For personal-care makers
A commercial facility in Redlands for makers of cosmetics and personal care — the professional address, the credential, and a straight answer about when a licensed facility is required and when it isn't.
The guide, not the rulebook
Here's the honest version. As we understand it, a small maker of cosmetics and personal-care products in California is not required to produce in a licensed kitchen. What you're required to do is label and make the product safely under the state's Sherman Law, and — below a revenue threshold — federal registration doesn't apply. So why are you here?
A licensed commercial facility on your label, your website and your wholesale paperwork reads differently from a home address. Retailers, markets and marketplaces often ask where a product is made; this is an answer.
Producing in a Health Department, USDA and Dairy Board approved facility is a fact you can state. It isn't a requirement for most personal-care products — it's a credential, and the buyers who care about it, care a lot.
Stainless surfaces, a dish station, a sanitized space that isn't your kitchen counter, and storage for your ingredients and packaging — by the hour, exclusive use, any hour of any day.
Some products change the picture. Anything making a drug claim, anything for the eye area, anything injected or taken internally, and anything containing hemp or CBD is outside what we can host — the first three because the exemptions above no longer apply, the last because we're not set up for it. Soap has its own carve-out. When in doubt, ask the agency, not us.
Questions makers ask
For most small cosmetic and personal-care makers, as we understand it, no — you need safe production and correct labelling under the Sherman Law, and below a revenue threshold federal registration doesn't apply. Confirm with the California Department of Public Health and the FDA's cosmetics guidance for your product.
The address, the credential and a proper workspace: a licensed facility to name on your label and your wholesale forms, a fact buyers respect, and a sanitized room with stainless surfaces and storage instead of a kitchen counter.
It depends on one question: is it eaten, or applied to the skin? Eaten, it's a food or supplement and the county's rules apply. Applied, it's a cosmetic. The maker analysis asks exactly this and routes you accordingly.
$25 an hour. Time, utilities, equipment, cleaning chemicals and dry storage are included. Details on the Become a Client page.
Then we're not the place — we're not set up for products containing hemp or CBD, and we'd rather say so now.
This is what we understand about products like yours — general information, not legal advice, and never a substitute for the agency's own answer. Your product may have an exception we haven't seen. Confirm with the agency named above; we've written this so you're not starting from zero.
Start the maker fit analysis — 2 min
The maker analysis asks what you make, who requires the licensed facility, and the schedule you'd keep. Two minutes; John reads every one himself.
COOKING BLOCK