Food & drink makers
How to start a packaged food business on Vancouver Island
Making packaged food to sell beyond a farmers’ market needs a kitchen approved by Island Health — your own, or rented time in a shared kitchen with your own approval — and a food safety plan. Labels must meet federal rules, canned low-acid foods need a process authority’s review, and selling to another province needs a federal licence.
A change is coming
- New names for milk ingredients on labels — takes effect 1 January 2030. What changes
Only want the steps that apply to you?
What you need, in order
18 steps. Each links to its own page, with the forms and the rule behind it.
- 1
Your own approval in a shared or rented kitchen
Island Health
If you rent a kitchen
Renting time in someone else’s approved kitchen doesn’t put you under their permit — permits are personal and not transferable. Island Health tells kitchen owners that every renter must contact them “for necessary approval”. Island Health publishes no separate commissary process, so call your local office before you start.
- 2
Zoning for your food business
Your municipality
If you set up your own kitchen
Before you sign a lease, check that the zone for the address allows your use — and in Victoria, ask Permits and Inspections to confirm the space’s legal use too, which can differ. Cities define uses narrowly: a restaurant, a take-out, a drive-through and food processing are often separate uses, and a use a zone doesn’t list is not allowed there. Making food with no counter is usually an industrial use: Langford excludes primary processing of meat, poultry and fish from its light-industrial use, and Nanaimo excludes processing livestock, fish and poultry from its food-processing use. Victoria’s 2018 zoning bylaw bans drive-throughs in every zone it covers.
- Cost:
- Saanich will confirm zoning in a letter for $200, within 10 working days.
- 3
Plan approval for your food premises
Island Health
If you build your own kitchen
Every food premises the regulation covers — restaurant, bakery, processor, food truck, commissary and most shops — needs its floor plans and equipment approved by an Environmental Health Officer before it is built or altered, and before it opens; a shop selling only whole produce, or prepackaged food that doesn’t need refrigeration, is exempt. The premises must be separate from living quarters.
- 4
Building permit for alterations or a change of use
Your municipality
If you build your own kitchen
Altering a commercial space — or only changing its use, say a shop becoming a café — needs a building permit, even with no construction; painting and other cosmetic work don’t. You can’t move in until the city issues an occupancy permit. A change of occupancy can trigger seismic, fire-separation, accessibility and sprinkler upgrades, and a restaurant for more than 30 people usually needs an architect. Langford and Nanaimo want Island Health’s stamped floor plans with the application; Victoria needs Island Health’s approval before it issues the permit.
- Cost:
- Victoria: $100 to apply plus 1.40% of the construction cost. Saanich: $100 for the first $1,000 plus $13 per $1,000 up to $500,000, and an application fee from $100 by project value. Langford: $63.41 for the first $1,000 plus $12.66 per $1,000 up to $100,000 (less above). Nanaimo: $105 plus $10 per $1,000 up to $100,000, then $7 per $1,000. Starting without a permit doubles the fee in Langford, and in Saanich (up to $20,000 extra).
- Time:
- Victoria expects four to six months for extensive changes. Nanaimo targets 8 weeks for a tenant improvement, and says it isn’t meeting its targets.
- 5
Grease interceptor
The CRD in Greater Victoria; your municipality elsewhere
If you build your own kitchen
In Greater Victoria, a food business that sends fat, oil or grease down the drain must install a certified, properly sized grease interceptor, and file a Waste Discharge Assessment Form with the CRD before choosing or replacing one — Victoria wants the CRD’s answer before it issues a building permit. Dishwashing, prep and barista sinks and dishwashers drain through it; toilets and hand sinks must not. Have it pumped out at least every 12 months and before grease and solids reach a quarter of its depth, and keep two years of records. Food trucks are exempt. Nanaimo requires one where wastewater carries excessive grease; elsewhere, ask your municipality.
- Cost:
- CRD fines reach $10,000 a day.
- 6
Food safety plan and sanitation plan
You write them; Island Health approves them
Written procedures showing how you keep food safe (critical control points and limits) and how you clean and sanitise. Required of every food service establishment and every premises where food is processed or prepared, and approved before a permit or approval is issued.
- 7
Approval to operate
Island Health
Food premises that don’t serve food for immediate eating — food processors, bakeries without a counter, food stores, commissaries — receive an approval to operate instead of a permit. Health approval must be in place before you open.
- 8
pH or water-activity test from an accredited lab
A commercial food-testing laboratory
For acidified or shelf-stable products
Proves a jam, pickle, salsa or other conditional food is lower-risk — usually pH 4.6 or below, or water activity 0.85 or below; an uncooked fresh-tomato salsa needs pH 4.2 or below. Your market manager or Island Health can ask you to prove it; when Island Health requires a test, use a commercial lab. Your own meter is fine while you develop a recipe and for routine quality checks. Re-test when the recipe changes.
- 9
A process authority for canned low-acid foods
A thermal-processing expert (process authority)
For low-acid foods in sealed containers
A low-acid food (pH above 4.6 and water activity above 0.85) sealed in a jar, can or pouch and sold at room temperature must be commercially sterile, unless it is labelled and kept “Keep Refrigerated” or “Keep Frozen”. The heat process that gets it there must be set by someone expert in thermal processing — CFIA’s example is a process authority — and to sell it at a BC market, the guideline in force requires the process to be reviewed and accepted by a qualified process authority. Every container needs a code naming where and when it was sterilised. BCCDC points to the Association of Food and Drug Officials’ directory; there is no BC list.
- 10
Federal food labels
CFIA and Health Canada rules
Prepackaged food needs a common name, net quantity, ingredients and allergens, your name and a physical address (a website doesn’t count), a best-before date if it keeps 90 days or less, a Nutrition Facts table, a front-of-pack “High in” symbol if it is high in saturated fat, sugars or sodium, and English and French — English-only is allowed for food sold only in the municipality where it’s made and its neighbours. Selling only at markets yourself removes the Nutrition Facts table and the front-of-pack symbol, unless the label makes a nutrition claim. There is no exemption for online sales, and a product may not be advertised online without a proper label.
- 11
Nutrition Facts values and a best-before date
You, checked against CFIA’s rules
You are responsible for your label values. Health Canada says the Canadian Nutrient File is too generic for a Nutrition Facts table; calculate from your suppliers’ nutrition data, ideally checked by a lab, because CFIA tests labels by lab analysis — with a 20% tolerance for naturally occurring nutrients, and none for added vitamins and minerals. No law sets shelf lives — you decide the best-before date, and CFIA calls a shelf-life study the most effective way to do it.
- 12
Barcodes for stores
GS1 Canada
If you sell to stores or distributors
No law requires a barcode, but many retailers, distributors and online marketplaces do. Every size, flavour or variant needs its own number.
- Cost:
- $26.25 a year for one barcode, $157.50 for ten, $525 for a hundred (by revenue band).
- 13
The Buy BC logo
Government of British Columbia
OptionalOptional: the Buy BC logo
A free licence to put the Buy BC logo on your packaging: producers qualify with food 100% grown, caught or raised in BC, processors with at least 51% of processing costs in BC. Label designs are approved before printing, and the licence is the entry point to the province’s cost-shared marketing funding.
- Cost:
- Free.
- 14
A legal-for-trade scale, if you price by weight
Measurement Canada
If you sell by weight
Only matters if you charge by weight — by the pound or kilo at the counter or market table. Then the scale must be a “legal for trade” model, the kind sold for retail use with a Measurement Canada approval number, rather than a kitchen scale, and a private service company checks it every five years. It sits level, faces the customer and is zeroed, and packaging isn’t charged. Food sold by the piece, or in packs that all weigh the same, doesn’t need one; neither does portioning a burger patty.
- 15
Municipal business licence
Your municipality
Business licences are issued by each municipality, and every one of the twelve checked requires one — home-based food businesses included. Fees differ: most charge about $100 a year for a home-based licence, Nanaimo $165, and Oak Bay $100 to $200 by type under new rules reported adopted in September 2026; Courtenay’s rises from $75 to $150 in 2027. Langford and Colwood charge once, and the licence then carries on. Mobile businesses can share one licence across municipalities — the Greater Victoria Inter-Municipal licence or the Vancouver Island Inter-Community licence ($170 on top of the local licence under the newest bylaws) — but the updated Inter-Community bylaw several municipalities have adopted excludes food trucks, carts and trailers — it starts once all participating municipalities have adopted it — and North Cowichan’s mobile food licence cannot be used intermunicipally.
- 16
Registering your business name
BC Registries
Trading under your own name needs no registration. Any other name means reserving it and registering within 3 months of first using it; a partnership registers within 3 months of forming. Incorporating is the alternative, and only a corporation, co-op or society gets exclusive use of its name.
- Cost:
- Name request $30 (reserved 56 days); sole proprietorship or partnership registration $40; incorporation $350, then a $43.39 annual report.
- 17
GST registration
Canada Revenue Agency
Snacks and candy are taxable
Most groceries are zero-rated, but candy, snacks, carbonated drinks, hot food, catering and sweet baked goods sold in packs of fewer than six are taxable at 5%. You must register once your sales pass $30,000 in a quarter or over four quarters — and zero-rated grocery sales count toward it.
- 18
Safe Food for Canadians licence
Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Only if you sell to other provinces
Needed to make, process, pack or label food that goes to another province, and to import food; a business that only exports needs one just to get a CFIA export certificate. Not needed for food made and sold only in BC, nor by a restaurant or caterer sending food straight to its customers.
- Time:
- Valid two years.
What you can sell
Rules where you are
Business licences, zoning and home-business rules differ by municipality.
When you’re ready to sell
Selling on Local Pass
A market table sells on market day. On the Island Food Market your jars, bags and bottles sell every day, to customers across the Island.
Your own storefront
A storefront on the Island Food Market, with every product on its own page, built to be found on Google.
Delivery, shipping and pickup
Local Pass drivers or your own delivery, plus shipping and pickup points with their own hours.
Wholesale for restaurants
Bulk prices and a shareable wholesale order sheet, drawing on the same stock; buyers send quote requests to your inbox.
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.