How to open a chocolate shop in budapest

Hello Chang and welcome to Expat.com

Hope that some members will be able to give you some information soon.

Regards
Kenjee
Expat.com Team

Most anything in food business will require a lot of paperwork. And if you make the product you will have to have your production place inspected. There are a lot of rules, such as if you make the chocolate at "home" you can not use your private home sink for your business, so you will have to install a second "business making chocolate only" sink, and it goes on from there. For example, to bottle wine I had to submit scaled architectural drawings of our cellar, production site, work process, equipment list, waste water treatment (all waste water, I found out to my surprise, is considered "sewage" in Hungary, there is no technical difference between "gray" versus "black" water here, and all waste water has to be treated as sewage), etc. etc. etc. Then they come for the on site inspection. Expect to end up having to buy a lot stainless steel (sinks, bowls, etc).

If you want to sell in a retail store you may have to either hire someone that has taken the state required course for running a retail store (bakery goods I suspect in this case) or take the retail sales course yourself to get the correct "eduction" certificate to run such a store.

I am not sure about a web distance only retail: you would still need the on site inspections and chocolate making permits, but probably not the store course.

And of course, you will have to start some type of business (sole proprietor, KFT, BT, etc) and pay all the regular monthly business taxes and fees each month.

However, if you own a farm house, you can request what is called a "small original producer" license, and you can grow and sell anything directly to consumers at farmer's markets or from your home (but you can not sell online as you must sell direct to the consumer in person) without having to take any retail courses or start a business. Of course, this probably will not work for chocolate since you would not be growing chocolate beans locally, but you can ask if you might be able to do that also with chocolate, and start there to see if you really want to get into retail in Hungary.

Hello Klsallee,

Thanks for the information, that helps a lot to get a picture to start my chocolate business.

Regards
Chang