Free Until Five: Forkto Is Free Until You Get Your 5

Today we’re launching something we’ve wanted to do for a long time.

If your food business in England, Wales or Northern Ireland currently holds a food hygiene rating of 3 or below, Forkto is free — until your next published rating is a 5. We call it Free Until Five. You don’t pay a penny while you climb, and nothing is charged unless you choose to carry on once you get there.

You can check your rating and claim your place in under a minute — the lookup runs live against the Food Standards Agency register. The rest of this post is why we’re doing it, exactly how it works, and the terms in full.

Why we’re doing this

Most software gets paid whether or not it delivers. We’ve never liked that, so we’ve tied our incentive directly to yours: Forkto only gets paid when your business gets its 5. If we don’t help you improve, we don’t earn anything. That’s the deal, in writing.

We can make that bet with a straight face because of what three years of working with UK food businesses has taught us: the rating follows the records. The element that traps most businesses below a 5 isn’t dirty kitchens — it’s confidence in management, the score an inspector gives your systems and paperwork. Complete, current, time-stamped records are precisely what Forkto produces as a by-product of running your day. We’ve watched that play out enough times to be comfortable staking our own revenue on it.

There’s also a fairness point. The businesses this helps most are the ones least likely to gamble on software. If you’re sitting at a 2 with a re-visit hanging over you, another monthly bill on a promise is a hard sell — and rightly so. So we’ve removed the gamble entirely. If Forkto doesn’t get you to your 5, it costs you nothing.

The numbers say this is a small, specific group with a big problem. Only 3.0% of rated UK food businesses sit below a 3, while 78.2% already hold a 5 (UK food hygiene rating statistics). But “3 or below” still covers around 42,000 businesses — cafés, takeaways, restaurants and shops that are compliant enough to trade, yet stuck under the standard their customers and the delivery platforms expect. If that’s you, this programme was built for you. And if you’re not sure whether a 3 is even a problem, we’ve written an honest answer: is a food hygiene rating of 3 bad?

Who qualifies, and how it works

Free Until Five is for any food business in England, Wales or Northern Ireland with a current FHRS rating of 3 or below, joining as a new Forkto customer. One location per business.

1. Check your rating. Look your business up — the tool pulls your current published rating straight from the FSA register.
2. Claim your place. Rated 3 or below? You’re in. Set up your account; no card is charged.
3. Get to your 5. Run your daily checks, temperature logs, cleaning sign-offs and records through Forkto. Everything is time-stamped and audit-ready — exactly the evidence an environmental health officer scores when they assess confidence in management.

Want to know which of the three scored areas is holding you back before you start? Run the free EHO readiness score — two minutes, and it points at your weakest element. Our action plan for going from 1 to 5 covers the whole climb in detail.

What happens when you get your 5

You tighten up your records and your routine, the EHO comes back, and your next published rating is a 5. That’s the moment this programme is built to reach.

At that point we get in touch — to congratulate you, first — and ask whether you want to continue on a paid plan, from £13 per month per location. Nothing is charged unless you say yes. And notice what you’d be paying for: not getting a 5 — you’ve already got it. Keeping it.

That distinction matters, because a 5 isn’t a trophy; it’s a standard you hold through every unannounced inspection that follows. The same daily discipline that won the rating is what maintains it, and ratings are rarely lost in a dramatic failure — they’re lost when the paperwork quietly goes stale. Our guide to a rating of 0 shows where that road ends.

The terms, in plain sight

No asterisks, no small print you need a lawyer for:

• Free until your next published rating is a 5, up to a maximum of 12 months.
• One location per business.
• New customers only.
• Subject to availability — we may close Free Until Five to new signups at any time. Businesses already in the programme keep their terms in full.
• After your 5: we ask whether you want to continue on a paid plan, from £13 per month per location. Nothing is charged unless you choose to.

No card while you’re in the free period. No automatic charge when your rating goes up. Continuing is a decision you make because the system is worth keeping — never one made for you.

Our side of the deal

Programme members get more than a login. You get close support from our team — real help setting up your checks and getting your records inspection-ready, because your result is now our result in the most literal sense.

What we ask of you is simple: use it properly. Records only lift a rating if they’re real and current. Make Forkto part of the daily routine and the evidence builds itself.

If you’re sitting at a 3, a 2, a 1 or a 0 and you’re ready to climb, check your rating and claim your place. We get paid when you get your 5 — and not before.