protection manager rule, and those are the two categories most likely to fit you.

Final thoughts

New Hampshire is the state where you read carefully rather than search for your product. Nobody wrote "microgreens", or "produce", or "raw". They wrote a definition of a retail food store, left farm stands out of it, and attached the license duty to nothing else. That is a real and usable no, and a fragile one, because a definition protects you only while you keep matching it.

Three things to carry. Know which of the two paragraphs you are arguing under, and get DHHS to put it in writing the moment you start cutting, washing, packing or aggregating. Check the fifteen self-inspecting towns against your delivery route before you call Concord, since the best accounts here sit in exactly those places. And if you do need a license, look hard at the F-7 farm store category at $150 a year before assuming licensing is the expensive outcome.

If something here does not match what DHHS or your town health officer told you, report it and it gets corrected. A page that is wrong about a rule is worse than no page.

Sources

Every claim above traces to one of these. All checked 7 August 2026.