Councils Carry the Load for Scotland’s Facebook Food Sales

Food Standards Scotland has published seller rules for Facebook food after 9 of 476 Marketplace ads named a registered business. The same legal duties that sit on a high-street shop now sit on a home baker who trades in a listing. The officers who must find those bakers work for Scotland’s councils, not for the platform that hosts the ad.

FSS commissioned Taylor McKenzie Research to map ready-to-eat food on Facebook Marketplace, then used the findings to write public guidance for sellers and buyers. It was still pointing people to those pages in August 2026. The kitchens behind most of the ads never identified a council on the listing itself.

Cakes Dominated the 476 Facebook Ads

An online survey of 1063 people, weighted to resemble Scotland by age, gender and education, found that 21% had bought food on social media. FSS said that share is equivalent to nearly 1 million people. Among those buyers, 55% had used Facebook Marketplace, 50% Instagram and 12% X, so many had used more than one app. The main reasons given were supporting a local business (48%) and convenience (42%).

The ad trawl started with 619 unique Marketplace listings. After dropping ads that were not in Scotland, not ready-to-eat, or too vague to classify, 476 remained. Bakery and confectionery made up almost two-thirds of that ready-to-eat pool. Takeaway-style meals that were collected or delivered hot were 12.1%. High-risk items such as sushi and cured meats were 1.2%.

WHAT THE 476 ADS CONTAINED

FSS set that baseline in its December 2024 review of Marketplace food ads, and said it was often hard to tell whether a component was shop-bought or homemade. Urban areas showed more listings and a wider mix of foods than rural ones. A later willingness sample of 500 people who already bought food online at least every three months put bakery, dessert or takeaway-style food at 30%, and cured meats including jerky at 13%.

Registration Is Free and 28 Days Before Trading

The guidance FSS said it would write is now a public page. Selling food online, including on social media, is operating a food business. The same law applies as for any other food business. Sellers must register as a food business with your Local Authority at least 28 days before they start, or as soon as possible if they are already trading. Registration is free. Failure to register is an offence and can bring enforcement action.

WHAT A SOCIAL MEDIA SELLER MUST DO

• Register first: Give the council a phone number and email so officers can make contact, and complete food business registration under Article 6 of the hygiene rules.
• Name the council: State on the social profile or pages which local authority holds the registration.
• Run a safety system: Keep a HACCP-based food safety management system, with clean kit, trained handlers, temperature control and packaging that protects the food.
• Tell the truth on the label: Give clear, accurate information, including allergens, and keep traceability records so a product can be withdrawn or recalled.
• Answer the inspector: Respond to Environmental Health requests, including when officers cannot see a private or closed group and ask for the same material another way.

CookSafe and RetailSafe are the manuals FSS points to for those procedures. The seller page also tells traders to notify the council if the address changes, if the type of food changes, or if the business closes. That is not new law. It is the ordinary food-business rule, restated for people who thought a Facebook listing sat outside it.

Selling food on social media? 📱

Selling food online means you’re operating a food business and the same legal requirements apply as for any other food business.

Visit our website to find out what you need to know: https://t.co/1PbZwavhFb pic.twitter.com/05OJI3mmA5

— Food Standards Scotland (@FSScot) August 10, 2026

On 10 August 2026 the official FSS account repeated the same line it had put on the website: selling food online means you are operating a food business, and the same legal requirements apply. Four days later it posted the companion note for buyers.

Who Inspects a Kitchen That Never Registered?

The hidden workload sits with local authority Environmental Health. Scotland has 32 of those authorities. They discuss registrations, arrange inspections, investigate complaints and give advice. If a business trades through social media, officers may review the online content. If they cannot open it, they can demand the information in another format. During an inspection they assess the premises, the process and the records.

That model assumes the council knows the kitchen exists. Of the 476 ads, 9 of 476 stated that the seller was registered. FSS said more businesses were probably registered and simply did not mention it, because a registration would be a selling point. Even on that reading, the listing itself rarely did the work of identifying a competent authority. A cake can go live without a food-business number, and the first person who has to notice is a buyer or a neighbour, not an algorithm at checkout.

Private and closed groups widen the gap. FSS tells officers they may not be able to see the content and will have to ask for it. An unregistered baker who never files, never names a council, and sells inside a group the public cannot search is not on the inspection rota until someone complains. Environmental health staff in the rest of the UK work under the same registration-first design, which is why the Scottish survey reads as a map of a wider blind spot rather than a local quirk.

Registered shops still have to take the inspection, display a hygiene rating, and put allergen information where a customer can use it before they pay. The home seller who never registers avoids that queue until a council finds the listing. The guidance does not change who holds the legal duty. It tells the seller to walk into the system that already exists.

Four Ads out of 476 Named an Allergen

Allergen law is not optional for a Facebook bake. Distance sales, including social media, require allergen information before the purchase, not in a chat after the money has gone. The food information rules including allergen labelling name 14 substances that must be declared when they are used as ingredients, among them cereals containing gluten, milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, soya, sesame, fish, crustaceans, molluscs, mustard, celery, lupin, and sulphur dioxide.

THE ALLERGEN GAP IN THE ADS

• Declared on the ad: 4 ads stated the presence or possible presence of allergens in the product.
• Asked the buyer: 6 ads asked to be told about allergies, said food was prepared in a kitchen handling allergens, or mentioned an allergen-awareness certificate.
• Named a council: 9 of 476 ads stated the seller was registered.
• Packed on site: From 1 October 2021, food packed on the premises before sale needs the name of the food and a full ingredient list with those 14 allergens emphasised.

A listing that says “message me for details” pushes the legal moment of disclosure into a private thread. That is the wrong order for someone who will react to milk in a ganache or nuts in a crumb. FSS’s buyer page now tells customers to ask the seller if they are registered and to ask for ingredients, including the chance of cross-contact in the same kitchen. The duty still sits on the seller. The ad, in most cases, did not discharge it.

No Dedicated Lab Survey of Marketplace Food

Local authority officers also flagged unregistered microgreens grown at home, a product with known microbiological risks, and said that trade could grow if import delays after EU exit pushed more growing indoors. The targeted search of the Marketplace set found 3 sushi ads, 2 microgreens ads and 2 salami ads, one of them homemade. There were no ads in that pass for smoked fish, sprouted seeds or jerky. FSS still treated their presence as a reason to make sure sellers know how to produce higher-risk foods safely.

The contractor report noted that no published study had reported the microbiological quality of food sold over social media. FSS’s own response recommended a survey of that quality, or allergen testing of products from these channels, to measure the risk rather than infer it from ad text. In the public record that followed, the seller and buyer pages appeared. A Marketplace-specific lab survey did not.

FROM THE SURVEY TO THE PUBLIC PAGES

1. 27 November to 22 December 2023: Taylor McKenzie runs the 1063-person omnibus on social-media food buying in Scotland.
2. 10 December 2024: FSS publishes the Marketplace review and says it will write tailored guidance for small-scale sellers on registration and the duties of a food business operator.
3. 19 May to 7 August 2025: Food and You 2 Wave 11 fields 1555 adults in 1091 Scottish households; 8% of online respondents (base 958) say they have ever ordered food or drink through social media such as Facebook, Instagram or Nextdoor, and 4% say they nowadays eat food ordered that way.
4. 10 August 2026: FSS is still posting the seller rules, with the buyer companion following on 14 August 2026.

The 8% figure is a different question from the 21% omnibus, asked later of a different sample, and it should not be read as a correction of the earlier share. It does show that a large, official consumer survey still finds social-media food orders far behind restaurant websites (67%) and apps such as Just Eat, Deliveroo or Uber Eats (60%). Another 14% said they eat food from a home kitchen. The Marketplace bake sits in that thinner, harder-to-see slice, which is exactly where a register-based inspection system is weakest.

Ask Which Council Registered the Seller

FSS now tells buyers to treat a social-media food ad like any other food business. If the listing does not name a local authority, ask. If anyone who will eat the food has an allergy, ask for ingredients and for what else is handled in the same kitchen. Think about how the food will be kept hot, chilled or frozen on the journey. Check the use-by or best-before date on arrival, and query a date that looks longer than a shop product of the same kind. Storage and reheating instructions should come with the food when they are needed.

Social media platforms are transforming how people buy food and this research has provided a baseline to help us to understand the variety and scale of this method of selling in Scotland. This convenience, however, might come with risks and it is essential that both buyers and sellers understand the nature of these types of foods so they can make informed choices. Sellers may not have the knowledge to produce safe food, particularly if they are producing higher risk foods.

Dr Karen Pearson, senior scientific advisor, Food Standards Scotland

The webpage and the August posts close the gap FSS said it would close in 2024. They do not put a registration field on a Marketplace ad, and they do not put an inspector in a kitchen that never filed. Until a listing names a council, the person with the legal power to walk through that door still has to be told that the door exists.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do You Need to Register to Sell Food on Facebook in Scotland?

Yes. Anyone who sells food or drink on social media must register with their local authority, provide a contact phone number and email, and tell that authority if the address, the type of food, or the business itself changes, including if it closes. Registration is free, should be completed at least 28 days before trading starts, and failure to register is an offence that can bring enforcement action.

What Foods Appeared Most Often in the FSS Marketplace Study?

In the more detailed breakdown, cakes where the seller did not say whether fresh dairy cream was used were 32.8% of foods recorded, followed by confectionery at 7.4%, cheesecakes at 5.8%, biscuits at 5.4% and South Asian-style takeaway meals at 4.2%. Fresh cream, which raises microbiological risk, was often impossible to confirm from the ad text alone.

What Allergen Information Must a Social Media Food Seller Give?

Allergen information for a distance sale must be available before the customer buys, not only on request after payment. The 14 allergens required by food information law have to be declared when they are used as ingredients, and from 1 October 2021 food packed on the same premises before sale also needs the product name and a full ingredient list with those allergens emphasised in the list.

Does the Same Law Cover Instagram and Other Apps?

Yes. FSS’s seller rules apply to food sold online, including via social media, without carving out a separate Instagram or TikTok regime. In the 1063-person omnibus, 50% of people who had bought food on social media had used Instagram and 12% had used X, so the same registration, hygiene and allergen duties already cover the apps that sit beside Marketplace.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of Food Standards Scotland research and public guidance on social-media food sales. It is informational only and is not medical, legal or food-hygiene advice for any specific product, allergy or business. Readers who sell food, who have a food allergy or intolerance, or who think they became unwell after a purchase should consult their local authority Environmental Health team and, for medical symptoms, a qualified doctor or allergy specialist before acting. Figures and page contents reflect the FSS survey, guidance and consumer survey cited here and may change if those publications are updated.