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UK cafés and takeaways: food-hygiene ratings, in numbers

309,348 cafés, coffee shops, takeaways and caterers from the Food Standards Agency's food-hygiene register — how the FSA rates them, what kinds of businesses they are, and where they cluster. Aggregate counts only; no premises is named.

Statistics computed 16 Jul 2026 · source: Food Standards Agency food-hygiene open data (OGL v3.0) · raw JSON · methodology
309,348
UK café, coffee-shop, takeaway and catering premises on the FSA register
294,137
independents (not on our national-chain blocklist)
76.6%
of numerically-rated premises hold the FSA’s top 5 rating
22,728
Scottish premises rated under the pass/improvement FHIS scheme

Food-hygiene ratings (Food Standards Agency)

The rating is the FSA's own assessment, not ours. 309,348 of the 309,348 premises carry a published rating value. England, Wales and Northern Ireland use the 0–5 Food Hygiene Rating Scheme; Scotland uses the separate pass/improvement Food Hygiene Information Scheme (FHIS) — both are shown below, verbatim.

FSA rating distribution (309,348 premises with a published rating value)
RatingPremises% of rated
Rated 5 — Very good191,00161.7%
Rated 4 — Good33,82310.9%
Rated 3 — Generally satisfactory16,6295.4%
Rated 2 — Improvement necessary4,1131.3%
Rated 1 — Major improvement necessary3,3211.1%
Rated 0 — Urgent improvement necessary4750.2%
Pass (Scotland FHIS)20,5886.7%
Pass and Eat Safe (Scotland FHIS)1600.1%
Improvement Required (Scotland FHIS)1,9800.6%
Awaiting inspection32,05210.4%
Awaiting publication310.0%
Exempt5,1751.7%

What kinds of businesses are they?

By the FSA's own business-type classification.

FSA business-type mix
Business typePremises% of classified
Restaurants, cafés & canteens140,04445.3%
Other catering premises75,31224.3%
Takeaways & sandwich shops62,98420.4%
Mobile caterers31,00810.0%

Top 30 local authorities by establishment count

Average rating is computed over numerically-rated (0–5) premises only — Scottish FHIS areas have no numeric scale, so their average shows as —.

Local authorities with the most café/takeaway premises
Local authorityPremisesAvg rating (0–5)% rated 5
Birmingham5,4304.2563.0%
Westminster4,0684.4669.2%
Glasgow City4,040
Leeds4,0134.6272.8%
Manchester3,7134.4467.7%
North Yorkshire3,0894.7282.8%
Somerset3,0024.8286.8%
Cornwall2,9774.7784.7%
Edinburgh (City of)2,967
Highland2,886
Sheffield2,7314.5772.1%
Dorset2,6244.9495.8%
Camden2,6124.1756.4%
Bristol2,5734.6174.7%
Fife2,564
Buckinghamshire2,3384.7079.9%
Liverpool2,3354.2160.9%
Bradford2,3234.4767.6%
Durham2,1124.5872.5%
West Northamptonshire2,0894.6278.0%
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole1,9924.8187.6%
Tower Hamlets1,9904.5473.6%
Kirklees1,9724.5671.0%
Cardiff1,9424.4967.8%
Southwark1,8904.5670.4%
Ealing1,8744.0353.3%
Wiltshire1,7534.6779.6%
Croydon1,7414.4763.8%
Wandsworth1,7034.6378.1%
Coventry1,7014.6275.2%

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Methodology & sources

Source. All establishment facts come from the Food Standards Agency food-hygiene open data (the FHRS bulk file), covering the FSA's café/restaurant, takeaway/sandwich-shop, mobile-caterer and other-catering business types. Ratings are the FSA's own published verdicts, stored and aggregated verbatim — including Scotland's separate FHIS scheme — never our own assessment. This snapshot was computed 16 Jul 2026; statistics are recomputed at most every 24 hours.

Independent vs chain. The independent/chain split is CafeGuard's own derivation — a name-match against a blocklist of national hospitality chains — and is the one figure on this page that is not the FSA's.

What this page is not. It is not a per-premises lookup and it names no business. For any individual establishment, always check the current rating on ratings.food.gov.uk.

Cite freely with a link to cafeguard.uk/cafes/stats. The free JSON API serves the identical snapshot for citation and reuse.