The headline
Takeaways have the UK's lowest food hygiene pass rate.
Just 61% of UK takeaways and sandwich shops hold the top 5-star rating (31,855 of 52,213 rated), against 75.3% of restaurants, cafes and canteens — and 92% for the best-performing category, schools, colleges & universities. Takeaways also carry the highest share of 0–1 star premises among the food types diners order from (2.7%). Their average rating is 4.33 out of 5, versus 4.6 for restaurants — a real, consistent gap driven by smaller, faster kitchens, not by widespread unsafe food.
Every business type, ranked by 5-star share
The 14 FSA business-type categories, ranked by the share of rated premises holding the top 5-star food hygiene rating.
| # | Business type | 5★ share | Avg rating | 0–1★ | Rated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Schools, colleges & universities | 92% | 4.9 | 0.1% | 31,216 |
| 2 | Farmers & growers | 90.5% | 4.88 | 0.1% | 1,179 |
| 3 | Other catering premises | 88.9% | 4.85 | 0.5% | 55,041 |
| 4 | Care homes & caring premises | 88.2% | 4.84 | 0.3% | 35,793 |
| 5 | Mobile caterers | 88.2% | 4.82 | 0.6% | 23,235 |
| 6 | Supermarkets & hypermarkets | 87.5% | 4.8 | 1.1% | 14,177 |
| 7 | Importers & exporters | 85.3% | 4.74 | 1.8% | 387 |
| 8 | Hotels, B&Bs & guest houses | 85.2% | 4.79 | 0.6% | 10,959 |
| 9 | Distributors & transporters | 84.8% | 4.77 | 1.1% | 2,536 |
| 10 | Manufacturers & packers | 84.3% | 4.76 | 1% | 7,621 |
| 11 | Pubs, bars & nightclubs | 76.8% | 4.66 | 1% | 44,025 |
| 12 | Restaurants, cafes & canteens | 75.3% | 4.6 | 1.6% | 117,909 |
| 13 | Food shops & convenience retailers | 71.2% | 4.51 | 3% | 87,636 |
| 14 | Takeaways & sandwich shops | 61% | 4.33 | 2.7% | 52,213 |
How big is each category?
Number of rated establishments per business type — context for the pass rates above. Restaurants and food shops dominate the register.
What the gap means
The spread from the best to the worst category is 31 percentage points of 5-star share. The pattern is consistent: large, institutional or supervised kitchens — schools, colleges & universities, supermarkets, care homes and mobile caterers — cluster at the top with documented procedures and regular self-audits. Small, independent, high-turnover kitchens — takeaways especially — sit lower, more often at 3–4 stars than the top mark. Even so, only 2.7% of takeaways score 0 or 1 star: a lower five-star share is mostly the difference between "good" and "very good", not between safe and unsafe.
Cite this report
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Citation
GeraEats (2026). UK Food Hygiene by Business Type 2026. Retrieved from https://geraeats.com/reports/uk-food-hygiene-by-business-type-2026Embed (HTML)
<blockquote>UK takeaways have the lowest food hygiene pass rate at 61% 5-star, versus 75.3% for restaurants (FSA data, 2026-06-12) — <a href="https://geraeats.com/reports/uk-food-hygiene-by-business-type-2026">UK Food Hygiene by Business Type 2026</a>, GeraEats.</blockquote>Explore the data
- The State of UK Restaurant Hygiene 2026 — the national pass rate, best and worst local authorities and the most common failures.
- UK Food Hygiene by Region 2026 — which region leads and which trails on food hygiene.
- UK Food Hygiene Ratings Directory — the full dataset, browsable by local authority and postcode area.
- GeraCompliance — food safety and regulatory checks for businesses.
Methodology
Figures are computed directly from the Food Standards Agency Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS) public register, grouped by the FSA's own businessType classification, over 483,927 rated establishments in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Percentages are over rated premises only — premises awaiting inspection or exempt are excluded from each category's denominator. Scotland's separate FHIS pass/fail scheme is excluded here so the five-star metric stays comparable across types. The average rating is the count-weighted mean of the 0–5 ratings. No figures are estimated or modelled. Data as of 2026-06-12.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Food hygiene ratings are sourced from the Food Standards Agency at ratings.food.gov.uk. Ratings reflect the most recent inspection on record and may have changed since publication.