Starting a food business in Esquimalt

Business licence

Every business in Esquimalt, home occupations included, needs an Esquimalt licence or a valid inter-municipal or inter-community licence. Payment is due by January 31 each year.

Fee: Home Occupations $100.00; Home Crafts $50.00 (its definition lists handmade articles, not food); late fee $25.00

Running it from home

Esquimalt allows any occupation carried on by a resident that is “clearly incidental” to living there, provided it meets the home-occupation conditions — and food is not excluded (the only banned uses are repair work and body-rub or escort services). The no-odour rule is the one most likely to matter for food. The business must stay inside the home or accessory buildings and use at most 15% of the floor area.

• No more than 15% of the dwelling’s floor area, and never over 46 m² (s. 13(3)).
• Run only by a resident; no employees in the dwelling other than immediate family living there (s. 13(5)–(6)).
• Wholly inside the dwelling or accessory buildings; no exterior storage or other outside sign of the business except a permitted sign (s. 13(2), (4)).
• No odorous, toxic or noxious emissions, heat, glare or noise (s. 13(7)).
• No more traffic or parking than is characteristic of the neighbourhood (s. 13(8)).
• At most two home occupations per dwelling, only one of them with more than one customer at a time — and that kind is not allowed in a detached accessory dwelling unit or secondary suite (s. 13(1), (12)).

Markets and events

A market on public land needs a business licence ($100, waived if it charges vendors nothing), and an individual selling from a space in a licensed market is exempt from the business licence bylaw. The market’s licensee must obtain and display the health, fire and other approvals at each booth. A licence for a fair, craft fair or other itinerant show held outside a licensed premises lasts one day.

Mobile businesses

Esquimalt is in the Greater Victoria Intermunicipal licence, which may still be issued for a mobile food vehicle, and in the Vancouver Island Inter-Community licence. Its new Inter-Community bylaw (No. 3189, adopted June 22, 2026) sets a $170 fee on top of the local licence and excludes mobile food vending — carts, trailers and trucks — but the updated regional scheme starts only once every participating municipality has adopted it.

Fee: Intermunicipal $100.00; Inter-Community $170 on top of the local licence (Bylaw 3189)