Small cafés, coffee carts and food trucks will spend less time on food safety paperwork after the Government agreed on Friday to change how hospitality businesses are regulated under the Food Act. Regulation Minister David Seymour and Food Safety Minister Andrew Hoggard said the Government had accepted seven of the eight food safety recommendations in the Ministry for Regulation’s Hospitality Sector Review, according to their joint statement.
The main change is that food businesses will be regulated according to how risky their food actually is. At present most hospitality businesses, from a two-table café to a large restaurant, run under the same template Food Control Plan, the highest of four risk categories. Under the reforms some lower-risk operators will move into lighter categories with fewer rules, and a new, simpler Food Control Plan will be written specifically for hospitality with less record-keeping.
“Red tape isn’t neutral, it’s a tax on growth,” Mr Seymour said. “We need to stop treating small hospitality businesses as though they are fine dining restaurants with large scale commercial kitchens.”
He said one business had told the review “that it was becoming a full-time job to complete the paperwork associated with food safety compliance”.
Mr Hoggard gave the clearest picture of how the new categories would work. “Low risk small cafes might fall into the low-risk category, whereas a large scale catering company might fall into the higher-risk category,” he said. “I expect these changes to be in force as soon as practicable.”
The Government has also agreed to scrap the recurring registration renewals that food businesses currently go through, to let businesses with a good track record go longer between compliance checks, and to let a food truck that is checked by one council have that check recognised by other councils. Regulators will get simpler guidance, and councils will have to follow clearer principles when setting food safety fees.
The one recommendation turned down was a proposal to scale the food business levy, which is paid to the Ministry for Primary Industries, according to each business’s annual revenue and to collect it centrally, RNZ reported. The review had noted that this would have lowered costs for some hospitality businesses but raised them for others, mostly food manufacturers.
The review’s final report spells out why operators have been frustrated. Unless exempt, every food business in New Zealand must register under one of four categories. The lightest, National Programme 1, covers businesses that only sell hot drinks and pre-packaged, shelf-stable food, such as many coffee carts. The heaviest, the Food Control Plan, covers makers of high-risk foods such as dairy products as well as most of the hospitality sector. The review found the template plan’s requirements were “generally too high for low-risk hospitality businesses (e.g., a small café) but proportionate to a higher-risk business (e.g., a large restaurant with complex menu items and a large customer base)”.
It gave examples of how businesses might move. Cafés that reheat food and make baked goods could shift from the Food Control Plan to National Programme 3, and coffee carts making shelf-stable baking could shift to National Programme 1.
The report was also critical of how compliance checks, known as verifications, are carried out. Most hospitality businesses are checked on a set schedule, with up to 18 months between visits. The review found many verifications focused on records and paperwork over watching what actually happens in the kitchen, especially when the verifier had little experience of kitchens. It said that meant verifiers might not be spotting real food safety risks. The review recommended extending the gap between checks to two years for high-performing businesses.
Food trucks were singled out as paying more than they should. Because a truck that trades in several regions would otherwise need a check from every council it works in, many use private verifiers, which generally charge higher fees. The review said such a truck would likely pay more for a verification than a restaurant simply because it crosses a regional boundary. When the report was released on 9 September, one of its most-quoted findings was that a food truck owner had to deal with 13 officials from eight agencies, which NEWS WIRE reported at the time.
Registration renewals were found to add little. The report said verification already does the job of checking in on a business, so “the renewal process serves no clear purpose”. It estimated that dropping renewals would save hospitality businesses about $1.9 million a year in fees, an average of $150 each.
The sector has welcomed the decision. Hospitality New Zealand chief executive Kristy Phillips said making the rules proportionate to risk “supports businesses by right-sizing the amount of time and compliance costs that will go into maintaining their food safety verification”, in a statement on Friday.
“Proper food safety management is important for food businesses and consumers, and today’s changes enable businesses to focus on the practical management of food safety rather than record keeping and compliance processes,” she said.
Ms Phillips said Hospitality New Zealand also expected that better fee-setting by councils would reduce costs for operators. The group welcomed a separate decision announced on Thursday that venues offering guests a ride home will not trigger passenger service requirements, and steps to standardise noise controls.
The food safety changes build on work already under way at New Zealand Food Safety, part of the Ministry for Primary Industries. Its Food Act Improvement Programme aims to cut the burden on low-risk food businesses, bring in simpler record-keeping rules and make verification more consistent across the country. The review said it did not think MPI’s existing work on registration and renewals would fix the problems on its own.
The stakes are large. The review put the hospitality sector at more than 25,000 businesses, with $21.4 billion in revenue and more than 193,000 workers. It made 24 recommendations in total, covering alcohol licensing, fees, transport and planning as well as food safety, and ministers are working through them portfolio by portfolio.
There is no firm start date yet. The review suggested the category changes and the simpler Food Control Plan could be delivered by mid-2027, with the end of renewals, longer verification periods and the food truck change following by the end of 2027. Some of the changes need only new regulations, but scrapping renewals will need a change to the Food Act itself, with public consultation.
For a small café owner, the practical difference could be fewer daily logs, no renewal forms and, for those with a clean record, fewer visits from the inspector. Whether it adds up to real savings will depend on how far the new plan cuts the paperwork, and on how councils set their fees.
Do you run a café, food truck or restaurant? Will these changes make a real difference to your week? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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