Starting a food business in Campbell River

Opening a shop, café, kitchen or truck in Campbell River

Business licence

$150 a year for restaurants, cafés, groceries, bakeries and food manufacturers alike; licences expire February 27.

Applying for the licence

Email the form to business.licence@campbellriver.ca with your Island Health permits. Staff check the zoning, building and fire inspectors review it, then the licence inspector approves.

Checking zoning

The zoning map may be out of date — confirm with City staff (planning@campbellriver.ca). The licence review also checks your use is permitted. A bylaw compliance letter costs $80.

Building permit

Needed for a change of use even with no construction — a shop becoming a restaurant is the City’s own example. A simple building pays $150 plus $10 per $1,000 up to $100,000. Commercial kitchen ventilation needs a mechanical engineer, and the fire department’s checklist must be cleared before the permit is issued.

Fire inspection

Building and fire inspectors may inspect a commercial space before the licence. Routine inspections are free; others cost $133 an hour. In a restaurant kitchen: suppression serviced every 6 months, a Class K extinguisher within 30 ft, and the exhaust inspected monthly to yearly depending on how much you cook.

Food truck licence

$150 a year.

Food truck fire inspection

Must meet NFPA 96 and send a fire suppression plan with the licence application. The inspection costs $133, and proof of it is needed to book City sites.

Where to ask: Fire Prevention, 250-286-6266

Business licence

All businesses operating in Campbell River need a valid business licence, home-based ones included, and operating without one can bring fines of up to $200 a day. Licences renew on February 28, and restaurants also need permits from Island Health.

Home-based fee: "$150 per year"; seasonal (six-month) licences "$75 per season"

Running it from home

Campbell River permits home-based businesses in all residential zones, with no food-specific rule other than a ban on cannabis operations, edibles included. The business must stay inside the house (accessory buildings only in rural zones) and may sell only catalogue sales or products made on the premises.

• Inside the principal dwelling, except the commercial growing and sale of fruit, vegetables or plants; accessory buildings only in rural zones (s. 4.9(a), (j)).
• No retail sales except catalogue sales or products produced on the premises (s. 4.9(f)).
• No noise, vibration, dust, smoke, odour, heat or traffic beyond what a dwelling normally produces; no outdoor storage or display (s. 4.9(d)–(e)).
• At most 40% of the dwelling’s floor area, up to 80 m² (861 ft²) (s. 4.9(g)).
• No more than one employee who does not live there (s. 4.9(h)).
• One unlit sign of up to 0.4 m² (s. 4.9(c)).
• No cannabis operations, including edible cannabis products (s. 4.9(k)).

Markets and events

For large events the organizer books through the City and buys a $150-a-day licence that covers participating vendors, and at City-sponsored events individual vendors need no separate licence. Seasonal licences ($75 a season) are meant for part-year businesses such as farm stands. Food trucks need a licence and $3,000,000 insurance — unless they already hold a primary food truck licence and an Inter-Community food truck licence from another participating municipality — and at a booked City site the approved booking agreement serves as the licence. City site bookings cost $35 an operating day, waived for holders of a Campbell River primary licence.

Mobile businesses

Campbell River’s page offers a Central Island Inter-Community licence to mobile businesses only, valid in Courtenay, Duncan, Nanaimo, Parksville, Port Alberni, North Cowichan, Lantzville, Comox, Lake Cowichan, Ladysmith, Qualicum Beach and Cumberland. Its food truck page accepts a primary food truck licence plus an "Inter-Community Food Truck Licence" from another participating municipality — which conflicts with the $170 fee and food-truck exclusion in the 2025–2026 bylaws adopted by Duncan and Sidney; which applies is not confirmed.

Fee: "The annual fee for an ICBL is $150" (City web page)