Catering and retail

More in this section

• Starting a food business

  This section gives you all the advice you need to start a food business.

• Safer food, better business

  Safer food, better business (SFBB) is an innovative and practical approach to food safety management. It helps small businesses with food safety management procedures and food hygiene regulations.

• Allergy and intolerance: Guidance for businesses

  This guidance is designed to help food businesses provide information to customers who need to avoid certain ingredients because of an allergy. It includes general advice and information on allergy and intolerance, the food labelling rules and specific voluntary best practice guidance on cross-contamination controls for pre-packed foods and loose foods.

• Food hygiene for businesses

  Good food hygiene is essential for you to make or sell food that is safe to eat. So even though there might not be a specific legal requirement behind each tip in this section, it is still very important for you and your staff to understand what good food hygiene is and to follow this advice.

• Food law inspections and your business

  If you run a business that makes or prepares food, it will be inspected to make sure you are following food law. Find out what inspections might involve and the action that inspectors can take if they find a problem in your business.

• Food safety and labelling for farmers markets

  The revised guide by FSA Scotland builds on existing good practice. The guide has been enhanced to include a section on food labelling to cover most food found at farmers markets.

• Introduction to HACCP

  HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) is a system that helps food business operators look at how they handle food and introduces procedures to make sure the food produced is safe to eat.

• Shelf life and storage of food

  Shelf life of ready-to-eat food, temperature controls and vacuum packed chilled foods guidance

• Training for food handlers

  Food business operators are required by law, to ensure that food handlers receive appropriate supervision and instruction/training in food hygiene in line with their work activity and should enable them to handle food safely. The person responsible for developing and maintaining the business's food safety management procedures must have received adequate training to enable them to do this.