A caterer is the one food business the law will not let call itself small. You are excepted from the petty food business operator definition by name, you follow two Parts of Schedule 4 rather than one, and you are scored on a sheet written specifically for catering. Updated October 2026.
Why the petty food business route is closed to you by name, why there is no registration tier for a caterer at any turnover, and why your licence has not expired since March 2026 whatever anyone is still selling you.
FSSAI publishes a separate inspection checklist for catering: 47 questions, 114 marks, five named sections. How a mark is actually awarded, the grading bands from the sheet's own footer, and the asterisked questions that produce Non-compliance on their own regardless of your total.
Premises, equipment and water; the receiving temperatures for high-risk and frozen food; pest control, disinfectants, waste and the records that go with them. The Part that applies to every licensee.
Part V is written for catering and says in its first line that it applies in addition to Part II. Cleaning between tasks, the hand-washing points it lists, hot holding at 60°C, and no water after cooking.
The section a restaurant checklist cannot have. What to ask the venue before you accept the booking, how to decide holding method per dish before you load, the two temperature readings per journey, who is responsible on site, and the two-minute record of what was served that you will be asked for if anyone reports illness afterwards.
Part II's personal hygiene requirements, training that is reviewed rather than done once, and the two places this touches employment practice: moving an unwell person off food handling, and holding health records.
A separate annual return for every licence you hold, the daily production record and the proviso worth reading, and the allergen declaration that reaches food service establishments with no turnover threshold at all.
The no-licence penalty has been a penalty up to ten lakh rupees with no imprisonment since 2023, and is quoted wrongly almost everywhere. Why the correction is not simply lighter, and what an inspection can do short of a penalty.
One pass through your kitchen and one through the venue, twenty minutes each, done the week before rather than the morning of.
Petpooja Tasks carries 150+ pre-built industry templates and AI auto-review with photo and video proof, so a temperature check comes back with evidence rather than a tick.
Explore Petpooja TasksRead the definition of a petty food business operator and you will find your own work described in it: a person who distributes foods including in any religious or social gathering. Read four words further and you will find yourself excepted from it by name.
That exception is the whole difference between a caterer and the stall holder working the same wedding, and it sits oddly against how most catering operations actually run. They can register. You cannot, at any turnover: FSSAI's own Kind of Business table gives a Caterer a State Licence up to ₹50 crore and a Central Licence above it, with no registration tier at all. The lighter Part I of Schedule 4, written for registered petty operators, is not the Part you follow either.
You follow two. Part II applies to every operator holding a licence, and Part V, which is written for catering and food service, opens by saying it applies in addition to Part II. Not instead of it. Most catering compliance advice picks one and stops.
There is also a sheet. FSSAI publishes a different inspection checklist for each kind of food business, and there is one for catering: 47 questions over 114 marks. Some of those questions carry an asterisk, and failing an asterisked question produces Non-compliance regardless of what you scored everywhere else. You cannot make it up on volume.
None of that is the hard part. If you are setting up rather than already running, our guide to starting a catering business covers the rest of it. The hard part here is that your food is cooked in a kitchen you control and eaten somewhere you do not. Schedule 4 asks for control of temperature through distribution and food service up to the consumer. For a restaurant that phrase means carrying a plate across a room. For you it means a van, a venue, and two hours on a buffet line. If a dish will not survive that, it is a menu decision, and costing the replacement is easier than explaining the incident.
This checklist is the catering half of our general FSSAI compliance checklist. Where that one covers every food business, this one covers the inspection sheet written for yours and the event that happens at somebody else's address.
Two things in it correct advice that is still repeated almost everywhere. An FSSAI licence has not expired since the March 2026 amendment removed the renewal machinery outright. And the penalty for operating without one has been a penalty up to ten lakh rupees with no imprisonment since 2023, not six months and five lakh.
Here's a preview of what you'll get inside:
On the catering inspection checklist specifically, carrying 114 marks across five sections. A+ is 100 to 114, A is 91 to 99, B is 77 to 90, and below 77 is Non Compliance. Some questions are asterisked and fail you on their own.
Source: FSSAI Regulatory Compliance Division, File No. 14(1)2016/Info/Enf/FSSAI dated 09-Mar-2018, catering inspection checklist, read 25-Aug-2026The penalty that may be imposed for carrying on a food business without a licence, with no imprisonment. The earlier text, six months and five lakh rupees, was replaced in 2023 and is still quoted almost everywhere.
Source: Section 63, FSS Act 2006 as amended by the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act 2023, Schedule entry 35Of Schedule 4 apply to a caterer. Part II binds every operator holding a licence, and Part V, written for catering and food service, opens by applying in addition to Part II. Part I is for petty operators, which a caterer is excepted from being.
Source: Schedule 4 Parts II and V, FSS (Licensing and Registration of Food Businesses) Regulations 2011, read at source 01-Oct-2026The petty food business operator definition covers a person who distributes foods including in any religious or social gathering, and then excepts a caterer. The stall holder at the same event can register. You cannot: FSSAI's Kind of Business table gives a Caterer a State Licence up to ₹50 crore and a Central Licence above it, with no registration tier at any turnover.
An FSSAI licence or registration is valid and subsisting unless suspended, cancelled or surrendered. The renewal machinery was removed when the regulation was substituted in March 2026, and the regulation's own heading changed from Validity and Renewal to Validity. Anyone selling you a renewal deadline is working from old information.
Six months' imprisonment and a five lakh fine for operating without a licence was replaced by a penalty which may extend to ten lakh rupees, with no imprisonment. Worth correcting in both directions: the prison risk went, and the financial ceiling doubled.
Part V opens with the words "In addition to Part-II". It is the catering-specific layer on top of the general requirements, not a replacement for them. Following one and not the other leaves most of the inspection sheet unanswered.
Asterisked questions produce Non-compliance regardless of the score. A kitchen can be at A grade on marks and still fail on a single asterisked question about signs of pest activity. Find the asterisked ones first, and see our pest control and hygiene audit checklist for what an inspector looks for.
Water, waste, power, work surface and holding space decide what you can safely serve. Finding out on the day that there is nowhere to hold food above 60°C turns a menu decision into an improvisation.
The allergen declaration and the veg or non-veg mark apply to food service establishments with no turnover threshold. Decide before the event whether it goes on a printed card, on buffet labels, or to the host, and make sure it is in a form a guest can actually use.
| Aspect | Before | With This Checklist |
|---|---|---|
| Licence route | Assumed registration is enough | Thresholds applied, petty route ruled out |
| Schedule 4 | Part V only, or neither | Part II and Part V, because V sits on top of II |
| Inspection | Found out the score on the day | Self-scored on the 47-question sheet first |
| Asterisked questions | Unknown | Identified and fixed before anything else |
| Transport | Food loaded, hoped for the best | Holding method per dish, two readings per journey |
| At the venue | Whoever is free keeps an eye on it | One named person, fixed check interval, written rule |
| Allergens | Mentioned if a guest asks | Declared in a form the guest can use, at any size |
Swipe the table sideways to see the full comparison.
Download the free FSSAI Catering Checklist and walk your kitchen with it this week.
Petpooja is India's leading SME business software suite, trusted by 1,50,000+ businesses across restaurants, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and more. From billing and payroll to task management and procurement Petpooja helps Indian businesses run better, every day.
Petpooja Tasks carries 150+ pre-built industry templates and AI auto-review with photo and video proof, so a temperature check comes back with evidence attached rather than a tick. Geofencing and geotagging confirm a check happened at the venue. Reminders go out on WhatsApp in 7 supported languages, and one plan covers unlimited users, which matters when half your event staff are on for a single day. Ask for a walkthrough against the pre-event list in section 09.
