Buying a coffee shop in England: what to check

If you buy a coffee shop in England and the operator changes, the food hygiene rating on the door does not pass to you. The council should treat your café as a new business. Until an officer inspects it, it shows as "awaiting inspection". Before you pay, look up the rating and its date, ask for the last inspection report, and check three costs the listing rarely shows: business rates, the tables outside and the coffee machine.

General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules differ by council and by contract.

The rating on the door belongs to the seller

A food hygiene rating is a score from 5 to 0 that the council gives after its food safety officer inspects a business. The food business operator is the person or company that runs the food business.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) tells councils in England how to run the scheme, in a guide called the Brand Standard. Its answer to question 15 says: "In cases of a change in FBO, the establishment should be registered and treated as new." FBO is the food business operator. The same answer goes on: "It is important that the food hygiene rating for the previous FBO is removed from food.gov.uk/ratings, and that the 'new' establishment is shown as 'awaiting inspection'."

So the 5 in the window was given to the seller's business. Yours gets its own rating at its first inspection. The FSA calls a rating "a snapshot of the standards of food hygiene found at the time of inspection" (FSA).

Buying the company that runs the café, not only its equipment and lease? Then the operator may stay the same company. Ask the council in writing how it will treat your deal.

One more point from the FSA: "display of the rating sticker is voluntary in England". A café with no sticker in the window can have any rating. Look it up online.

Our count: how old a 5 can be

On 29 October 2026 we downloaded the FSA's open ratings data for England, for every entry listed as "Restaurant/Cafe/Canteen": 118,415 entries. We took the 6,822 with "coffee" in the name. Of those, 5,337 were rated 5. For 1,081 of them, about one in five, the date shown with the rating was more than two years old.

That does not mean anything is wrong in those cafés. The FSA says the time between inspections "varies from six months for the highest risk businesses to two years for lower risk businesses", and for some very low-risk businesses the gap may be longer than two years. It also says that "the published inspection date may not represent the date of the most recent check." A 5 describes the day of the inspection. Read the date next to it.

Five checks before the deposit

Look up the rating and its date. Search the FSA ratings site by the café's name or street. Write down the rating and the date. If you cannot find the café, the FSA says to contact the council responsible for inspecting it.
Ask for the last inspection report. It holds more than the score. The officer checks how food is handled, the physical condition of the premises, "including cleanliness, layout, lighting, ventilation, pest control and other facilities", and how food safety is managed. The condition of the premises is something you take over. Ask the seller for the report first. If you do not get it, the FSA says you could make a freedom of information request to the council, and the council "will usually send you a copy of the report". GOV.UK says an organisation should answer within 20 working days (GOV.UK), so ask early.
Plan your registration. "You are required to register at least 28 days before trading" (FSA). Ask the council what it needs from you as the new operator, and set your completion date (the day the sale becomes final) and your opening day by that answer.
Check the business rates. Business rates are the tax on business premises. The bill is worked out from the rateable value: the premises' "open market rental value on 1 April 2024", as estimated by the Valuation Office (GOV.UK). Put simply, roughly the yearly rent the premises could have fetched on that date. Find it in the business rates valuation search for England and Wales. Then ask the seller for the current bill and whether it includes small business rate relief. GOV.UK says: "You will not pay business rates on a property with a rateable value of £12,000 or less, if that’s the only property your business uses." Between £12,001 and £15,000 the relief goes down gradually to nothing (GOV.UK). A low bill may come from the seller's situation. If your business already uses other premises, ask the council what you would pay.
Check the licence for the tables outside. In England, tables and chairs on the pavement need a pavement licence from the council. The council grants it "to the applicant" (Business and Planning Act 2020, s. 3(3)). A licence lasts as long as the council sets, up to 2 years (guidance). The fee is capped at £350 for someone who already holds a licence for those premises and £500 in any other case (s. 2(1A)). Ask the seller for the licence, the name on it and its end date. Ask the council whether you must apply in your own name.

For scale on point 4: the council multiplies the rateable value by a number called the multiplier. For the 2026 to 2027 tax year in England, GOV.UK's guide to estimating business rates gives a lower multiplier to eligible retail, hospitality and leisure businesses, and names a café among them. Below a rateable value of £51,000, it is 38.2p for each pound. At a rateable value of £20,000, that comes to £7,640 for the year before any relief (our sum). Ask the council whether your café is eligible and which multiplier it will use.

The coffee machine and the rest of the kit

The espresso machine and the grinders may belong to the seller, to a finance company or to the coffee supplier. Ask, item by item:

Who owns it?
If it is leased or comes with a contract to buy coffee from one supplier, can I see the contract: what it costs, how many months are left, and whether it can pass to me?
Is it on the list of what is for sale?

Put the list of equipment, with the answers, in the sale contract. Ask your solicitor (your lawyer in England) how.

What to save and compare in your list

When you weigh two café listings, put these three lines side by side:

the hygiene rating and its date from the FSA site, with the day you looked;
the rateable value, and whether the seller's bill includes small business rate relief;
the seats inside and outside, and for the outside seats, the pavement licence and its end date.

The PDF report from our free extension has lines for rent and the lease, for licences and for what exactly is for sale. "The extension does not guess: when the page is not clear, the line says “not stated”." On a café listing, a "not stated" on licences becomes two questions: whose name is on the pavement licence, and when does it end? The full list of what to look at is in our due diligence guide.

Your next three steps

The extension. On a computer: Add to Chrome — free or Add to Edge — free. Reading on your phone? Open this page on your computer. "Open a business-for-sale listing and press “Download PDF”. You get a report on the 12 things a check of the business needs: what the listing says about each, and which ones it does not say."
Your account. "Saving a listing takes a My list account. In it, the listings you save from different sites sit in one place." Create my account.
The check. The €550 report tells you "What exactly you are buying: the company itself, or only the assets (equipment, stock, the lease). That decides which old debts can come with the purchase." It also covers "Debts on record; who is recorded as the owner; what is recorded about the equipment." Start for €550. The €950 report is "everything in the €550 report, plus the seller's figures checked against the seller's own papers — tax returns or the accounts the company filed." "We read the whole lease." Start for €950. Both are on our pricing page. We do not contact the seller. "You pay only if we take it on."

See a sample report Start my check

Sources

Food Standards Agency, Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (updated 30 June 2026) (retrieved 29 October 2026)
Food Standards Agency, Food Hygiene Rating Scheme: Guidance for local authorities on implementation and operation, the Brand Standard, revision 8 (June 2023), Q15 (retrieved 29 October 2026)
Food Standards Agency, Guidance on implementation and operation of the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (publication page) (retrieved 29 October 2026)
Food Standards Agency, Food hygiene ratings search (retrieved 29 October 2026)
Food Standards Agency, UK food hygiene rating data API (open data) (retrieved 29 October 2026)
Food Standards Agency, Food business registration (updated 25 June 2026) (retrieved 29 October 2026)
GOV.UK, How to make a freedom of information (FOI) request (retrieved 29 October 2026)
GOV.UK, Find a business rates valuation (retrieved 29 October 2026)
GOV.UK, Business rates: How your rates are calculated (retrieved 29 October 2026)
GOV.UK, Estimate your business rates: multipliers for the 2026 to 2027 tax year (updated 15 July 2026) (retrieved 29 October 2026)
GOV.UK, Business rates relief: Small business rate relief (England) (retrieved 29 October 2026)
Business and Planning Act 2020, sections 1 to 3 (legislation.gov.uk) (retrieved 29 October 2026)
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Pavement licences: guidance (England) (retrieved 29 October 2026)
Provenance Diligence, Pricing (retrieved 29 October 2026)
Provenance Diligence, Free extension (retrieved 29 October 2026)

Buying a coffee shop in England: the hygiene rating does not come with it