So you want to sell your cooking: starting a home food business in the UK

Nearly every home cook I’ve met got the same nudge before they started. A cousin at a birthday, a neighbour who kept coming back for the leftovers, someone at the mosque asking if you’d do a tray for Eid. At some point “you should sell this” stops being a compliment and starts being a question.

The good news: in the UK you can run a food business out of your own kitchen, legally, and it costs nothing to get the paperwork started. The part people trip over isn’t the cooking. It’s knowing which few steps are actually required, and which are just noise.

Register with your council — free, and they can’t say no

Before you sell a single portion, you register as a food business with your local council. You do it online through the Food Standards Agency portal, it’s free, and registration can’t be refused. The one timing rule worth remembering: do it at least 28 days before you plan to start. Don’t rush to register months early either — wait until you’re genuinely close to trading.

If you rent, or you have a mortgage, have a quick look at your tenancy or mortgage terms and give your landlord a heads-up — running a business from home can need permission. In some cases you might need planning permission too, usually only if the cooking noticeably changes how you use the property (deliveries at all hours, that sort of thing). For most people batch-cooking on a Sunday, it’s a non-issue.

The hygiene visit and your FHRS rating

After you register, an environmental health officer from the council may come and look at your kitchen. This sounds scarier than it is. They’re checking the basics: that you can keep things clean, store food at the right temperatures, avoid cross-contamination, and keep pets and raw chicken well apart. You’ll come away with a Food Hygiene Rating from 0 to 5 — the sticker you’ve seen on chip shop windows.

Aim for a 5. Buyers look for it, and on Cooked Nearby you can show your rating on your profile. It’s free training well spent: the FSA’s starting a food business from home guidance walks through what they’ll want to see.

Allergens: the bit you can’t wing

There are 14 allergens the law cares about — things like peanuts, milk, eggs, gluten, sesame, crustaceans. You have to be able to tell a customer, accurately, which of them are in a dish. If you cook to order, you can hand that over in a written note or a clearly kept recipe card.

If you’re making up boxes in advance — say ten portions of nihari packed and ready before anyone orders — that’s prepacked for direct sale, and Natasha’s Law applies. Those need a label with the food’s name and a full ingredients list, with the allergens emphasised in bold. It takes ten minutes with a label template once you’ve set it up. We’ll cover this properly in its own post.

The unglamorous extras

• Insurance. Not legally required, but public liability cover is cheap peace of mind if someone ever claims they got ill. Worth a quote.
• Pricing. Cost your ingredients, then your time. Most home cooks undercharge at first. If a generous portion of curry costs you £2.50 to make, £6 isn’t greedy — it’s sustainable.
• Start small. One or two dishes you can make with your eyes closed beats a menu of twelve. You can always add.

Then just… start

Register, sort your kitchen, write down your allergens, take a few good photos in daylight, and put up your first week’s cooking. The cooks who do well aren’t the ones with the fanciest setup. They’re the ones who show up every week with something people want to eat.