Most people who consider selling food from home in Singapore eventually arrive at the same nervous question. Am I even allowed to do this from an HDB flat?
The answer is yes. There is an official framework for it, and it's called the Home-Based Business Scheme. It's the Housing Board's way of saying that small home businesses, including food businesses, are welcome under their roofs, as long as they don't get in the way of the families living next door.
It's a sensible scheme. It's not a licence. It's not an application form. It's a set of conditions that essentially say: keep it small, keep it quiet, and keep it neighbourly. If you can do those three things, you can run your home-based food business.
HDB isn't asking for a business plan. They're asking that you be a considerate neighbour while you build one.
What the Home-Based Business Scheme covers
The scheme allows HDB flat residents to run small-scale businesses from their flats to supplement their household income. The Home-Based Business Scheme is specifically designed for the kind of small, quiet operation that most home chefs run. The Housing Board describes it as a way to support residents who want to earn from home without converting their homes into commercial premises.
To stay within the scheme, your home business must meet a clear set of conditions. The full list is on the HDB website. The most important ones are:
✓ The business must be run by you and members of your household. You can't bring in non-resident staff or partners under this scheme.
✓ Your flat must remain primarily a home. The business cannot turn it into a commercial space, a shop, or a workshop.
✓ The business cannot disrupt your neighbours. No noise, smells, smoke, or movement of goods that affects the people around you.
✓ There should be no display, signage, or advertisement of your business at the flat.
✓ You cannot use heavy machinery or equipment that wouldn't normally be in a residential home.
✓ No physical retail. The flat is not a shop. Customers don't walk in to browse, and you don't display merchandise for sale.
Why this is good news for home chefs
If you read those conditions and think "that just sounds like normal cooking from home" you're right. That's the entire point. The scheme exists to support small-scale, low-impact home businesses, which is exactly what most home chefs run.
Home cooking on Ownmades is built around quiet, neighbourly operations. You cook the way you've always cooked, package orders for individual customers, and hand them over for collection. There's no signage. There are no walk-ins. The smells coming from your kitchen are the same smells your neighbours have been smelling for years.
In other words: if you've been cooking your favourite dishes from your HDB flat for as long as you've lived there, the Home-Based Business Scheme is most likely already designed around the way you operate.
Two final things worth knowing
The Home-Based Business Scheme is run by HDB. The food safety rules for what you cook are run by the Singapore Food Agency. They are separate frameworks that work together. HDB cares about how you operate from the flat. SFA cares about what you put on the plate. Both apply.
Also worth flagging: HDB has a separate scheme called the Home Office Scheme. That one allows up to two non-resident staff and is designed for office-style work. The Home-Based Business Scheme is the one that applies to home cooking, since you'll be operating with household members only.
READ THE OFFICIAL HDB GUIDANCE
Home Business
The full HDB hub page on running a home business from your flat. Includes both the Home-Based Business Scheme (for household members only) and the Home Office Scheme (for office-style work with up to two non-residents).
Read the full guidance on hdb.gov.sg
If everything checks out
And for most home cooks, it does. Then you have everything you need from the housing side of things. Your kitchen is your kitchen. Your neighbours stay your neighbours. And the small business you've been thinking about can quietly become a real one.
A note on this article: Ownmades is not affiliated with the Housing & Development Board. The summary above is written in our own words to help home cooks find official information. Scheme conditions can change. For the authoritative, complete, and current rules, read the HDB guidance directly. This article is not legal or regulatory advice. Different rules apply if you live in private housing, in which case URA's guidelines apply instead.
Your kitchen's already a business. We just help people find it.
