Starting a food business in North Cowichan

Opening a shop, café, kitchen or truck in North Cowichan

Business licence

$100 a year, $50 if you start after July 1; renewing after February 28 costs $125.

Applying for the licence

Email the checklist and form with satisfactory Island Health and fire department reports and a floor plan. You pay only after approval; it takes a few weeks to two or three months.

Checking zoning

Use the interactive GIS map. A File Review Letter giving the current zoning costs $210 and takes up to 10 business days. Food and beverage processing is allowed in the light-industrial zone, not the commercial ones.

Building permit

Needed for alterations, and an occupancy permit after any change of occupancy classification. $150 plus 1% of the construction value (the City’s web page still shows an older formula). A planning compliance form goes in with every application.

Fire inspection

A food service needs a satisfactory fire department report before the licence; the inspection is booked after you apply, and the first is free (re-inspection $100). Restaurants are then inspected about every 12 months.

Food truck fire inspection

No fire inspection. Propane equipment needs BC Safety Authority approval.

Where to ask: Fire Department, 250-746-3107

Business licence

Anyone, resident or not, who provides a service in North Cowichan needs a business licence. The fee page lists no separate home-based fee.

Home-based fee: "Yearly Licence Fee $100"; late fee $25 after February 28 (February 29 in a leap year); pro-rated $50 after July 1

Running it from home

North Cowichan limits home-based businesses to a fixed list — arts and crafts studios, private car repair, day care, hairdresser, office and books, professional office, and small tool and appliance repair — and no food use is on it: “catering” and “food processing” appear nowhere in the bylaw. So a food business can’t run from home as a home-based business; ask Planning about rezoning or a temporary use permit.

• Conducted only by the resident plus at most one non-resident employee, entirely inside the dwelling or a permitted accessory building (s. 30).
• No more than the lesser of 46 m², or 20% of the floor area if goods for sale are not made, repaired or refinished on site (s. 30).
• No exterior display or sale of goods, and no sale of goods unrelated to the business (s. 30).
• No odorous, toxic or noxious vapours or matter (s. 31).
• Some zones permit only a "limited home-based business": office and books (for example R3-MF, s. 58.3(2)).

Markets and events

Each food cart, truck or trailer needs its own mobile food service licence, with Island Health approval and at least $2 million liability insurance; it may operate only on property zoned for that use, or on public land at a designated site or under a permit, and not within 30 m of a permanent food service, 100 m of an elementary school or 150 m of an approved special event without permission. No licence is needed for a concession whose proceeds go to charity or that is carried on in a licensed place.

Mobile businesses

North Cowichan offers the Vancouver Island Inter-Community licence under its new Bylaw No. 4075 (adopted September 2, 2026), and its page lists 20 participating communities from Victoria to Campbell River. A mobile food service licence is not available as an intermunicipal licence. North Cowichan is also in a Cowichan-area intermunicipal scheme (Bylaw 3169); Duncan’s site names the partners as Duncan, Lake Cowichan and Ladysmith.

Fee: $170 on top of the $100 business licence ($270 in all); $85 after July 1