How to Get a 5 Star Food Hygiene Rating

A 5 star food hygiene rating is the green sticker every café wants in the window. Customers look for it, delivery apps show it, and a low score can follow you around online for months. The good news is that a 5 is well within reach for most small cafés. Inspectors are not looking for a brand new kitchen. They are looking for food handled safely, a clean and well-kept building, and proof that you manage food safety every day.

This guide explains how the rating works, what the inspector scores, the common reasons cafés lose marks, and what to do before, during and after an inspection.

How food hygiene ratings work

The Food Hygiene Rating Scheme runs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. After an inspection by your local council, your business gets a rating from 0 to 5:

• 5: hygiene standards are very good
• 4: good
• 3: generally satisfactory
• 2: some improvement is necessary
• 1: major improvement is necessary
• 0: urgent improvement is required

Ratings are published on the Food Standards Agency website. In Wales and Northern Ireland you must display your sticker where customers can see it. In England displaying it is voluntary, but many customers notice when a café has no sticker in the window.

Scotland runs a different scheme, the Food Hygiene Information Scheme, where results are shown as Pass or Improvement Required. The same habits get you a good result there too.

What the inspector scores

An inspector looks at three things. Each one is scored, and the scores together decide your rating. To get a 5 you need to do well in all three.

1. How food is handled. How you prepare, cook, reheat, cool and store food. Are raw and ready-to-eat foods kept apart? Is food cooked and held at the right temperatures? Are dates checked?
2. The condition of the premises. Cleanliness, layout, lighting, ventilation, pest control, handwashing facilities and the state of repair of the building and equipment.
3. How you manage food safety. Whether you have a food safety management system, such as the Food Standards Agency's Safer Food, Better Business pack, whether staff are trained and supervised, and whether you keep records that show you do the checks you say you do.

The third area is where many good cafés lose their 5. The kitchen can be spotless, but if there is no written system and no records, the inspector has no way of knowing it is spotless every day, not just today.

Common reasons cafés lose marks

Inspectors see the same problems again and again. The most common ones in small cafés:

• No records, or records filled in after the fact. A diary with the same handwriting and the same pen for a whole month looks like it was written the night before.
• Handwashing. A sink blocked with equipment, no hot water, no soap or no paper towels.
• Raw and ready-to-eat food mixed up. Raw meat stored above cooked food, the same chopping board or knife used for both, or a vacuum packer or slicer used for raw and cooked food.
• Temperatures. No thermometer, no probe checks, or a fridge running warm with nobody noticing.
• Cleaning. Grease behind equipment, dirty seals on fridge doors, a dirty extractor hood.
• Pests. Droppings, gaps under doors, or no pest control contract and no checks.
• Allergens. Staff who can't say what is in a dish, or no up-to-date allergen information for the 14 major allergens.
• Out-of-date or unlabelled food. Opened tubs with no date, or food past its use-by date.
• Training. Staff who haven't been trained, or no record that they have.

Temperatures to know

Most food safety checks come back to temperature. The figures most UK cafés work to:

• Fridges: 8°C or below is the legal limit. Most kitchens aim for 5°C or below to leave a margin.
• Freezers: -18°C or below.
• Cooking: a core temperature of 75°C is the common guide for cooked food, checked with a probe.
• Hot holding: 63°C or above.
• Cooling: cool cooked food as quickly as possible, ideally within 90 minutes, before it goes into the fridge.

Check and write down fridge and freezer temperatures at least once a day, and probe food you cook or reheat. When a reading is wrong, write down what you did about it: moved the stock, adjusted the thermostat or threw the food away. That note is what shows the inspector your system works.

A checklist for a 5 star rating

Work through this list a few weeks before you expect an inspection, and then keep it up every day.

Your food safety system

• Use a written food safety system. The Food Standards Agency's Safer Food, Better Business pack is free and written for small businesses.
• Fill in the opening and closing checks every day, at the time they are done.
• Sign off the daily diary at the end of each day.
• Review the system every four weeks and after any change to your menu.

Staff

• Train every food handler before they start, and keep a record. A Level 2 food hygiene course is the usual standard for staff who handle food.
• Make sure staff know how to wash their hands properly and when, and that they don't work with food within 48 hours of sickness or diarrhoea.
• Make sure every member of staff can find allergen information for every dish.

The kitchen

• Keep raw and ready-to-eat food apart in storage and preparation. Use separate boards, knives and equipment, and colour-code them.
• Label and date everything once it is opened or prepared.
• Keep handwashing sinks clear, with hot water, soap and paper towels.
• Keep a cleaning schedule and follow it, including the places nobody sees.
• Have a pest control contract or regular checks, and seal gaps under doors.
• Fix broken tiles, seals and equipment, or have a plan to.

What happens on inspection day

Inspections are usually unannounced. The inspector will walk round the kitchen and storage areas, watch how food is handled, ask staff questions and look at your records.

• Be open. Show the inspector your food safety system and records straight away.
• Let staff answer. The inspector may ask a team member how they check a temperature or what to do with a delivery. Staff who have been trained will answer well.
• Fix small things on the spot if you can, such as restocking soap or moving a tub to the right shelf.
• Ask questions. If you are not sure what the inspector wants, ask. They would rather tell you than come back.

At the end, the inspector will usually tell you what they found and what to improve. You will get the rating in writing later.

If you get less than 5

A lower rating is not permanent. You have three options:

• Appeal. If you think the rating is wrong or unfair, you can appeal to your council within 21 days of being told your rating.
• Right to reply. You can send a short statement explaining what you have done to put things right. It is published with your rating.
• Ask for a re-rating. Once you have made the improvements, you can ask the council to visit again. Some councils in England charge a fee for this. The new rating can be higher or lower.

A worked example: what a 5 costs and what a low score costs

Here is an illustration for a small café. Prices are rough and vary by supplier.

• Probe thermometer and probe wipes: about £20 to £40.
• Fridge thermometers for 3 fridges and a freezer: about £15.
• Level 2 food hygiene training for 4 staff, online: about £15 to £25 each, so £60 to £100.
• Colour-coded chopping boards and knives: about £40 to £80.
• Safer Food, Better Business pack: free.

That is roughly £135 to £235 to put the basics in place. Now compare a 2 star rating on a busy street. If it puts off just 5 customers a day, each spending £8, that is £40 a day or about £1,000 a month at 25 trading days. The cost of getting it right is less than a week of lost trade.

How it works in Café QR

Café QR's food safety module keeps your checks and records in one place, in the style of Safer Food, Better Business, so the records are filled in on the day and easy to show.

• Opening and closing checklists on a tablet or phone, with the time each check was done and who did it. Overdue checks show on the Today screen.
• Temperature logs for fridges, freezers, hot-hold and deliveries, checked against UK limits. A reading out of range must have a corrective action before it can be saved.
• A daily diary that pulls in the day's checks and readings, signed off by a manager.
• Inspection mode: a read-only view of the last 30, 60 or 90 days to show an inspector, with the 14-allergen matrix for every dish, ready to print or save as PDF.

Food safety is included in the POS plan at £39 per venue a month, or £6 a month as an add-on to Order & Pay. See how food safety works in Café QR.

Related reading

• How to Open a Café in the UK
• Café Profit Margins
• How Much Does an EPOS System Cost in the UK?