Most people starting a food business get the hard part right and the cheap part wrong. They can cook, they have worked out their costs, they have found a pitch or a unit. Then an environmental health officer walks in eight weeks after opening, asks to see the records, and the conversation goes badly — not because the food is unsafe, but because nothing was written down.
Whether you are opening a café, taking a stall at a market, running a food van, baking from your kitchen or selling online only, the same three obligations apply: register, control allergens, and be able to show how you manage food safety. None of them costs much. All of them are far cheaper to set up before you trade than to retrofit after an inspection.
Register with the council, and do it early
You must register your food business with the local authority at least 28 days before you start trading. Registration is free, it cannot be refused, and it applies to every food business including home bakers, market stalls and online-only sellers. If you operate from a van, trailer or stall, you register with the council where the vehicle or stall is ordinarily kept between trading, not with every council whose patch you visit.
Registration is not a licence and it is not an approval. It is a notification, which is exactly why people skip it — nothing appears to happen when you do it. What actually happens is that you go on the list the council inspects from, which is how you get a hygiene rating at all. Trading unregistered is an offence, and being discovered unregistered is a poor way to begin a relationship with the officer who will be scoring you for the next decade.
Registration is free and takes twenty minutes. Not registering is the only part of this that carries a criminal offence and no upside whatsoever.
The rating is scored on three things, and one of them is paperwork
The Food Hygiene Rating Scheme gives a score from 0 to 5 after an inspection. That score is built from three separate assessments: how hygienically the food is handled, the condition of the premises including cleanliness, layout, pest control and facilities, and how you manage food safety — which in practice means your documented system and your records.
The third one is where small businesses lose points they did not need to lose. A spotless kitchen run entirely from memory scores worse than a competent kitchen with a folder. Fridge temperatures logged, cleaning schedules signed off, supplier records, cooking and cooling checks, staff training notes. It is unglamorous and it is the cheapest rating points available to you.
Display rules differ across the UK. In Wales and Northern Ireland, displaying your rating sticker is a legal requirement. In England it remains voluntary, though in practice customers increasingly look the rating up before they walk in, so a good one is worth showing regardless. If you disagree with a rating you can use the appeal process, request a re-visit once you have made improvements, and publish a right to reply alongside the score.
Allergens: what is law, and what is now expected
There are 14 allergens that must be declared: celery, cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, lupin, milk, molluscs, mustard, peanuts, sesame, soya, sulphur dioxide and sulphites, and tree nuts. How you declare them depends on how the food is sold, and this is the distinction that trips people up.
Food that is prepacked for direct sale — packaged on the same premises before the customer orders or selects it, which covers the sandwich in the chiller and the boxed brownie on the counter — has needed a full label since 1 October 2021 under what is usually called Natasha's Law. That means the name of the food and a full ingredients list, with any of the 14 allergens emphasised within the list using bold, capitals, underlining or a contrasting colour.
Food made to order or served loose does not need a label, but the allergen information still has to be available and there must be a clearly signposted way for a customer to get it. Updated Food Standards Agency guidance goes further and recommends written allergen information supported by a conversation with the customer rather than relying on a verbal answer alone. That guidance is best practice rather than law, but it is the standard an officer will measure you against and the standard a court would find persuasive if something went wrong. For online and telephone orders, the information has to be available before the order is placed and again when the food is handed over.
An illustrative sequence: kitchen table to market stall
Take a home baker going commercial. Eight weeks out, she registers with the council — free, online, twenty minutes. Six weeks out she writes up her food safety management system using the Food Standards Agency's free Safer Food, Better Business pack, which is built around the HACCP principles the law requires and comes with the diary sheets that become her records.
Four weeks out she sits down with her six product lines. Two are cut to order on the day and need no label but do need an allergen sheet on the stall. Four are boxed in advance and are therefore prepacked for direct sale, so each needs a printed label with the full ingredients list and the allergens emphasised — which means pinning down the exact spec of every ingredient, including the ones she used to buy on whatever was cheapest that week. That is the real cost of the exercise: not the labels, but committing to consistent suppliers.
Two weeks out she starts the fridge log, even though she is not trading yet, so there is a genuine history by the time anyone asks to see it. On inspection day she has a folder, not a story.
The week-one checklist
Register with the council. Write the food safety management system down. Start the records the day you start trading, not the day you hear an inspection is due. Split your menu into prepacked-for-direct-sale and made-to-order, and label the first group properly. Put an allergen matrix in writing behind the counter and train every member of staff to reach for it rather than guess. Train staff proportionately to what they do — a formal certificate is not a legal requirement, but demonstrable training is.
The commercial side matters too, and it is the part food businesses tend to underthink: pricing for profit is where most independents leak money, the cafe margin trap explains how a busy site can still go backwards, and refunds and returns covers what you owe a customer when something is wrong.
Common questions
Do I need to register if I only bake from home occasionally?
Yes. Registration is required for any food business, and the test is whether there is a degree of organisation and continuity to what you are doing rather than the size of the operation or where the kitchen is. A home baker selling regularly at markets, through social media or to order is a food business and must register with the local authority at least 28 days before trading. Registration is free and cannot be refused. Your home kitchen may then be inspected, though officers apply the requirements proportionately to the risk of what you actually produce. Genuinely occasional charity or community events are treated differently, and your council will confirm where the line falls for you.
What counts as prepacked for direct sale?
Food that is packaged at the same place it is offered to consumers, before the customer orders or selects it. The classic examples are a sandwich made in the morning and put in the chiller, a boxed cake on the counter, or a salad wrapped in advance for the lunch rush. It does not include food packaged after the customer orders it, such as a sandwich made to order and wrapped in front of them, or food sold loose. Prepacked for direct sale items need the full label required since 1 October 2021: the name of the food and a complete ingredients list with the 14 allergens emphasised inside that list.
Is a food hygiene certificate a legal requirement for my staff?
No specific certificate is required by law, which surprises people. What the law requires is that food handlers are supervised, instructed and trained in food hygiene matters to a level appropriate to the work they do. A Level 2 Food Safety qualification is the common way to evidence that, and most councils and many insurers expect to see it, but the legal obligation is on the outcome rather than the certificate. In practice, having training records for each member of staff feeds directly into the management of food safety element of your hygiene rating, so the paperwork is worth having even though no single course is mandated.
Can I improve a poor hygiene rating before the next routine inspection?
Yes. You can request a re-visit once you have fixed the issues identified, and the officer will re-score you on what they find at that visit rather than making you wait for the next scheduled inspection. Some councils charge a fee for a re-visit. You can also appeal a rating you believe was wrong, within a set period after being told the score, and separately publish a right to reply explaining the circumstances alongside the published rating. Fix the substance first: re-visits reassess the same three areas, and turning up with the premises tidied but no records still limits how far the score can move.
