Build your food stall risk assessment
Answer four quick questions and get a risk assessment written around your food stall, with the gas, fire, and food safety rows organisers and councils look for. For street food traders, catering trailers, coffee vans, and market food stalls. Free to download, no email needed.
Let's build your food stall risk assessment.
What do you sell?
Pick the closest match. If you sell hot food and hot drinks, pick hot food; it covers both.
Selling handmade products rather than food? Use the market stall risk assessment builder instead.
Food stall risk assessments, answered
Do I need a risk assessment for a food stall?
Yes. Health and safety law requires anyone trading as a business to assess their risks, and the findings must be written down once you employ five or more people. In practice the paperwork ask comes much sooner: event organisers, councils, and street food markets ask food traders for a written risk assessment as a condition of the pitch, usually alongside public liability insurance and proof of food business registration.
What should a street food risk assessment include?
The rows an organiser looks for on a catering document: gas safety if you cook on LPG, fire from cooking equipment, burns and scalds, food hygiene and cross-contamination, allergens, temperature control, handwashing, and waste water, plus the general stall rows such as trips, manual handling, and vehicle movements during set-up. This builder includes each row only when your answers say it applies.
Does it work for a burger van or catering trailer?
Yes. One of the four questions asks what you trade from. Answer that you use a catering trailer or van and the document swaps the gazebo rows for trailer stability, steps, and serving hatch rows. It works the same way for coffee vans, horsebox bars, and converted carts.
Is this the same as my food safety management system?
No, and you need both. A risk assessment covers health and safety at your stall. Food law separately requires a documented food safety management system; most small food businesses use the Food Standards Agency's free Safer Food, Better Business pack. Organisers and environmental health officers may ask to see both, along with your food business registration.
Do I still need a gas safety certificate?
Yes. If you cook on LPG, your installation needs an annual check by a Gas Safe registered engineer qualified for mobile catering, and organisers routinely ask for the certificate itself. The risk assessment records how you manage gas day to day; it does not replace the check. Our LPG gas safety guide covers what the check involves and what it costs.
Is the builder really free?
Yes. Answer the four questions, adjust the rows so the document describes your stall, and print or save it as a PDF. No email address is needed; leaving one is optional and gets you a link that rebuilds this exact document before your next event.
StallSyncFood stall risk assessment
Work through each hazard before the event. Blank columns are yours to fill in.
| Stall or business name | Event and venue | Event date |
| Assessed by | Assessment date | Review date |
| Hazard | Who might be harmed | What you are already doing | What else could you do? | Action by whom and when | Done |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A starting point, not legal advice: add and remove hazards so this describes your stall. It covers health and safety, not your food safety management system. If you employ five or more people, health and safety law requires you to record your significant findings. Check current guidance at hse.gov.uk.
Muckifoot Studios Ltd, trading as StallSync. Company No. 16838457. Generated free at stallsync.co.uk.