Vancouver Island, BC
Start and run a food business on Vancouver Island
Every permit, licence and rule for opening a restaurant, selling at a farmers’ market or making food to sell — from Island Health, the Province and your municipality — with a straight yes or no for 101 foods. Each answer links to the document it comes from.
Start with your business
Each page lists what you need, in the order you need it.
Restaurants, cafés & food service
Food & drink makers
Food shops
Farms, fishers & beekeepers
Can I sell it?
Type a food to see where it can come from and where it can be sold.
Permits, local rules and more
Why we made this guide
Local Pass is a Victoria-based marketplace, founded by Island residents to keep more of what we spend on food in our own community. A local food system only grows when more people can start a food business — and on Vancouver Island the rules for doing that are spread across Island Health, the Province, the federal government, marketing boards and every municipality, most of them written for inspectors rather than cooks and farmers.
So we put them in one place, in plain language, with the document behind every answer. It is free to use and needs no account, whether or not you ever sell on Local Pass: every new bakery, farm stand and food truck that opens on the Island makes it a better place to eat.
How this guide works
- Every answer comes from a published document — 411 of them, from the Food Premises Regulation to each municipality’s bylaws — and links to the page it rests on.
- Farmers’ market rules follow BC’s 2020 market guideline, which is in force. A new guideline was drafted in 2026; where it would change an answer, the food’s page says so.
- Local Pass is a platform that connects Island businesses and customers through its app and website — it is not a regulator. Every seller is responsible for the permits, licences and labels their food needs, and this guide is here to help you work out which ones.