How to Start a Tiffin Service From Home in India

To start a tiffin service from home, you need FSSAI Basic Registration, a kitchen your building allows you to cook commercially in, a short rotating menu, a price per meal worked out from your actual costs, and a delivery radius you can cover before the food goes cold. The licence is the cheap, easy part. Pricing and delivery are where home tiffin services succeed or quietly stop.

One thing to fix before anything else: many guides still say FSSAI Basic Registration only covers turnover up to ₹12 lakh. That changed on 1 April 2026.

Key takeaways

• FSSAI Basic Registration covers food businesses with turnover up to ₹1.5 crore since 1 April 2026, up from ₹12 lakh, and costs about ₹100 a year.
• Your housing society and municipality decide whether you can cook commercially from your flat. Check before you spend.
• Price per meal from your real costs: ingredients, packaging, gas and delivery. Then build monthly plans on top.
• A tiffin service lives or dies on a fixed delivery radius and fixed delivery times.
• Below ₹20 lakh of turnover a year, most home food businesses don't need GST registration.

The licence: FSSAI Basic Registration

Every food business in India needs FSSAI registration or a licence, including one run from a home kitchen. The tier depends on turnover, and the limits were raised sharply from 1 April 2026, per FSSAI's own reforms release.

A home tiffin service will sit in Basic Registration for a long time. Even 200 meals a day at ₹120 comes to about ₹88 lakh a year, well inside the limit. If a guide or an agent tells you that you need a State Licence because you passed ₹12 lakh, they are working from the old rules.

You apply on FSSAI's FoSCoS portal with ID proof, a photograph, proof of the premises address and a list of what you will make. Registrations are perpetually valid now, though the annual fee still applies. Miss the annual fee, though, and the registration is now "deemed suspended" automatically; see FSSAI license renewal in 2026. Your FSSAI number has to appear on your packaging, so get it before you print anything. The full list, including the local trade licence, is in cloud kitchen licences in India.

Check your building first

FSSAI makes your food legal. It doesn't make your flat a legal place to run a business from. That is decided locally, by your municipality's rules on commercial activity in a residential unit, and by your housing society's bye-laws. A society can restrict commercial use and fine members who break its rules, and delivery traffic and cooking smells are usually what start the complaint.

Read the bye-laws, and if you rent, the clause in your agreement about commercial use, before you buy a single extra container. We go through this in detail in how to start a cloud kitchen from home.

Work out your price per meal

Most home tiffin services underprice because they cost the food and forget everything else. Cost one meal properly:

Add those up, then set the price. Here is an illustration with assumed numbers, not a benchmark: if ingredients come to ₹55, packaging ₹12, gas ₹5 and delivery ₹15, the meal costs ₹87 before you've paid yourself anything. At ₹120 a meal you keep ₹33. Twenty-two working-day lunches for 40 subscribers then earn about ₹29,000 a month before your own time. Put your own numbers in, and if you want the ingredient side worked out with yield, our free food cost calculator does it per dish.

Plans, not just meals

The tiffin model works because of subscriptions. A subscriber who has paid for a month tells you how much to cook, which cuts waste, and pays you before you buy ingredients.

Typical structures are a trial of a few days, then weekly and monthly plans, with lunch only, dinner only, or both. Set clear rules for pauses and cancellations at the start: how much notice a subscriber has to give to skip a day, and whether unused days carry over. Writing the rule down once saves an argument every week.

Take payment upfront by UPI, and keep a simple sheet of who is active, who has paused and who has paid. Once you pass a few dozen subscribers, a missed name on that sheet is a missed lunch and a lost customer.

A menu that rotates without growing

Subscribers eat your food five or six days a week, so the menu has to change, but the kitchen can't. The trick is a fixed structure with rotating dishes: a dal, a sabzi, rotis and rice every day, with the dal and sabzi rotating on a weekly cycle and one special day. Publish the week's menu in advance so subscribers know what's coming and you can buy for it.

Choose dishes that hold for an hour between cooking and eating. Gravies, dals, dry sabzis and rice travel well. Anything fried and crisp does not. The same thinking for delivery menus generally is in cloud kitchen menu ideas.

Delivery: a radius and a time

Fix a delivery radius you can actually cover, and a delivery window, such as lunches between 12:30 and 1:30. A tight area means one delivery run covers everyone while the food is still warm. Offices and PGs within a couple of kilometres are the classic first customers because one drop serves many people.

Decide early whether you deliver yourself, hire a delivery person, or use a local courier. And decide between disposable containers and steel tiffins. Steel looks better and costs less per meal over time, but only if you collect and wash them reliably, and lost tiffins are a real cost.

GST and the delivery apps

Food is treated as a service for GST, so the registration threshold is ₹20 lakh of turnover a year, or ₹10 lakh in some special-category states. Below that, a home tiffin service selling directly usually doesn't need to register.

Listing on Zomato or Swiggy changes that calculation, and their document lists differ. If you're considering it, read whether you need GST to sell on Zomato and Swiggy first. Most home tiffin services start with direct orders over WhatsApp, where you keep the whole price. Baking instead of cooking meals? The licence is the same but the labels and GST rate differ; see how to start a home bakery business. Selling chai on a busy street instead? See how to start a tea stall business. Cooking for events rather than daily meals? See how to start a catering business.

FAQ

Do I need an FSSAI licence for a tiffin service?

Yes. Every food business needs FSSAI registration, including one run from home. A home tiffin service with turnover up to ₹1.5 crore needs only Basic Registration, which costs about ₹100 a year. That limit was raised from ₹12 lakh on 1 April 2026, so older guides quote the wrong figure.

How much does it cost to start a tiffin service from home?

Very little compared to a restaurant, because you already have the kitchen. The main early costs are FSSAI registration at about ₹100 a year, containers or steel tiffins, extra utensils and your first stock of ingredients. Delivery is the cost that keeps running, so plan it before you take orders.

How do I price a tiffin meal?

Add the cost of ingredients, packaging, gas and delivery for one meal, then add what you want to earn per meal. Many new services price on ingredients alone and lose money. Build weekly and monthly plans from that per-meal price rather than guessing a monthly figure.

Can I run a tiffin service from a rented flat?

Possibly, but check your rental agreement's clause on commercial use and your housing society's bye-laws first. A society can restrict commercial activity and fine members who break its rules, and a landlord's objection can end the business quickly. FSSAI registration alone doesn't settle this.

Do I need GST registration for a home tiffin service?

Usually not below ₹20 lakh of turnover a year, or ₹10 lakh in some special-category states, when you sell directly. Listing on a delivery app can change that, because the platforms have their own requirements. Check before you list rather than after.

What to do next

Do it in this order: read your society bye-laws and rental agreement, apply for FSSAI Basic Registration on FoSCoS, then cost one meal properly before you announce a price. Start with a single meal, lunch or dinner, for a small radius, and grow the radius only when deliveries run on time.

If you later open a place where guests sit down and eat, book a short dineomAI demo and see ordering and GST billing handled at the table.