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Compliance for Restaurants & cafés

Compliance for Restaurants & Cafés — What You Actually Need

You run a kitchen open to the public, with gas, hot oil, electrical equipment, and people on the premises. That combination pulls in more compliance obligations than almost any other small business. Here is what actually applies to you, in the order it matters — and what to check before you pay anyone.

Your risk profile

Higher than average. Commercial kitchens combine the three things that drive compliance risk: ignition sources (gas, hot oil), members of the public on site, and in many cases sleeping accommodation above. The cost of getting it wrong is not just enforcement — it is fire, injury, and closure.

What applies to you

In the order it matters. Each links to a plain-English guide.

Fire Risk AssessmentEssential — start here

The foundation document. A commercial kitchen with public access is exactly the kind of premises where the Responsible Person duty bites hardest. Everything else — alarms, extinguishers, lighting, training — flows from what this identifies.

Fire ExtinguishersEssential

A kitchen with cooking oil legally needs a wet chemical extinguisher within reach of every cooking position. Water or foam on burning oil causes a violent flare-up. This is the single most common — and most dangerous — gap we see in restaurants.

Gas SafetyEssential

Commercial catering gas must be maintained by an engineer holding the right commercial qualifications (COMCAT, not domestic CCN1). If you have gas-fired cooking over 60kW, you almost certainly need a kitchen interlock that shuts the gas off if extraction fails — frequently missing in older kitchens.

Fire Alarm SystemsRequired — scope depends on premises

What category you need depends on your layout and whether anyone sleeps on the premises. A restaurant with flats above is a very different job from a single-storey café.

Emergency LightingRequired

Public premises need escape routes that stay lit if the power fails. Monthly and annual tests are not optional, and there is no "improvement recommended" middle ground with emergency lighting — it works or it does not.

Electrical (EICR)Required

A commercial kitchen is a demanding electrical environment — heat, moisture, heavy loads. The recommended inspection interval is shorter than for a dry office, and the duty to maintain the fixed installation is a legal one.

PAT TestingRequired

Kitchen appliances are high-stress equipment in a wet, hot environment — they sit on a 12-month combined inspection-and-test cycle, far shorter than office IT. The mixer, the fryer, the toaster, the coffee machine: all in scope.

Legionella Risk AssessmentRequired — usually proportionate

If you have a hot and cold water system, you have a legionella duty. For most restaurants this is a proportionate assessment plus simple temperature and flushing routines — not an expensive ordeal, but not something to ignore either.

Workplace Safety TrainingRequired

Fire awareness for all staff, a designated fire marshal, first aid provision sized to your headcount, and kitchen staff who specifically know not to put water on an oil fire. Training is where the law and common sense point the same way.

If you run a restaurant, café, or takeaway, you are operating one of the highest-risk small-business environments there is — not because anyone is careless, but because of what a commercial kitchen is: open flames or hot oil, heavy electrical loads, members of the public on the premises, and often residential flats above. Each of those pulls in obligations of its own, and they interact.

This page is the buyer's-eye view: what actually applies to you, in the order it matters, with an honest note on what each involves. It is not a sales funnel and it does not end in a quote. The aim is that by the time you do get a quote — from anyone — you already know what you are looking at and whether it is fair.

Where to start

Start with the fire risk assessment. It is the legal foundation and it determines the scope of almost everything else — what alarm category you need, where extinguishers go, how much emergency lighting, what training. A good one is specific to your premises. A generic template bought cheaply is the most common false economy in this sector, because it tends to miss exactly the things that make a kitchen-with-public-access different from an office.

From there, the kitchen-specific essentials — wet chemical extinguishers, commercial gas safety, and the kitchen interlock — are where the real, physical risk concentrates. These are not box-ticking items. They are the difference between a contained incident and a serious fire.

The honest position on cost

Be wary of anyone who quotes you a single bundled "compliance package" price before they have seen your premises. The right sequence is: understand which obligations apply to you, get itemised quotes you can actually compare, and judge each against what you now know. That is the whole point of Compliance Buyer — not to sell you the package, but to make sure you can tell a fair one from a bad one.

Common questions

I run a small café with no gas — does all of this still apply?

Most of it, scaled to your risk. No gas means the gas-safety duties fall away, but fire risk assessment, electrical safety, PAT testing, legionella, emergency lighting, and training still apply. The principle is proportionality: a two-person café is a lighter job than a 90-cover restaurant, but the same headings apply — just sized to what you actually run.

What should all this cost me, roughly?

It varies enormously by size and setup, which is exactly why fixed "compliance packages" should be treated with caution — a good provider prices to your premises, not to a tier. The right move is to understand which obligations genuinely apply to you first (this page is the start), then get itemised quotes you can compare, rather than a single bundled figure you cannot interrogate.

There are flats above my restaurant. Does that change things?

Significantly. Sleeping accommodation above a commercial kitchen raises the fire risk profile sharply and changes what fire alarm category, compartmentation, and assessment depth you need. This is the situation where a competent, premises-specific fire risk assessment matters most — a generic template is not adequate.

A company cold-called offering a full compliance package. Should I take it?

Understand what you need before you buy, not after. A bundled package is not automatically bad — but you cannot judge whether it is fair, complete, or overpriced unless you already know which obligations apply to your specific premises and roughly what each involves. Read the relevant guides here first, then assess any quote against that. Your business, your risk, your decision.

Not sure how this applies to your premises?

Tell The Guide about your business and it will help you work out what you actually need — in plain English or full technical detail, your choice.

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Last updated 2026-06-09. General information to help you understand your obligations and judge your own risk — not legal advice.