Miracle Brews: a five-star hygiene rating, earned by the barista

How can a charity café or coffee cart pass its food hygiene inspection?

Keep one set of food safety records that meets the stricter of your council's and the Food Standards Agency's requirements, and make sure the people serving can use those records without you. For Miracle Brews, Petit Miracles' charity coffee cart, I wrote the HACCP plan, risk assessment, and manuals in a format designed for dyslexic and neurodivergent readers. At the inspection, the barista walked the inspector through the records alone. The cart was rated five stars.

Where they started

Petit Miracles upcycles furniture in Shepherd's Bush and uses the profits to fund training and jobs for people with disabilities and others who find work hard to come by. Miracle Brews, a coffee cart staffed by that community, was the next step. Before it could serve a single cup, it needed the paperwork every food business needs, and that paperwork had to work for the people who would actually use it.

What I did

• A pre-opening risk assessment and a HACCP plan, the food safety plan every food business needs.
• Health and safety documents, operations manuals, and training materials for the team.
• One standard, the strictest. Where the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and the Food Standards Agency asked for different things, I used the stricter of the two, so one set of records satisfied both.
• Documents designed for the reader. Most food safety paperwork is written for inspectors. These were written for the barista, who is dyslexic and neurodivergent: larger type, more space between lines, a soft grey background instead of glaring white, no capital-letter headings, very little colour, pictures alongside the words, and every process broken into numbered steps.

The result

On inspection day, the barista answered the inspector's questions and walked through the records without the founder in the room. Miracle Brews was awarded a five-star food hygiene rating, the highest there is.

The barista told me that, for once, he had been given something he could work with. That matters more to me than the stars.

What they said

"Working with Ben Sawyer was an excellent experience. As a hospitality consultant, Ben supported our social enterprise coffee initiative, Miracle Brews, by developing a comprehensive Health & Safety manual and a full HACCP plan for the project. His expertise and guidance ensured that our operational systems met the highest professional standards.

Miracle Brews creates supported employment opportunities for people with disabilities, so it was incredibly important that our food safety procedures were both robust and accessible for an inclusive workplace. Ben approached this with great care, designing the manual to be clear, practical, and dyslexia-friendly, ensuring it could be easily understood and used by a diverse team.

His professionalism and ability to translate complex compliance requirements into an accessible format made the entire process smooth and effective. Thanks to Ben's work, Miracle Brews achieved a 5-star Food Hygiene Rating, which was a major milestone for the project.

I would highly recommend Ben to any hospitality business or social enterprise looking for expert support in food safety, compliance, and operational systems."

Elicisia, Founding Trustee, Petit Miracles

What this means for you

If you are opening a café, a cart, or a kitchen, your food safety records are only as good as the person using them at eight on a busy morning. Write them for that person.

• Opening soon: the Pre-Opening Diagnostic, £695, or Plan, from £495 a month.
• Running a charity or social enterprise: how I work with charities.

Do I have to display my food hygiene rating?

It depends where you trade. In Wales and Northern Ireland, you must display your rating where customers can see it before they come in. In England, display is voluntary, but your rating is published online either way, and many guests check it. Scotland runs its own scheme, the Food Hygiene Information Scheme, which gives a Pass or Improvement Required rather than stars. Wherever you are, the result is public, so the records behind it matter.

Talk it through

Tell me what you are opening and who will be running it. I'll tell you what the inspector will want to see.