Safer Food Better Business (SFBB): Packs & Rules

SFBB at a glance

SFBB is a free FSA pack for small food businesses in England and Wales. Scotland uses CookSafe and Northern Ireland uses Safe Catering.
There are packs for caterers, retailers, Indian cuisine, Chinese cuisine and childminders, plus a care home supplement. Pick the one that matches what you sell.
You complete the safe methods before you start trading. After that, the manager signs the diary every day and does a 4-weekly review.
The law asks for HACCP-based procedures, not SFBB itself. If yours are missing or inadequate, your food hygiene rating can be capped at 1 or 0.
Inspectors check three things: the pack matches what happens in the kitchen, staff follow it, and the diary is filled in honestly.

What is Safer Food Better Business?

Safer Food Better Business is a food safety management system written by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) for small businesses. The FSA's SFBB page says it "details the food safety management procedures for small businesses", and that each pack covers cross-contamination, cleaning, chilling, cooking, management and using the diary. The first four are the 4 Cs of food safety.

Every pack has two halves:

Part	What it is	When you use it
Safe methods	Sheets with a "Safety point", a "Why" column and a "How do you do this?" column that you fill in. The back of each sheet covers what to do if things go wrong and how to stop it happening again	Once, before you start food operations, then reviewed whenever something changes
Diary	Week-to-view pages, opening and closing checks, a 4-weekly review, staff training record, suppliers' list and cleaning schedule	Every day you trade

Source: SFBB for caterers full pack.

The pack is a HACCP-based system, though you won't see the word "HACCP" in it. The FSA says it "cut out all the jargon", so there are no hazards or critical control points on the page. The ideas are still there: cooking temperatures and chilling limits do the job of critical limits, the "What to do if things go wrong" column is a corrective action, and the diary is the record. If you want the formal version with the seven principles, see our HACCP guide.

Allergens are treated as a hazard all the way through the pack. The cross-contamination section defines the problem as harmful "bacteria, viruses or allergens" spreading onto food from other food, surfaces, hands or equipment. It has a "Food allergies" safe method, the management section has "Managing food allergen information", and one of the daily opening checks is "Allergen information is accurate for all items on sale". Our allergen management guide goes into the detail.

SFBB often gets mixed up with three things it isn't:

A certificate or course. Nobody "passes" SFBB, and completing it doesn't count as food hygiene training.
A rating. Your food hygiene rating comes from an officer's inspection. SFBB is one of the things the officer looks at.
A legal requirement in itself. The law asks for procedures based on HACCP principles, and SFBB is one free way to have them.

Where did SFBB come from?

SFBB was written to help small businesses with a law that was coming in 2006. Regulation (EC) 852/2004 applied from 1 January 2006 and required every food business after primary production to have permanent procedures based on HACCP principles. Before that, the Food Safety (General Food Hygiene) Regulations 1995 had asked for hazard analysis based on five HACCP principles. A full HACCP study was a big step for a small kitchen.

The FSA launched SFBB in 2005 "to help small and micro businesses to adopt good food safety procedures". The FSA called SFBB "a simplified food safety management system", built mainly for small caterers.

The range has grown since then. Today there are retail, cuisine-specific, childminder and care home versions, plus Welsh-language packs for caterers, retailers, childminders and care homes. The Indian and Chinese cuisine packs are only published in English. The packs now sit on GOV.UK. The current caterers pack covers allergen labelling for prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) food, which has been required since October 2021, and has a safe method on acrylamide.

Is SFBB a legal requirement?

No. The legal requirement is Article 5 of Regulation 852/2004. It says food business operators "shall put in place, implement and maintain a permanent procedure or procedures based on the HACCP principles". Article 5(2)(g) adds "documents and records commensurate with the nature and size of the food business". SFBB is one way to meet that duty, and the FSA's food safety management guidance recommends it for small catering businesses.

Each pack spells out the consequence: "It is an offence not to have food safety procedures in place and could lead to legal action being taken against the operator of the food business." In England, breaching Article 5 is an offence under regulation 19 of the Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013. In Wales it is regulation 17 of the Food Hygiene (Wales) Regulations 2006. Our HACCP guide covers penalties, the time limit for prosecution and when directors are personally liable. Our food standards legislation guide covers the wider law.

There is also flexibility in the other direction. The FHRS Brand Standard tells officers that "for small businesses which present only basic hygiene hazards, it may be sufficient that the business has in place good hygiene practices", and that documentation "may not be necessary" under Article 5. The retailers pack's "Is this pack for me?" page says the same in plain terms: if you sell no food that needs to be kept cold, the pack "could be more than you are required to do by law". The FSA's advice is to ask your local food safety team what level of system you need.

Which SFBB pack do you need?

This decision table is built from the "Is this pack for me?" page of each pack. That page is where most of the exclusions are, and other guides tend to skip it.

Your business	Pack	Who it is not for
Restaurant, café, takeaway or other small caterer	SFBB for caterers	Complex processes (see the next section)
Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Sri Lankan restaurant or takeaway	SFBB for Indian cuisine: adds safe methods for rice, checking food is cooked, and hot holding and delivery	As for caterers
Chinese restaurant or takeaway	SFBB for Chinese cuisine	As for caterers
Convenience store, newsagent, health food shop or deli selling chilled food	SFBB for retailers: has a cooking and preparation section for shops that make sandwiches, bake off products, reheat or hot hold food, run a rotisserie, or cook bacon, sausages and eggs	Butchers, fishmongers and bakers, which the pack says handle "foods that present additional risks which are not covered"
Registered childminder providing meals, snacks or drinks other than tap water in your own home	SFBB for childminders: eight safe methods and a 3-monthly review in place of the 4-weekly one	Nurseries and other non-domestic childcare (use the caterers pack), nannies in the child's home, and childminders who only store packed lunches or provide food occasionally
Small residential care home cooking for residents	Care home supplement, used with the caterers pack: extra care, mini-kitchens, gift food	Nursing homes. It is never used on its own
Business in Scotland	CookSafe (Food Standards Scotland)	SFBB doesn't apply in Scotland
Business in Northern Ireland	Safe Catering	SFBB doesn't apply in Northern Ireland
College or training provider teaching catering students	SFBB teaching resources for colleges: "Teaching resources for catering students intended to promote understanding of food safety management"	Not a pack for running a business
Food manufacturer or larger, higher-risk business	A HACCP plan, through the FSA's MyHACCP tool, FSA templates or a consultant	SFBB is designed for simple processes

Two more points from the packs. A childminder who already uses the caterers pack can carry on with it. In England, the details a childminder gives Ofsted or their childminder agency also register them as a food business, so they don't need to register separately. Any other new food business must register with its council at least 28 days before it starts trading. That rule is printed at the front of the caterers and retailers packs.

When is SFBB not enough?

The caterers pack names the processes it doesn't cover. If you do any of them, "you must be able to demonstrate that you do these safely":

Processes: vacuum packing, sous vide, low temperature cooking, fermenting, smoking or curing meat or fish
Foods: kebabs, sushi and sashimi, liver parfait, fish or meat carpaccio and tartare, and less than thoroughly cooked burgers

That doesn't mean you have to drop SFBB. Usually you keep the pack for everything standard and add a written procedure, or a HACCP plan, for the extra process. You can ask your local food safety team which route fits. The same GOV.UK page says a council "might advise that you need an HACCP plan if your business is larger or higher-risk".

How does SFBB work, step by step?

Pick the pack from the table above and download the full pack or single sections.
Fill in the front page and the review table. The caterers pack asks who takes charge of it. You, as the operator, have overall responsibility, every food handler must follow the safe methods, and the person in charge makes sure the diary is filled in when they're off.
Work through every relevant safe method before you start trading. Do one section at a time, in any order. Tick the boxes, write down what you do, and mark anything that doesn't apply. The caterers pack gives the example of a business that doesn't hot hold food, which can skip "Hot holding".
Sign off each method on the safe method completion record. Once every relevant method is complete, that sheet shows you have worked through the pack.
Train staff on the safe methods that apply to their job: show them, question them, watch them do it, and record it on the staff training record.
Run the diary every trading day. Do the opening and closing checks, note anything that went differently or wrong and what you did about it, and have the manager sign.
Do the 4-weekly review, or the 3-monthly review in the childminders pack.
Update the pack whenever you change your menu, suppliers, equipment or processes, and record the review date at the front.

The daily checks

The opening and closing checks safe method lists the minimum. You can add your own checks.

Opening checks	Closing checks
Fridges, chilled display and freezers working	All food covered, labelled and put away
Other equipment (e.g. oven) working	Food on its use-by date thrown away
Staff fit for work in clean work clothes	Dirty cleaning equipment cleaned or thrown away
Prep areas clean and disinfected	Waste removed and new bin bags in
No evidence of pests	Prep areas clean and disinfected
Enough soap, paper towels and sanitiser	Washing up finished
Hot running water at all sinks and basins	Floors swept and clean
Probe working and probe wipes available	"Prove it" checks recorded
Allergen information accurate	Cleaning done to the cleaning schedule
Cleaning done to the cleaning schedule

The pack says fridge and chilled display temperatures should be checked "at least once a day", starting with the opening checks.

Extra checks and "Prove it"

Extra checks are the less frequent jobs, such as deep cleans, maintenance, dishwasher descaling, probe checks and pest checks. You record them in the box at the end of each diary week. The "Prove it" safe method is where you use a disinfected probe to show your methods work. Here are the numbers SFBB uses:

What	SFBB figure	Pilla guide
Cooking	Examples: 80°C for 6 seconds, 75°C for 30 seconds, 70°C for 2 minutes, 65°C for 10 minutes, 60°C for 45 minutes	Cooked food temperature check
Hot holding	At or above 63°C. This is a legal requirement	Hot holding temperature check
Cooling cooked food	Chill it down "as quickly as possible" and then put it in the fridge; prove your method with a probe by testing the temperature at regular intervals ("Chilling down hot food" safe method)	Food cooling temperature check
Chilled food	8°C or below. This is a legal requirement in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and recommended in Scotland. Set fridges to 5°C or below	Fridge temperature check
Frozen food	-18°C or below
Probe accuracy	Iced water -1°C to 1°C, boiling water 99°C to 101°C. Check regularly, "for example once a month", if the maker gives no schedule	Food probe accuracy test

The diary and the 4-weekly review

According to the diary introduction, the diary "should take about one minute a day to complete, unless you have something special to write down". Each day the manager signs a line on the diary page (the SFBB diary and 4-weekly review sheets) that reads "Our safe methods were followed and effectively supervised today". If the manager isn't in, they can hand the diary to another member of staff.

In the 4-weekly review, you walk the kitchen, look back over four weeks of entries and write down any serious problem, or anything that "went wrong three times or more", with what you did about it. It ends with a checklist that covers safe methods, allergen updates, equipment changes, new suppliers, the cleaning schedule, staff training, complaints and probe calibration. It "requires completion even if no problems have been found."

You can keep the diary on paper or electronically. The FSA says you can "download the diary pages onto your device, fill them in and store them electronically", and keep completed pages until your next visit from a food safety officer.

As a minimum, you fill in the diary each day. The pack also reminds you of a separate legal duty: keep a record of the food you buy, who from, the quantity, the date and allergen information. Keeping invoices and receipts usually covers it.

What do inspectors check in an SFBB pack?

Officers judge your pack under "confidence in management", one of the three scores behind your rating. The FHRS Brand Standard (Revision 8, June 2023) describes what a good score looks like: procedures "in place and appropriate for size and nature of the business (e.g. SFBB)", hazards "understood, properly controlled, managed and reviewed with supporting evidence", procedures that "adequately cover all activities", records that are maintained, and staff "suitably supervised, instructed and/or trained in food hygiene". Matched to the parts of the pack, that gives four checks:

Every relevant safe method is filled in and matches what you do, signed off on the completion record. This is how procedures "cover all activities".
Staff follow the methods. The Brand Standard looks for staff who are supervised, instructed and trained, and the pack asks you to record training on the staff training record in the diary.
The diary is kept. The caterers pack diary contains week-to-view pages, opening and closing checks, the 4-weekly review, the staff training record, the suppliers' list and the cleaning schedule, and "the manager should sign the diary every day".
Problems are written down and reviewed. The pack says to note in the diary "what happened and what you did", and the 4-weekly review is where you look for persistent problems. That's the "reviewed with supporting evidence" part.

A real inspection report shows how this gets written up. When Norwich City Council inspected a takeaway in May 2025, it recorded under "Confidence in Management" that the cleaning, cooking and cross-contamination safe methods were missing from the SFBB pack. It also found the business wasn't working to the chilling, cleaning schedule, hand washing and training records parts it did have. That section scored 10, and the overall rating was 2.

How SFBB affects your food hygiene rating

Your food hygiene rating comes from three scores, and the Brand Standard names SFBB as its example of procedures "appropriate for size and nature of the business", and your worst single score caps your rating:

Confidence in management score	What the Brand Standard describes	Highest rating possible
0	Procedures in place and appropriate for the business (e.g. SFBB), hazards controlled and reviewed, records maintained	5
5	Procedures in place and appropriate (e.g. SFBB), with only minor record-keeping issues	5
10	Generally satisfactory; "some further development/completion needed", records with "some deficiencies/gaps"	4
20	Procedures "inappropriate or inadequate" for the business (e.g. SFBB), or little progress since the last inspection	1
30	"No evidence" of food safety management or documented procedures	0

So a missing or badly kept pack can stop you getting above 1, however clean the kitchen is.

SFBB failures that ended in court

Courts treat a missing or unused pack as a failed food safety management system. These cases come from council records.

Case	What went wrong with SFBB	Outcome
Kebab house, Cardiff (sentenced 9 January 2024)	"No documented food safety management system was provided", only "a few pages of temperature monitoring sheets", and on later re-rating visits "Partial completion of a food safety management system"	Manager convicted under the Food Hygiene (Wales) Regulations 2006: 6 months' prison suspended for 18 months, 40 days' rehabilitation activity, £1,000 fine, £2,000 costs, and a Hygiene Prohibition Order banning him from running a food business (Cardiff Council, SRS prosecutions 2023-24, case 32)
Convenience store, Clifton Street, Cardiff (8 February 2024)	"No food safety management system in place", plus a mouse infestation; the store was found open during a voluntary closure	Company fined £8,000 with £1,456.65 costs and a £2,000 surcharge; its sole director fined £2,900 with £1,456.65 costs and a £1,160 surcharge (same Cardiff Council record, case 35)
Damascene, Slough (Reading Magistrates', February 2021)	The pack was completed and staff trained only after inspectors found unsafe food	Company fined £4,000 with £5,000 costs and a £181 surcharge. The owner was fined £175 with a £32 surcharge. Magistrates noted the improvements but "could not ignore" the risk (Slough Borough Council)

The Slough case shows that finishing the pack after an inspection doesn't undo an offence that has already happened. Records you keep before anything goes wrong are different. They support the "due diligence" defence in regulation 12 of the England regulations, which applies if you can show you "took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence".

SFBB myths and mistakes

Myth or mistake	What the packs and regulators say
"Downloading the pack is enough"	The safe methods must be filled in to describe your business. A printed, blank pack counts for nothing
"SFBB covers everything I cook"	Vacuum packing, sous vide, curing, rare burgers and similar need extra procedures (see above)
"Fill the diary in at the end of the week"	It is signed daily, and closing checks are ticked at closing time
"The 4-weekly review is only for when there's a problem"	It "requires completion even if no problems have been found"
"The paper diary is compulsory"	The FSA accepts an electronic diary, and other HACCP-based systems are allowed
"SFBB works anywhere in the UK"	It covers England and Wales. Scotland uses CookSafe and Northern Ireland uses Safe Catering
"Butchers and bakers can use the retailers pack"	The retailers pack says it is "not suitable" for them
"The pack is the manager's, so staff don't need to see it"	The pack "should always be available at the business", and every food handler must follow the safe methods

Running SFBB day to day

The pack works best when you fill in the diary as part of opening and closing. Filled in later from memory, it records what people think happened. The Wiltshire Council SFBB FAQ is a good short read on the practical questions. If you would rather run the daily checks, temperatures and 4-weekly review on a phone than in a ring binder, Pilla can hold them as checklists with the records kept in one place. The safe methods themselves still need to be written for your business first.

SFBB FAQs

How long should I keep completed SFBB diary pages?

The FSA says to store completed diary pages safely until your next visit from a local authority food safety officer, on paper or electronically. Wiltshire Council adds that you should ask the officer during that visit how long they want you to keep them. Records also help a due diligence defence if you are ever charged, which is a good reason not to throw them away early.

Can I take my SFBB pack to a new job or new premises?

You can, but Wiltshire Council advises starting a new pack for a new catering operation. A chef who takes the pack also leaves the old kitchen without its food safety management system. If you move your own business, review the pack so it matches how the new site works, record that review, and train staff in any changes.

Does SFBB replace a food hygiene certificate?

No. The pack is designed for in-house training on your own safe methods, and you record that training in the diary. Wiltshire Council says this is not a substitute for certificated food hygiene training, and you still need to decide which staff, such as supervisors and managers, need more.

Safer Food Better Business (SFBB): what it is, which pack you need and what inspectors check

Article Content