Selling food online in the UK: when and how to register as a food business operator (FBO)

Selling food online in the UK: when and how to register as a food business operator (FBO)

You must register as a food business operator at least 28 days before you start selling — even if you sell only from your kitchen.

That single rule catches most online food sellers off guard. If you sell food or drink to the public with any regularity — through your own website, a marketplace, social media, or a mix of all three — you are a food business operator (FBO), and you must register with your local authority before you trade. This piece explains who counts as an FBO, when the 28-day clock starts, which council you register with when you sell at a distance, what registration does (and doesn't) involve, and what your local authority expects to find once you're on its list. The named systems behind all of it are FBO registration under retained EU Regulation 852/2004, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) guidance, your local authority environmental health team, HACCP-based food safety management, allergen rules under the Food Information Regulations, and the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS).

A note before we start: this is practical guidance, not regulated legal advice, and the rules can change. Check the current position for your specific business with the FSA and your local authority — or ask us.

Does selling food online make me a food business operator?

Yes. If you sell food online with some regularity and continuity, you are a food business operator and must register. The FSA treats an online food seller the same way it treats a shop. It is the activity — preparing, storing, distributing or selling food to others — that makes you an FBO, not whether you have premises, a shopfront, or a full-time operation.

The legal basis is retained EU Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 on the hygiene of foodstuffs, which requires that any business carrying out any stage of the production, processing or distribution of food be registered with the competent authority. Selling food to the public is distribution. As GOV.UK puts it, you must register if you "sell food, cook food, store or handle food [or] prepare food" — and that explicitly includes selling online, by mail order, or through a marketplace.

The FSA's test turns on regularity and continuity, not size. A genuine one-off — a cake for a friend, a single charity bake sale — generally falls outside it. But if you sell most weeks, take orders through a website, or run a recurring market stall, you have an ongoing food business, however small. "It's just a side hustle from home" doesn't exempt you. The law looks at what you sell, not where, or how small.

When do I need to register — and what is the 28-day rule?

You must register at least 28 days before you start trading. The 28-day clock runs before your first sale, not before your first inspection. Registration is free, it can't be refused, and you don't need approval to begin once you've submitted it. If you've already started selling without registering, the fix is the same — file the registration now.

This is the detail most sellers get backwards. People assume they need permission, wait for a reply, and either delay their launch or — more often — start trading and forget the form entirely. Neither is right. Registration is a notification, not a licence. You tell your local authority you exist; you don't ask them whether you may.

Practically, that means you build the 28 days into your launch plan as a gate every other go-live date has to clear. If your product page goes live on the 1st, your registration should already have been in for nearly a month. Start late and you are, strictly, trading unregistered from day one — and that's the position you don't want to be in if a complaint or an early inspection brings the council to your inbox.

If you've already begun selling without registering, don't wait for a tidy moment. Submit it now. Registering late is far better than continuing to trade unregistered, and the form is the same either way.

Which local authority do I register with if I sell at a distance?

You register with the local authority for the area where your food is stored or prepared — not where your customers are. If you make food in one council's area and sell across the country, you register with that one council: the kitchen's, not the customer's. This is the single point distance-selling and online sellers most often get wrong.

For a home baker in Leeds shipping nationwide, that's Leeds City Council, full stop. The customers' locations are irrelevant to registration. If you operate from more than one premises — say a home kitchen and a separate commercial unit — you register each location with whichever authority covers it. And if you have no fixed premises at all because you're a genuinely mobile or pop-up operation, you register with the authority where you keep or store the vehicle or stall.

Register online through the GOV.UK "register a food business" service, which routes you to the correct local authority based on your postcode. There is no fee. Once submitted, you can trade after the 28 days have elapsed (or immediately, if the authority confirms sooner — but plan for 28).

Does a marketplace or platform register on my behalf?

No. Selling through a marketplace doesn't make the marketplace your food business operator. You are the FBO, and the obligation to register, to manage food safety, and to label correctly is yours. The platform provides a sales channel; it does not absorb your legal responsibilities as the person who prepares and dispatches the food.

This matters because the assumption is so easy to make. A platform handles payments, listings, and sometimes delivery logistics, so it feels like the compliant entity. It isn't — not for your food. If a customer reacts to an undeclared allergen, or a council traces a complaint back to your kitchen, the FBO on the hook is you. The same applies to selling through social media: a checkout button on Instagram changes nothing about who the food business operator is.

So treat the channel as plumbing. Whoever prepares, stores and sells the food is the FBO, and that's the entity that registers and answers to the local authority.

What does my local authority expect once I've registered?

Your local authority expects you to be running a documented, HACCP-based food safety management system, to have your allergen information in place, and to be ready for an inspection — before you register, not after. Registering puts you on the list; it also puts your kitchen in line for a visit. The form itself starts the process of risk-rating you.

Registration isn't the finish line — it's the start of an ongoing relationship with environmental health. Here's what they're looking for.

A food safety management system based on HACCP. HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) is the discipline of identifying where food safety risks arise in your process and controlling them. For most small and home-based food businesses, the FSA's Safer Food, Better Business (SFBB) pack is the accepted, ready-made way to do this — a structured diary and set of records covering cleaning, chilling, cooking, cross-contamination and supplier checks. The council expects this to exist and to be kept up, not invented the night before an inspection.

Allergen information. Under the Food Information Regulations, you must be able to tell customers which of the 14 regulated allergens are present in each product. For distance selling, allergen information must be available to the customer both before they buy (on the website or listing) and again when the food is delivered. This pre-and-at-delivery requirement is specific to distance selling and is one of the most common online-seller gaps.

Traceability and supplier records. You should be able to show where your ingredients came from — one step back — so that if there's a problem, it can be traced. Keep invoices and supplier details.

Fitness of the premises — including a home kitchen. If you run the business from home, the kitchen used for the business must meet food hygiene standards. The FSA is clear that a domestic kitchen can be used for a food business; it just has to be clean, well-maintained, with adequate facilities for washing food, equipment and hands, and arrangements to keep the food side separate from ordinary household activity.

How does the food hygiene rating work for an online business with no shopfront?

After your first inspection, your local authority gives you a Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS) score from 0 to 5, based on hygiene standards, the condition of the premises, and your food safety management records. The rating is published on the FSA's national website and can be looked up by anyone — including buyers checking you out before they order.

A no-shopfront business is rated on exactly the same three elements as a café: how hygienically the food is handled, the structural condition and cleanliness of the premises (your kitchen), and how confident the inspector is in your management system and records. The records part — your SFBB pack or equivalent HACCP documentation — carries real weight, because for an online seller the inspector often can't watch a lunchtime service. Your paperwork is the evidence that you do things properly when no one's watching.

In England, displaying the rating is voluntary; in Wales and Northern Ireland it's mandatory. But "voluntary to display" doesn't mean "private" — the rating is published regardless, and a strong score is a genuine trust signal for online buyers who can't see your kitchen.

A worked example: launching a home-based online bakery

Take a concrete case. You're starting an online bakery from your home kitchen in Bristol, shipping nationwide, selling through your own website and a marketplace. Here's the sequence run end to end.

Step 1 — Confirm you're an FBO. You're selling regularly, with continuity, to the public. You're a food business operator. No exemption applies.

Step 2 — Work backwards from the 28 days. You want to go live on 1 May. Registration must be submitted by no later than early April. That's your first hard deadline, and every other launch task has to fit before it.

Step 3 — Register with the right council. Your kitchen is in Bristol, so you register with Bristol City Council through the GOV.UK service — not with the councils where your customers live. It's free and can't be refused.

Step 4 — Put your HACCP system in place before you submit. You complete an FSA Safer Food, Better Business pack covering your bakes: chilling, cross-contamination, allergen handling, cleaning, supplier checks. This exists on day one, not after the first inspection.

Step 5 — Sort allergens for distance selling. You list the 14 allergens for every product on both your website and the marketplace listing (information before purchase) and include an allergen sheet with each parcel (information at delivery). Both points are required.

Step 6 — Get the home kitchen inspection-ready. Clean, maintained, separation of business food prep from family life, handwashing facilities, safe storage. The inspector can arrive any time after registration.

Step 7 — First inspection and FHRS rating. The council visits, assesses hygiene, premises and your records, and publishes your rating on the FSA site. Your SFBB records are doing the heavy lifting here.

Step 8 — Keep notifying. Change your kitchen address, add a high-risk product line, or move premises, and you tell Bristol City Council. The notification duty doesn't end at registration.

That's the whole path. None of it costs a registration fee; all of it is gettable wrong by skipping the sequencing.

How does FBO registration sit alongside the rest of your obligations?

Registration is the front door, but it opens onto several adjacent duties that an online food seller hits more or less at once. Labelling is the big one: pre-packed food sold online still needs compliant labelling, including the name of the food, an ingredients list with allergens emphasised, durability dates, and storage and business details. Pre-packed for direct sale (PPDS) rules can also apply depending on how and where the food is packed and sold — worth checking against your exact model.

If you ever sell or source food across a border — importing specialist ingredients, or exporting your product into the EU — you move into customs and SPS territory, with its own systems (commodity codes, pre-notification, and for products of animal origin, sanitary controls). That's a separate discipline from domestic FBO registration, but it's the natural next question once a UK food business starts to grow. Build the trade and labelling requirements in early rather than retrofitting them.

The point: FBO registration is necessary but not sufficient. It's the act that makes you visible and accountable; food safety management, allergen compliance, correct labelling, and ongoing notification are the substance the council expects to find behind it.

What you don't need to do

To be candid about scope — because advisory means saying what you don't need too — there are things people over-worry about. You don't need to pay anything to register; it's free. You don't need approval or a licence before you can trade (registration is a notification). You don't need to register separately in every county you ship to — one registration, with your kitchen's council, covers nationwide distance sales. And a genuine one-off bake for a friend or a single charity event isn't a food business at all.

Where it does get more involved — products of animal origin made for wider supply, certain manufacturing, or anything crossing a border — you may need approval (a higher bar than registration) rather than simple registration. If you're not sure which side of that line you fall, that's exactly the kind of question worth a five-minute check before you commit.

The bottom line

If you sell food online in the UK with any regularity, you're a food business operator. Register with the local authority where your food is stored or prepared, at least 28 days before your first sale — it's free and can't be refused. Have your HACCP-based system, allergen information and a clean, fit kitchen in place before you register, because registration starts the inspection and rating process, not the other way round. And remember the platform you sell through never becomes the FBO. You are.

Rules in this area do change, and the detail depends on exactly what you sell and how. Got a question about your goods specifically? Talk to us — tell us the goods and the route, and we'll tell you exactly what you need.

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