Business setup
Hi Valerie.
My name is Jonathan and my business partner and I are opening a new mobile catering business in Normandy, France. We are both from the UK and we have both been involved in the catering industry for many years.
My business partner and I are very well acquainted with all the regulatory/Health & Safety rules here in England, and all of our catering units are built and maintained to the highest standards and have all the necessary paperwork and certifications required here in the UK.
We are now branching into Europe, starting in France. We have already sourced a great location in Normandy, and we have a contract in place. We have registered a new business with Companies House here in the UK for this project, as we don’t want to mix it with our existing UK-based businesses. We have also created a new business bank account here in the UK with both Euros and GBP accounts. Please let me know if this is a sensible approach to opening a business in France?
We’re close to launching our new business and there are a few questions that I would like answered in order to ensure that our catering units meet all local and national regulatory requirements in France and are run in the most efficient and effective way.
1. Are the Health and Safety certificates and documents that we have here in the UK valid in France? We currently work with a business called NCASS and they specialize in high-quality Health and Safety certification for street food vendors here in the UK. (https://www.ncass.org.uk/). I can send you examples of our current Health and Safety documents if required?
2. Do we need to register our new food business with the local authority in France? If so, how do we go about this? Also, are there any other French authorities/governing bodies who we’ll need to register with? Please advise.
3. A quirky question: Our vans here in the UK have wooden counters/worktops. This is acceptable because our food products (hot dogs) are already cooked by our suppliers and we only re-heat them. Therefore, stainless steel counter tops are not necessary. What is the French standard for a work surface in a mobile catering unit?
4. We’re thinking of using the card readers from our new bank (Revolut) but I would like to ask if you can recommend any other companies that offer card machines/merchant accounts for UK businesses based in France? What would be you’re recommendation?
5. Can you recommend any hiring platforms (such as indeed.com) or any other methods that we can use to recruit new french-speaking staff for our business?
6. Can you offer a brief overview of the French taxation structure and anything we should be aware of going forward? What is the most tax-efficient and sensible way to operate our business? Currently, we’re UK-based so we will pay our taxes here. Please advise.
7. Can you recommend a company to handle our Frech payroll?
8. Public Liability and Emplyee liability insurance ... can you recommend anyone? I don’t think our current liability insurance policy is valid in France? The usual standard here in the UK is £10 million indemnity for both staff and employee liability. Please advise.
9. Please can you recommend any suppliers for the following: cooking utensils for catering vans, dessert sauces (chocolate etc), hot dog sauces, napkins, disposable cutlery, brioche hotdog buns (large)?
Many thanks Valerie!
Jonathan