Becoming a caterer in France without qualifications: what the law requires

What French law says about qualifications

Since 1 July 2023, the list of activities reserved for qualified professionals sits in article L121-1 of the French Crafts Code (Code de l'artisanat), which took over from a 1996 law. For food, it covers preparing or making fresh bread, pastries, butchery, charcuterie and fish products, plus artisan ice cream. The word traiteur does not appear.

In practice, preparing meal trays, buffets and canapés and delivering them requires no diploma. Baking your own éclairs or making your own pâté en croûte can take you into a regulated trade: a qualification may then become necessary, yours or that of a qualified person who actually supervises production (a CAP, BEP or equivalent diploma in that trade, or three years of hands-on experience). Have your chamber of trades and crafts confirm your case.

Many caterers handle this without cutting corners: they buy bread and pastries from qualified artisans and focus on what they prepare themselves. That is an organisational choice, not a weakness. Clients judge a caterer on freshness, presentation and punctuality.

Required or not: the table

Myths run both ways: some people believe a cookery CAP is essential, others that a home kitchen will do. Here is what the texts in force actually require of a caterer starting out.

Hygiene: the only training that really matters

EU Regulation No 852/2004 applies to every food business, caterers included. Staff must receive instructions or training in food hygiene suited to their work, and the business must run procedures based on HACCP principles: identify hazards, set control points, monitor, correct, record.

The 14-hour course known in France as formation hygiène alimentaire is compulsory for commercial restaurants: restaurants, cafeterias, fast food. The Ministry of Agriculture's technical instruction of 3 April 2026 states that caterers registered under the catering services activity code are not covered. Watch the code you choose when registering: a caterer registered as fast food, for example, is covered.

Our advice is simple: take the course anyway. Two days are enough to understand the cold chain, temperatures, traceability and self-checks, and you leave with the outline of your food safety plan. During an inspection, that is the document you will be asked for, not a diploma.

The food safety plan, in practice

The plan de maîtrise sanitaire describes how your business keeps what it sells safe. It brings together good hygiene practice (cleaning, clothing, handwashing, pest control), the hazard analysis of your preparations, batch traceability and the handling of non-compliant products.

Day to day, it comes down to a few habits kept without exception: logging fridge temperatures every day, recording batch numbers of the food you receive, labelling each preparation with its date, discarding anything past its shelf life. The good hygiene practice guides published for the trade are a sound starting point.

Keep your records ready for inspection: temperature logs, batch numbers, cleaning schedules, delivery notes from your suppliers. Inspectors can visit without warning, and tidy records are the proof that your plan is applied, not just written.

Registering your premises before opening

Every establishment that prepares, stores or transports food of animal origin must be registered on form Cerfa 13984, before opening, with the departmental food safety authority. It is done online, in French, and must be updated whenever the operator, address or activity changes.

If French paperwork is not your strong point, you are not on your own. Chambers of trades and crafts (CMA) and chambers of commerce (CCI) advise future business owners, and the official entreprendre.service-public site translates part of its pages into English. For food safety questions, the departmental authority (DDPP) is the one that answers, and it is better to ask before opening than after an inspection.

Registration is enough to sell directly to the final consumer. Food safety approval, which involves a full file and an inspection visit, is only required to sell prepared dishes to intermediaries (a restaurant, a canteen, a shop that resells), apart from a limited exemption based on distance and quantities. Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 (article 3, point 18) defines the final consumer as the ultimate consumer of a foodstuff who does not use it as part of a food business operation. A company ordering for its own meeting seems to fit, but no text settles it expressly: to be confirmed with the DDPP in your department.

Choosing premises and budgeting for them is covered in what a catering unit costs to open.

The cold chain on delivery

The order of 21 December 2009 sets maximum storage and transport temperatures. A ready-prepared dish must be kept at +3 °C at most; a dish delivered hot must stay at +63 °C or above. Between your premises and the client, those temperatures are held with a refrigerated vehicle or suitable insulated containers.

Temperature-controlled transport equipment requires a certificate of conformity. Check yours before buying: a badly equipped van costs more to convert than to choose properly in the first place.

What replaces a diploma

A corporate client never asks for a diploma. They ask for the order to arrive on time, complete, fresh and well presented, and for a quick reply. Those are organisational skills as much as cooking skills: planning preparation, getting quantities per guest right, loading the van in the right order, setting up a buffet in ten minutes.

That is exactly what the Crozy Workshop teaches, the five-day training included when you open a Crozy in your area: the menu and the method, hygiene and organisation, preparing real orders, delivery and set-up, then tools and finding clients. Do you need to be a cook? No. You need rigour, compliant and registered premises (food safety status to be confirmed with the DDPP before opening), and pride in a job well done.

To see where these requirements fit in the whole journey, read how to start a catering business in France.