Complete your FDA food facility registration in the right order — the free DUNS number first, the registration itself second — and keep it from quietly expiring.
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By the end of this lesson you'll know whether you have to register with the FDA at all, the one free step you have to finish before you can register, how the registration itself works, and the renewal deadline that expires your registration if you forget it. This is the federal step for most packaged-food makers, and it trips first-timers in two predictable places: they don't know a number from Dun & Bradstreet has to come first, and they don't know the whole thing lapses every two years. Neither surprise costs money. Both cost time you won't have.
is a notification, not permission. You are not applying and waiting for a "yes." You are telling the FDA your facility exists, what it does, and where it is, so the agency knows to inspect you and can reach you fast in a recall. There's no inspection to pass to complete it and no fee to file it (FDA, How to Start a Food Business, verified July 2026).
That "it's free and there's no gatekeeper" quality is exactly why it slips. A license you pay for and wait on gets your attention. A free notification with an instant confirmation is easy to file late, file wrong, or forget to renew — and the law still treats those failures as operating out of compliance. So the goal here isn't just to do it; it's to do it in the right order and keep it valid.
The registration requirement lands on any facility that manufactures, processes, packs, or holds food for consumption in the United States. But several kinds of food operations are carved out. Under 21 CFR 1.226 (verified July 2026), the facilities that do not register include:
Exempt from the FDA is not exempt, period
Being carved out of federal facility registration does not free you from your state and local rules. A retail bakery skips FDA registration and still needs its state and city permits; a cottage operation working under a state exemption is still bound by that state's cottage law. Federal exemption is one layer only. Confirm your own status against 21 CFR 1.226 and note the date you checked.
If you make sauces, baked goods, blends, beverages, snacks, or condiments in a commercial space and sell beyond a home-kitchen cottage exemption, you almost certainly do have to register. The rest of this lesson is for you.
You cannot finish an FDA registration without a . Every registration has to carry a , and as of July 2026 the DUNS number is the only UFI the FDA recognizes as acceptable (FDA, How to Start a Food Business, verified July 2026). No DUNS number, no completed registration. This is the single most common thing first-timers don't see coming.
The good news: a DUNS number is free. You request it from Dun & Bradstreet, not from the FDA. The catch is time — Dun & Bradstreet says a standard free request can take up to about 30 business days, with a paid expedited option that's faster (Dun & Bradstreet, Get a D-U-N-S Number, verified July 2026). Because timelines and the accepted-identifier rule can both change, confirm the current turnaround on Dun & Bradstreet's page and the current UFI rule on the FDA's — and request your number early, before you sit down to register. A registration you can't finish because you're waiting on a number is a self-inflicted delay.
With your DUNS number in hand, the registration itself is a short online submission through the FDA's Industry Systems.
Create your FDA Industry Systems account
Registration runs through the FDA's online Industry Systems and its Food Facility Registration Module. You create an account there first (FDA, Online Registration of Food Facilities, verified July 2026).
Enter the required facility information
You provide the facility's name, full address, and phone; any trade names; the owner, operator, or agent in charge; the food product categories you make, pack, or hold; the type of activity for each; and your DUNS number as the UFI (21 CFR 1.232, verified July 2026).
Submit and save your registration number
On submission the FDA assigns your facility a registration number. Save it where you keep your legal records — you'll need it to renew, to update, and when an inspector or a customer asks.
Two timing points bind here. First, you must register before your facility begins to manufacture, process, pack, or hold food, not after (21 CFR 1.230, verified July 2026). Second, when your details change — a new address, a new owner or agent, a new product category — you update the registration, and the FDA gives you 60 days to do it. If you close the facility, you cancel the registration.
An FDA registration is not "set and forget." It expires unless you complete a every two years. By law, every registrant renews during the period beginning October 1 and ending December 31 of each even-numbered year (21 U.S.C. 350d, verified July 2026). Miss it, and the FDA treats the registration as expired and removes it — which means you'd be operating unregistered (FDA, How to Start a Food Business, verified July 2026).
Here's why this one bites. Because registration is free, nothing invoices you. There's no bill in the mail, no card on file that declines, no payment reminder to jog your memory. The only thing standing between you and an expired registration is your own calendar. First-timers who nailed the initial registration two years earlier are exactly the people this catches.
Put the window on a calendar you actually watch
The next renewal window is October 1 through December 31 of the current even-numbered year — 2026 as of this writing. Add a recurring reminder for October 1 of every even year, and confirm the live window on the FDA's page each cycle, since the rule and the accepted identifier can move. A free registration has no other tripwire.
FDA food facility registration is federal and uniform — the same everywhere in the country. That's the good news and the limit. It does not satisfy your state license or your local health permit; those are separate, additive, and vary by state and city — and they're the subject of the next lesson, on your state and local licenses. Whether the deeper FSMA preventive-controls rules apply to your operation is a different question again, worked through in do the rules even apply to me. For now, the federal box is the one in front of you: DUNS number first, registration second, renewal on the calendar.
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