Guide · Starting up
How to register a food business (and what happens next)
Registration is free, takes minutes, and can't be refused — but the 28-day rule catches people out, and what you do before the first inspection decides your hygiene rating.
Who has to register
You must register as a food business if you sell or supply food regularly or in an organised way — and the bar is lower than most people think. 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 — trading unregistered is an offence councils can prosecute, but they treat prompt self-registration very differently from being discovered.
How to do it (ten minutes, free)
- Go to GOV.UK and search "register a food business" — it routes you to your own council's form.
- 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 details land with the council's Environmental Health team, and you join the inspection queue. The visit is usually unannounced, and it produces your food hygiene rating — the score that follows your business around online.
New businesses fail on paperwork, not dirt. Walk in on day one with these and you're most of the way to a 5:
- A food safety management system — for small businesses that means Safer Food, Better Business, filled in and alive.
- A dated allergen matrix — one row per product, all 14 allergens. Build it free with the matrix builder and keep the printout in your SFBB folder.
- Allergen-aware staff — the free FSA course plus a 15-minute briefing (see our training guide).
- Labels, if you prepack — anything packed before sale needs Natasha's Law labelling.
And keep your registration current: tell the council if you move, change what you do, or close.