Food Business Registration

A brewery is a food business. That means you must register with your local authority as a food business, which triggers a whole cascade of obligations. You need a food safety management system based on HACCP principles — Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points. This means identifying every point in your process where contamination could occur, documenting the controls you have in place, monitoring those controls, and keeping records to prove you're doing it.

You'll need to comply with food hygiene regulations, which cover everything from the design of your premises to pest control, cleaning schedules, and staff training. Environmental health officers can inspect your premises, and those inspections are not optional. A poor food hygiene rating is public information and can damage your reputation before you've even established one.

You'll also need a fire risk assessment — another legal requirement for any business premises. This covers escape routes, fire detection, extinguishers, signage, and staff training. It needs to be documented and kept up to date. Chapter 14 covers the physical health and safety obligations in detail, but understand that the regulatory paperwork sits here too: risk assessments, COSHH documentation, and fire safety records are all part of the compliance burden you're signing up for.