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

317,461 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 30 Aug 2026 · source: Food Standards Agency food-hygiene open data (OGL v3.0) · raw JSON · methodology
317,461
UK café, coffee-shop, takeaway and catering premises on the FSA register
302,120
independents (not on our national-chain blocklist)
76.6%
of numerically-rated premises hold the FSA’s top 5 rating
23,162
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. 317,461 of the 317,461 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 (317,461 premises with a published rating value)
RatingPremises% of rated
Rated 5 — Very good195,13061.5%
Rated 4 — Good34,35010.8%
Rated 3 — Generally satisfactory17,0475.4%
Rated 2 — Improvement necessary4,3111.4%
Rated 1 — Major improvement necessary3,4731.1%
Rated 0 — Urgent improvement necessary5440.2%
Pass (Scotland FHIS)20,9116.6%
Pass and Eat Safe (Scotland FHIS)1590.1%
Improvement Required (Scotland FHIS)2,0920.7%
Awaiting inspection34,20910.8%
Awaiting publication310.0%
Exempt5,2041.6%

What kinds of businesses are they?

By the FSA's own business-type classification.

FSA business-type mix
Business typePremises% of classified
Restaurants, cafés & canteens143,25445.1%
Other catering premises77,66024.5%
Takeaways & sandwich shops64,44920.3%
Mobile caterers32,09810.1%

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
Birmingham5,7024.2161.6%
Westminster4,1384.4569.1%
Glasgow City4,103
Leeds4,0614.6172.6%
Manchester3,9014.4568.0%
North Yorkshire3,1884.7282.8%
Cornwall3,0574.7784.6%
Edinburgh (City of)3,055
Somerset3,0464.8286.7%
Highland2,942
Sheffield2,7344.5772.2%
Camden2,6574.1755.9%
Dorset2,6564.9495.6%
Bristol2,6474.6274.9%
Fife2,588
Liverpool2,4294.1960.0%
Buckinghamshire2,4104.6979.5%
Bradford2,3814.4868.1%
West Northamptonshire2,1864.6077.0%
Durham2,1694.5972.6%
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole2,0314.8187.4%
Tower Hamlets2,0284.5273.0%
Kirklees2,0244.5670.8%
Cardiff1,9974.4867.8%
Southwark1,9734.5670.3%
Ealing1,9254.0253.2%
Croydon1,8014.4462.4%
Wiltshire1,7924.6879.6%
Wandsworth1,7424.6277.6%
Coventry1,7384.6175.4%

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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 30 Aug 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.