Selling Food Online From Your Own Shopify Store in India

Selling snacks, sweets, spices, pickles or health foods from your own Shopify store is one of the most common D2C starts in India, and also one of the most regulated. Before the first order ships, you need the right FSSAI registration or licence, a product page that shows what the food label shows, and a delivery plan that respects shelf life. This guide covers the April 2026 change to FSSAI turnover limits, what your product pages must display, and how to set all of it up on Shopify.

FSSAI details are from the FSSAI order of 13 March 2026 on revised turnover thresholds, the FSSAI press release of the same date, the FSS (Labelling and Display) Regulations 2020 compendium (Version VII, 3 April 2025), FSSAI's advisory to e-commerce food businesses dated 3 December 2024, and the FoSCoS eligibility document. Shopify details are from the Shopify Help Centre. All checked on 9 October 2026. This is general information, not legal advice. Confirm your category with FSSAI's FoSCoS portal or a food licensing consultant before you apply.

Do you need an FSSAI licence to sell food from your own website?

Yes. Every food business in India needs either an FSSAI registration or an FSSAI licence, and selling online does not remove that. What changes is which one you need, and that depends mainly on your turnover and on what you actually do: manufacture, repack, relabel, store or only sell.

A common mistake is to treat the Shopify store as the business and forget the kitchen or unit behind it. FSSAI regulates the food activity. If you make the product yourself, your manufacturing premises need to be covered. If a co-packer makes it under your brand, both of you have obligations, and your label has to carry the right licence details. Sort out who holds which licence before you design packaging, because the licence number goes on the label.

Registration, state licence or central licence, which one applies after April 2026?

FSSAI changed the turnover limits this year, and a lot of advice online still quotes the old numbers. By an FSSAI order dated 13 March 2026, effective from 1 April 2026, the thresholds are:

The order says it "supersedes all other earlier orders and regulations with respect to turnover thresholds or criteria" for categorising food businesses. FSSAI's press release on the same reforms adds that registrations and licences will now have perpetual validity instead of periodic renewal.

For most founders starting out, this is good news. A new brand with turnover under Rs 1.5 crore now falls in the registration band rather than needing a state licence. Turnover is not the only criterion, though. Some activities have their own rules. The FoSCoS eligibility document, for example, lists exporters under a central licence with no turnover limit. Check your exact activity on FoSCoS before assuming registration is enough.

Does selling online put you in the e-commerce licence category?

This is the question founders ask most, and the honest answer is that it needs checking for your case. FSSAI's FoSCoS eligibility document lists "E-Commerce" as a category needing a central licence with "No limit on Capacity or Turnover". It also lists a Head Office or Registered Office licence for food businesses with activities in two or more states.

Two things make this less clear-cut than it looks:

• The document predates the March 2026 order. It still shows the old Rs 12 lakh registration limit, so it has not been refreshed since the new thresholds came in.
• The e-commerce category was written with platforms in mind. FSSAI's e-commerce guidance is mostly about operators that list other sellers' food and handle orders for them. A brand selling only its own products from its own website is in a different position from a marketplace.

Our advice is practical. Run your activities through the FoSCoS eligibility check, and if the answer is unclear, get a written view from a food licensing consultant before launch. A wrong category is cheap to fix before you start selling and awkward to fix after an inspection.

What must your Shopify product page show under FSSAI labelling rules?

Your product page has to give the buyer the label information before they buy. Regulation 4(2) of the FSS (Labelling and Display) Regulations 2020 says that when food is sold through e-commerce or any other direct selling means, "the mandatory requirements of the label as given in these regulations shall be provided to the consumer through appropriate means before sale". The exceptions are batch or lot number, best before, use by, expiry date and date of manufacturing or packing, which naturally change from pack to pack.

Regulation 5 lists what a label must carry. In practice, your product page should show:

One more rule matters for marketing copy. FSSAI's December 2024 advisory says product claims online "must be fully aligned with the information provided on the product's physical label". If the pack does not say "high protein" or "no added sugar", your product description should not say it either. This catches many brands whose website copy was written separately from the packaging.

How do you show FSSAI details on Shopify product pages?

Use metafields rather than pasting everything into the description. Shopify describes metafields as a way to "extend an existing platform data model, such as products, customers, and orders with your own custom data". For a food store, that means defining fields such as ingredients, nutrition table, veg or non-veg, allergens, FSSAI licence number, manufacturer name and address, net quantity and shelf life, and filling them in for each product.

Shopify's help page explains that if your theme supports dynamic sources, you can connect most metafields to your product page from the theme editor. Older themes, or some metafield types, need a small theme code change. Our guide to Shopify metafields and metaobjects goes through the setup.

Doing it this way has three benefits:

• Every product shows the same fields in the same place, so nothing mandatory gets left out when someone adds a new product in a hurry.
• You update one field, not one paragraph. If the manufacturer address or licence number changes, you change data rather than rewriting copy.
• Your site matches your packaging. The person who updates the label artwork can update the same fields in Shopify.

Put the FSSAI logo and licence number in the footer as well, so it appears on every page. Product layout matters here too. Our notes on product page design cover how to fit compliance details in without burying the add to cart button.

What does FSSAI's shelf life rule mean for your stock and dispatch?

It means you cannot ship old stock. FSSAI's advisory to e-commerce food businesses, dated 3 December 2024, says that "FSSAI mandates that products must have a minimum shelf life of 30% or at least 45 days before expiry, at the time of delivery."

The rule is measured at delivery, not dispatch, so courier time counts against you. Plan for it in three places:

• Inventory. Track batches and expiry dates in your warehouse or inventory tool, and dispatch oldest first only while the stock still clears the shelf life rule at delivery.
• Short shelf life products. For fresh sweets or bakery items, the rule pushes you towards local delivery or fast courier services, and away from slow surface shipping to far pin codes.
• Festive stock. With Diwali on 8 November 2026, brands making large batches of sweets and gift boxes in October need to check that the last orders will still meet the rule when they arrive.

The same advisory says food and non-food items should be delivered separately to avoid cross-contamination, and that last-mile delivery staff should be trained in safe handling. If you use a third-party fulfilment partner, put these points in writing with them.

How do you ship perishable food from a Shopify store?

Split your catalogue by how far each product can safely travel, then set delivery options to match. Shopify gives you two tools for this.

Shipping profiles. You can create up to 99 custom shipping profiles, so products that can travel anywhere sit in one profile and short shelf life products sit in another with limited zones and faster rates. Shopify's shipping profiles page covers how to group products.

Local delivery. Shopify's local delivery lets you offer delivery "within a set distance from your location, or for certain postal codes". You can add up to 10 delivery zones per location, each with its own price and an optional minimum order. This suits a sweet shop or bakery that wants to sell fresh products in its own city while shipping packaged items nationally.

For national shipping, choose a courier setup that gives you reliable delivery times to the pin codes you sell to. Our comparison of a shipping aggregator or direct courier covers the trade-offs, and our guide to showing delivery dates on Shopify helps you set honest expectations at checkout.

What about GST on food products?

GST on food depends on the product, whether it is packaged and labelled, and its HSN classification. We are not going to quote a rate here, because the right answer depends on your specific products. Confirm the HSN code and rate for each product with your CA, then set them up in Shopify. Our GST setup guide for Shopify explains how tax settings and invoices work once you have those answers.

Your FSSAI registration and your GST registration are separate. Having one does not cover the other, and payment gateways usually ask for business documents during onboarding, so keep both sets ready.

What should a food brand settle before launching on Shopify?

Work through this list before you remove the store password:

1. Licence category confirmed on FoSCoS for every activity: manufacturing, repacking, storage, selling, and whether you sell across state lines.
2. Licence or registration issued, and the number printed on packaging and shown on the site.
3. Packaging artwork checked against Regulation 5 of the labelling regulations, with net quantity and consumer care details as required under Legal Metrology rules.
4. Product page fields set up as metafields, with every mandatory label item filled in for every product.
5. Website copy checked against the physical label, so no claim appears online that is not on the pack.
6. Shelf life plan in place, so that every order meets the 30% or 45 days rule at delivery.
7. Shipping profiles and local delivery zones set by how far each product can safely travel.
8. GST rates confirmed by your CA for each HSN code.

If you are building a broader health or wellness food range, our guide to launching a wellness D2C brand on Shopify covers the parts of the launch beyond compliance.

Planning to sell food online from your own Shopify store?

Free food store compliance review. Get in touch or email hello@exactwhy.com with the subject "Food Store on Shopify" and your store URL or a link to your current packaging. Tell us what you sell, where it is made and where you want to deliver. We reply within 4 hours with a list of the product page fields you need, how to split your catalogue for shipping, and the questions to settle with your licensing consultant and CA.

If you go ahead. We build the store with product metafields for every mandatory label item, a product page layout that shows them clearly, shipping profiles and local delivery zones that match your shelf life, Indian payment gateway and courier setup, and a launch check of every product against your packaging.