How to register a food business (and what happens next)

Who has to register

You must register as a food business if you sell or supply food regularly or in an organised way — check the official guidance for your activities. It includes:

• Home food businesses — cakes from your kitchen, meal prep, cottage bakeries (our selling food from home guide covers the full picture)
• Market stalls, pop-ups and street food — register with the council where the food is prepared or stored, not each market you visit
• Online-only sellers — Instagram bakers and marketplace sellers included
• Cafés, takeaways, delis, food trucks, childminders providing meals

A genuinely one-off charity bake sale generally doesn't need registration. Anything with regularity — weekly markets, taking orders — does. If in doubt, register: it costs nothing and takes ten minutes.

The 28-day rule

Register at least 28 days before you start trading. It's the law, and it's the one deadline in food registration. Already trading and didn't know? Register today — contact your local authority and register promptly. Trading without required registration can lead to enforcement.

How to do it (ten minutes, free)

• Use the official food business registration guidance and its local-authority registration service.
• You'll give: business name and address, what you'll make and sell, water supply, and when you'll start.
• It's free, and the council cannot refuse a registration. Skip any third-party site that charges a fee for "handling" it.
• Register each premises separately if you prepare food in more than one place.

One distinction worth knowing: registration is not a licence. A small number of businesses handling meat, fish, egg or dairy products supplied to other businesses need approval instead — a different, stricter process. Selling direct to the public — including at farmers' markets and food fairs — is almost always plain registration.

What happens after you register

Your local authority receives the registration and arranges an inspection if required. Visits are usually unannounced, but the first may take several months. An applicable inspection determines the rating or outcome for your nation.

Before trading, put working food-safety and allergen procedures in place:

• A suitable food safety management system — SFBB is one option in England and Wales.
• Accurate allergen information — a checked matrix is one possible format for non-prepacked food.
• Staff who understand your procedures — use suitable instruction and training (see our training guide).
• Labels matched to your sales method — check whether advance-packed products are PPDS or standard prepacked food.

And keep your registration current: tell the council if you move, change what you do, or close.