Capital Regional District

Starting a food business in Victoria

What City of Victoria adds to the Island Health and provincial rules: its business licence, home-based businesses, and markets and events.

Changes are coming

  • Victoria patio licence fees for 2027 — takes effect 1 January 2027. What changes
  • Victoria’s free building, sign and development permits end — takes effect 29 January 2027. What changes
  • Victoria’s noise bylaw rewrite — proposed, no date set; it may not happen. What changes
  • No parking variance to move into an existing Victoria space — proposed, no date set; it may not happen. What changes
  • A simpler way to host events on private property in Victoria — proposed, no date set; it may not happen. What changes
Parts of this page rest on documents that don’t spell the answer out. Confirm with City of Victoria before you rely on it.

Business licence

Every business in Victoria needs a City business licence, renewed each year; licences run January 16 to January 15. A home-based business must be licensed in the municipality where it is located, and an online business run from home needs one too when the home is its main place of business.

Fee: $100 a year for a home-based business (the bylaw lists catering separately at $60 a year); a $25 late fee after February 15

Sources

Running it from home

Unclear — ask the municipality

Victoria has two zoning bylaws, and which one covers your home has to be checked by address (in VicMap, or with zoning@victoria.ca). Neither has a food-specific rule. The older Schedule D, which the City’s licence form still cites, allows small-scale making but bans sales to customers at the home, restaurants, and more than one person in the business; Zoning Bylaw 2018 bars sales on the premises except as accessory to the business.

  • Zoning Bylaw 2018, s. 20 (most low-density residential lots): a City business licence; no sale of goods on the premises except as accessory to the primary business; no noise, odour, smoke or other nuisance detectable beyond the premises; at most three home occupations in a dwelling, only one of them with customers who come to it; no sign except as the bylaw or Sign By-law allows.
  • Schedule D (lots still under the Zoning Regulation Bylaw): no sale of goods to customers attending the lot; "restaurants" and "retail stores" are prohibited uses; "making, processing and assembly of products on a small scale" is permitted; no more than one person in the business, living on the lot — two for urban agriculture, and two where the lot borders a zone that permits retail, only one of whom must live there (employees who never attend the lot are not counted); no business materials visible on the lot except one car, van or pickup.
  • The City’s licence form says a home-based licence requires the applicant to live at the location and be the only person in the business.
Zoning decides whether a business can run from your home; Island Health decides what food can come from a home kitchen. What you can make at home to sell

Sources

Markets and events

Every business in Victoria needs a business licence, and the $100 catch-all covers any business the fee schedule doesn’t name; no City page says how that applies to a farmers’ market vendor. The bylaw licenses the operator of an outdoor market on public property ($100). The one stated case is urban-farm produce, eggs and honey, which need the producer’s own $100 annual licence to sell off-site. Food trucks may operate only on private property or at special events with a permit.

Sources

Mobile businesses

Mobile businesses such as caterers can buy an Inter-Municipal licence, honoured across all 13 Greater Victoria municipalities, from the municipality where their office — home or commercial — is located; each municipality keeps its own rules for mobile food vendors. Victoria also offers the Vancouver Island Inter-Community licence, at $170 a year on top of the City licence.

Fee: Inter-Municipal: no fee beyond the annual General Business Licence; Inter-Community: $170 a year on top of it

Sources

Notes on the sources (5)
  • The City’s "Starting a Business" page and licence form still point to Schedule D, but Bylaw 25-038 (October 2, 2025) moved lots in residential zones into Zoning Bylaw 2018, whose home-occupation section has neither the one-person limit nor the restaurant ban.
  • Not confirmed: whether a home occupation counts as a "non-residential use" under the GRD-1 zone’s s. 1.1(a), which limits those uses to certain lots.
  • Zoning Bylaw 2018’s cover still reads "Consolidated on June 9, 2022", although its amendment table runs to July 2026.
  • The licence fee for a home-based caterer or food producer is not confirmed: the bylaw schedule (consolidated only to November 7, 2024) prices catering at $60, while the City’s website quotes $100 for any home-based business.
  • Home-grown raw fruit, vegetables and mushrooms, eggs and honey are a separate "urban food production" category, sold from a small front-yard foodstand or off-site; anything else falls outside it.

Other municipalities · Farmers’ markets

Last checked 26 September 2026. We check this guide regularly against Island Health, provincial and municipal sources, but regulations and laws change often and we can’t guarantee it is complete or current. Confirm with Island Health and your municipality before you apply, build or sell.

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