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

321,722 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 18 Sept 2026 · source: Food Standards Agency food-hygiene open data (OGL v3.0) · raw JSON · methodology
321,722
UK café, coffee-shop, takeaway and catering premises on the FSA register
306,294
independents (not on our national-chain blocklist)
76.5%
of numerically-rated premises hold the FSA’s top 5 rating
23,324
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. 321,722 of the 321,722 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 (321,722 premises with a published rating value)
RatingPremises% of rated
Rated 5 — Very good197,14961.3%
Rated 4 — Good34,69610.8%
Rated 3 — Generally satisfactory17,2285.4%
Rated 2 — Improvement necessary4,3891.4%
Rated 1 — Major improvement necessary3,5801.1%
Rated 0 — Urgent improvement necessary5690.2%
Pass (Scotland FHIS)21,0876.6%
Pass and Eat Safe (Scotland FHIS)1580.0%
Improvement Required (Scotland FHIS)2,0790.6%
Awaiting inspection35,52311.0%
Awaiting publication450.0%
Exempt5,2191.6%

What kinds of businesses are they?

By the FSA's own business-type classification.

FSA business-type mix
Business typePremises% of classified
Restaurants, cafés & canteens144,69945.0%
Other catering premises79,17324.6%
Takeaways & sandwich shops65,12120.2%
Mobile caterers32,72910.2%

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
Birmingham6,0494.2061.5%
Westminster4,1844.4669.4%
Glasgow City4,126
Leeds4,0804.6172.6%
Manchester3,9064.4568.0%
North Yorkshire3,2314.7182.5%
Edinburgh (City of)3,118
Cornwall3,0854.7884.8%
Somerset3,0784.8286.9%
Highland3,010
Sheffield2,7354.5872.4%
Dorset2,6984.9495.6%
Camden2,6864.1755.5%
Bristol2,6744.6274.8%
Fife2,600
Liverpool2,4624.1959.7%
Buckinghamshire2,4224.6979.3%
Bradford2,4024.4868.1%
Durham2,2014.5872.3%
West Northamptonshire2,1874.6077.1%
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole2,0664.8187.6%
Tower Hamlets2,0484.5272.9%
Kirklees2,0454.5570.6%
Cardiff2,0154.4667.3%
Southwark1,9964.5670.1%
Ealing1,9854.0153.2%
Wiltshire1,8344.6679.1%
Croydon1,8144.4462.4%
Wandsworth1,8004.6277.9%
Islington1,7694.3058.2%

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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 18 Sept 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.