If you've already cooked for your family for years without anyone getting sick, here's some good news: you probably already know most of what's in this guide.
But once you start selling food to people outside your household, the standards get a little firmer. Not because home cooking is risky in itself, but because your customers are trusting you the way they'd trust a restaurant kitchen, and that trust is worth protecting.
The Singapore Food Agency has published a two-page guide for home cooks operating under the HDB/URA Home-based Small Scale Business Scheme. It's short, practical, and surprisingly readable. Here's the gist.
These aren't restaurant rules. They're the same habits any thoughtful home cook already practices. Written down, so there's no ambiguity.
The general principles
Before getting into the cooking, the SFA outlines a few baseline conditions for anyone running a home-based food business under this scheme:
✓ Comply with HDB and URA's Home-based Small Scale Business Scheme guidelines.
✓ Keep your food preparation areas clean and hygienic.
✓ Don't keep pets that roam freely in the house while you're operating.
✓ Don't sell food to licensed retail food establishments or at temporary fairs.
✓ Don't offer catering services. The scheme is designed for small-scale, made-to-order cooking. Larger jobs need a licensed kitchen.
✓ If you're cooking for a lot of clients or in large quantities, that's the signal to move into a proper licensed premises.
✓ Strongly encouraged: complete the Basic Food Hygiene Course (WSQ Food & Beverage Safety and Hygiene).
Personal hygiene (the non-negotiables)
Most of these are second nature for any cook, but worth running through:
✓ Wash hands with soap and water after handling raw food, before handling cooked or ready-to-eat food, after the toilet, after handling waste, and between tasks.
✓ Wear a face mask during food preparation and when handling cooked or ready-to-eat food.
✓ Use clean gloves or clean utensils when handling cooked or ready-to-eat food.
✓ If you're feeling unwell, don't handle food. Reschedule the order. Customers will understand. Food poisoning, they will not.
Ingredients (sourced and stored properly)
✓ Get your supplies from licensed or approved sources. No grey-market shortcuts.
✓ Use ingredients that are fresh, stored at the right temperature, and not past their expiry.
✓ Clean and wash everything thoroughly before use.
Storing food at home
✓ Store all food in covered containers.
✓ Store raw food in tightly sealed containers below cooked or ready-to-eat food in the fridge.
✓ Keep perishables refrigerated or frozen until you're ready to use them.
Defrosting safely
✓ Thaw food fully before cooking it.
✓ Cook thawed food immediately. Don't refreeze it.
✓ Only thaw the amount you'll actually use.
✓ Thaw in the fridge, in the microwave, or sealed in a plastic bag submerged in clean water and never on the counter.
Cooking and handling (the hot zone)
This is the part that catches most beginners out, and it's the part that matters most for keeping your customers safe.
✓ Use separate gloves, equipment, and chopping boards for raw food versus cooked or ready-to-eat food.
✓ Cook food thoroughly. No shortcuts on doneness.
✓ Keep hot foods above 60°C and cold foods below 5°C. The space in between is the danger zone where bacteria multiply fastest.
✓ Don't cook food too early. The longer it sits, the more chance for things to go wrong.
Keep your kitchen clean
Self-explanatory, but the SFA spells it out for the record:
✓ Clean all food prep surfaces and equipment regularly.
✓ Keep your fridge clean.
✓ Protect kitchen areas from pests.
✓ Practise good refuse management. Don't let waste pile up.
Why this matters
The reason these rules exist isn't to make life harder for home cooks. It's to make sure that the home-based food businesses that do exist are reliable, consistent, and safe enough that customers feel they can trust them. That trust is the foundation Ownmades is built on and it's the same trust that turns first-time orders into regular customers.
Reading the official guide takes about ten minutes. Internalising the habits takes about a week. Both are worth it.
DOWNLOAD THE OFFICIAL GUIDE
Guidelines on Food Safety & Hygiene Practices for Residents Preparing Food under the HDB/URA Home-based Small Scale Business Scheme
A two-page PDF published by the Singapore Food Agency. Covers personal hygiene, ingredient sourcing, food storage, defrosting, cooking, and kitchen cleanliness for home-based food businesses in Singapore.
Download the PDF from sfa.gov.sg
Already practising most of this?
Then you're closer to opening a home-based food business than you think. Save the PDF for reference, run through it once before you start, and revisit it whenever you scale up. The rest is up to your kitchen.
A note on this article: Ownmades is not affiliated with the Singapore Food Agency. The content above is a summary written in our own words to help our community find official information. For the authoritative, complete, and current rules, download and read the SFA's official PDF directly. This article is not legal or regulatory advice.
Your kitchen's already a business. We just help people find it.
