How to start a meal prep business in British Columbia

Start with the regulation, because the internet will tell you otherwise. The Food Premises Regulation (B.C. Reg. 210/99) applies to every food premises other than a short list: a bed and breakfast operated in a private residence, a food bank, voluntary caterers feeding their own organization, premises under the Milk Industry Act or the Fish and Seafood Act, small assisted living residences, licensed slaughter establishments, and premises that sell only whole fresh fruit and vegetables or prepackaged food that is not potentially hazardous. A domestic kitchen cooking meals for sale is not on that list. As consolidated to 8 September 2026, the regulation contains no home-kitchen exemption for prepared meals.

The sentence that decides most applications is in the construction requirements: food premises must be separate from and without direct access to living quarters, or to any area where activities incompatible with the safe handling of food are carried out. A kitchen you also cook your own dinner in, with the hallway to the bedrooms off it, does not meet that. A fully partitioned second kitchen with its own entrance might, and only an environmental health officer can tell you whether yours does.

Health authorities say the same thing in plainer words. Interior Health's guidance for food premises states that home-based kitchens are generally not allowed and some exceptions may apply, and that online food sales may be permitted when the food is prepared at an approved kitchen facility. That last line is the realistic path for meal prep: sell online, cook in an approved kitchen.

The usual start is renting time in a commissary or shared commercial kitchen that already holds its approval. You pay for the hours you cook and the storage you use, and the building already meets the construction requirements. Before you sign, ask what the health authority expects of you as a separate operator in that building, how much refrigerated and freezer space you get, whether you can receive supplier deliveries on your cook days, and what hours you can be in the room.

Taking your own space means plan approval first. A person must not construct or make alterations to food premises unless the plans and specifications have been approved by a health officer, and Fraser Health asks for three sets of floor plans drawn to scale along with the application. Speak to an environmental health officer before you sign a lease. They will tell you what the space needs, and that conversation costs nothing.

The regulation also sets what the room must do: sound construction, surfaces that are durable and easily cleaned, potable water, hot and cold water adequate in quantity and pressure, lighting bright enough to work and clean by, ventilation that clears steam and grease, and equipment that allows safe and sanitary handling of food. Refrigeration and hot-holding equipment must be adequate for the premises and fitted with a thermometer accurate to within 1 °C.

Two things stand between you and opening. First, approval: nobody may operate food premises unless the plans and specifications were approved and the premises were built and maintained accordingly. Second, the permit: a person must not operate a food service establishment unless they hold a permit issued by a health officer, and that permit is not transferable and must be posted where it can be seen.

A food service establishment, as the regulation defines it, is food premises in which food is processed, served or dispensed to the public, and intended for immediate consumption. Fraser Health describes the same test from the operator's side: food businesses that prepare and serve food intended for immediate consumption must obtain a health operating permit. Chilled meals a customer reheats at home are the awkward case. Ask your health authority which category your business falls into and get the answer in writing, because it decides both the permit and the training requirement.

The application package is a known list: the application form, a food safety plan, a sanitation plan and scaled floor plans, then an inspection before you open. Permit fees are set by the health authority and change, so ask yours for its current fee schedule rather than trusting a number you read somewhere.

FOODSAFE is the province's food handler training programme, managed by the BC FOODSAFE Secretariat with the BC Centre for Disease Control, the regional health authorities and industry associations. Level 1 is the food handler course; Level 2 goes further, into managing food safety.

The regulation requires every operator of a food service establishment to hold a FOODSAFE certificate or an equivalent, and to make sure that whenever the operator is away, at least one employee present in the establishment holds one. Fraser Health states the same expectation: Level 1 for the owner, and at least one certified person on site at all times of business. Train more than one person before you open, because a single certificate is a single point of failure on a Sunday cook day.

B.C. asks for paperwork other provinces do not. Every operator of a food service establishment must develop, maintain and follow written procedures to ensure a health hazard does not occur. Those procedures identify every critical control point, the critical limits for each, the procedures that keep you inside those limits, and what you do when a limit is not met. That is the food safety plan.

The sanitation plan is the second document: written procedures for the safe and sanitary operation of the establishment, covering cleaning and sanitizing requirements for the premises, equipment and utensils, the cleaning and sanitizing agents used with their concentrations and uses, and any pesticides with their uses and storage.

For premises where food is processed or prepared — which is what a meal prep kitchen is — both plans must be approved by a health officer. The BC Centre for Disease Control publishes guidance for writing a food safety plan the HACCP way, and it is the sensible place to start rather than a template bought online. Write them around what you actually do: cook, chill, portion, label, hold, deliver.

All food on the premises must come from approved sources: food premises whose plans were approved under the regulation, a licensed slaughter establishment, or a source approved by a federal, provincial or territorial government or agency that sets and enforces food safety standards. Keep the invoices. Where the chicken came from is a normal question at an inspection.

Potentially hazardous food must be stored or displayed at not more than 4 °C or not less than 60 °C, and frozen food must be stored, displayed or transported at not more than −18 °C. All food must be handled, packaged, stored and transported in a sanitary manner and without risk of spoilage, so the temperature discipline does not stop when the van doors close. Run the delivery at 4 °C or colder and you will not have to argue about it.

Decide how the business is owned before you take money: a sole proprietorship, a partnership or a corporation, registered with B.C.'s registry, with a business name registered if you trade under something other than your own or the corporation's legal name. Get a business number from the Canada Revenue Agency and open a bank account that is not your personal one.

Most B.C. municipalities require a business licence, and some run an inter-municipal licence so one covers several cities in the region — useful if you cook in Burnaby and deliver in Vancouver and New Westminster. Ask each city. Arrange general and product liability insurance, which shared kitchens and landlords ask to see, and tell your motor insurer that the vehicle is used for deliveries.

Two taxes, and they behave differently. The provincial one is the simpler: sales of food for human consumption are exempt from PST, including meals and non-alcoholic hot or cold beverages, with soda beverages taxed at 7% and liquor at 10%. A business that sells only food for human consumption is not required to register to collect PST — though you still pay PST on the goods and services you buy for the business, such as packaging equipment and vehicles.

GST is where meal prep gets interesting. Basic groceries are zero-rated, but the Canada Revenue Agency's memorandum on basic groceries treats a lot of prepared food as taxable: salads unless canned or vacuum sealed, sandwiches and similar products other than when frozen, platters and arrangements of cheese, cold cuts and similar food whether or not they are ready to eat, and food or beverages heated for consumption. Food supplied under a catering contract is taxable too.

The rule about six servings is narrower than people repeat. It applies to listed single-serving items — baked goods under 230 grams, puddings under 425 grams, beverages under 600 millilitres, ice cream under 500 millilitres or 500 grams — where a package of fewer than six is taxable and six or more is not. It is not a general rule that a box of six meals becomes zero-rated.

The GST rate in B.C. is 5%, and the place of supply for goods is the province where you deliver them, so an order driven into Alberta takes Alberta's rate. You are a small supplier while worldwide taxable revenue stays at or under $30,000 over four consecutive calendar quarters; cross it in a single quarter and you stop being one on the day of that sale, and you register within 29 days of your effective date. This guide is not tax advice and Mealforma does not file returns. How your menu is treated is for the CRA and your accountant, and the answer decides whether tax sits on top of your price or comes out of it.

Labelling for prepackaged food is federal, the same in Prince George as in Toronto. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency's checklist sets out the core: the common name on the principal display panel, the net quantity in metric units, a list of ingredients in descending order by weight with priority allergens named, a best-before date where the durable life is 90 days or less, the name and principal place of business of the responsible party, and a Nutrition Facts table unless an exemption applies. Mandatory information appears in both English and French.

Health Canada's priority allergens are eggs, milk, mustard, peanuts, crustaceans and molluscs, fish, sesame seeds, soy, sulphites, tree nuts, and wheat and triticale. Declare them in the ingredient list or in a "Contains" statement immediately after it. "May contain" is only for allergens that may be present unintentionally despite reasonable precautions.

The Nutrition Facts exemption is the part that catches meal prep. Food sold only in the retail establishment where it was prepared and processed from its ingredients is usually exempt, but the exemption is lost if the label makes a nutrient content claim or a health claim, or a vitamin or mineral is added, or the product is ground meat. Meal prep sells on calories and protein, which is a nutrient content claim. Plan on carrying a Nutrition Facts table, printed from the recipe version the kitchen actually cooked.

Geography costs more than fuel here. A North Shore run means Lions Gate or the Ironworkers, and both can add half an hour at the wrong time of day. East of the city, the Port Mann and the Pattullo decide whether Surrey is a 40-minute stop or a 90-minute one. Anything on Vancouver Island means a sailing time, not a drive time, and a missed sailing is not a late delivery, it is tomorrow.

Build zones that respect that. A flat delivery fee across Metro Vancouver quietly pays for the easy stops and loses money on the hard ones. Set a zone per bridge crossing, a cut-off early enough to cook and pack, and a delivery window the customer can plan around. Downtown and the West End add their own problem: no loading zone free at 5pm, and towers where the concierge may or may not accept food.

Through all of it the food is at 4 °C or colder. Vancouver rain does not chill a meal; a van standing in the sun on a July afternoon warms it. Insulated bags, frozen gel packs, a thermometer in the vehicle, temperatures recorded at the start and end of the route, and a photo at each drop that settles the messages beginning "it never arrived".

Most meal prep businesses sell by the week. A customer picks a plan — 10 meals, 15 meals — chooses meals before a cut-off, and receives them on set delivery days. The cut-off is what makes the business work: it tells you exactly what to buy and cook before you spend anything on food.

Cost each meal from its recipe, in Canadian dollars: ingredients at the price you actually pay, the tray, the sleeve, the label. Then add kitchen rent, labour, delivery and card fees per meal before you choose a price. Subscriptions smooth the weekly swings and make purchasing predictable; one-off orders and add-ons fill the gaps.

Once orders arrive every week, the work is keeping the menu, the cut-offs, the kitchen's quantities, the labels and the delivery routes in step. Mealforma is meal prep software built for that: an online store with weekly subscriptions, production quantities worked out from locked orders, labels printed from the recipe version the kitchen cooked, and each day's route. Delivery zones, fees, cut-offs, tax rate and whether prices include tax are settings you edit yourself, and the storefront can run in English and French.

It is a flat monthly price in Canadian dollars, and it never takes a percentage of your sales. Each company on Mealforma gets its own Postgres database from the day it signs up. What Mealforma does not do: it does not certify anyone, it does not obtain permits or approvals, it does not write your food safety plan for the health officer, it does not file your returns, and nothing here is legal advice.