Getting your FSSAI registration
Every home kitchen selling food in India needs one. It costs ₹100 a year, needs four documents you already own, and most people finish the form in under an hour.
First, the thing everybody gets wrong
You need a registration, not a licence. They are two different things, and almost everything you find by searching is about the licence — which is why so many people decide this is too hard and give up.
If you cook from home and your yearly sales are under ₹1.5 crore, a registration is all the law asks of you. That threshold was raised from ₹12 lakh in April 2026, so older guides — and most search results — will tell you that you need a licence when you do not. A licence only becomes relevant far beyond the scale of a home kitchen. Nothing on this page involves an inspection, a consultant, or thousands of rupees.
This is a requirement of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, not of Orderly.Food. You would need it to sell home-cooked food anywhere — to neighbours, on WhatsApp, or through any platform.
What to keep ready
Four things. You almost certainly have all of them already. Scan or photograph each one clearly before you start, because the form asks for uploads as you go.
- PAN cardPlus a self-attested copy to upload — that just means signing your name across the photocopy.
- Aadhaar cardAgain with a self-attested copy.
- Address proof for the kitchenWherever you will actually cook the food you sell. An electricity bill or a rent agreement both work.
- A passport-size photographA clear, recent one. A plain phone photo against a light wall is usually fine.
That is the whole list. There is no shop licence, no GST number, and no inspection to arrange first.
Whose name goes on it
The name on all four documents must be the same person. That is the only rule about names, and it is worth getting right the first time — a mismatch is the most common reason an application comes back.
It does nothave to be the person who cooks, or the person whose name is on the Orderly.Food kitchen. Any adult in the household can hold the registration. A registration in a husband’s name works perfectly well alongside a kitchen profile in his wife’s name, and the other way round. Pick whoever has the tidiest documents.
What it costs
₹100 for each year you register for. Two years is ₹200, five years is ₹500. You choose the length when you apply.
Registering for a few years at once saves you repeating the form, and the fee is the same either way — there is no discount for a longer term, and no penalty for a shorter one.
Where to apply
The government portal is called FoSCoS — Food Safety Compliance System. Everything happens there:
Create an account, choose the registration for a petty food business operator, fill in your details, upload the four documents, pay, and submit. Your certificate arrives as a PDF you can download and print.
Watch someone do it
If a form is easier to follow than to read about, this walkthrough goes through the portal step by step.
Once you have it
Add the registration number and the certificate to your kitchen application. We check it, and it appears on your kitchen page so buyers can see it — which is quietly one of the strongest reasons somebody orders from a cook they have never met.
Keep an eye on the expiry date. We will email you well before it lapses, because a kitchen with an expired registration has to stop selling until it is renewed.
If you get stuck
Write to support@orderly.food and tell us where you are stuck. We will walk you through it. Plenty of people have found the portal confusing — asking is not a bother, and you will not be the first.
We can help you understand the process, but we cannot apply on your behalf: the registration has to be made by the person whose name is on it. Rules and fees can change — FoSCoS is always the authority, and this page is a friendly summary of it.