UK SIC 2007 · 56102
Unlicenced restaurants and cafes (SIC code 56102)
Unlicenced restaurants and cafes is UK SIC code 56102. It sits in division 56 (Food and beverage service activities) of the SIC 2007 list. On the August 2026 Companies House register, 43,551 active UK companies list 56102 among their SIC codes. 37,348 of them list it first. That makes it the third most used code in its division.
Division 56: Food and beverage service activities
Division 56 is about serving food and drink to eat now. It is the home of the UK hospitality trade. Takeaways and mobile food stands under 56103 form the biggest single group. Restaurants come next, split by alcohol licence. Licenced venues use 56101, and unlicenced restaurants and cafes use 56102. Pubs and bars register under 56302. Event caterers use 56210. Code 56290 collects other food services, such as contract catering and delivery-only kitchens. The codes track licensing and format, so they say a lot about how each business really runs.
Related SIC codes
Who prospects SIC 56102 companies
Hospitality churns fast and buys supplies constantly. That makes it one of the most worked sectors on the public record. Food and drink wholesalers, EPOS and card payment providers, delivery platform sales teams, utility brokers, insurance intermediaries and commercial kitchen fitters all mine these codes. Accountants add payroll and tronc support. A new incorporation usually means a site opening within months. That is the window for fit-out, systems and supplier deals. Websites are weak across takeaways and cafes, so the poor-website filter gives web designers and booking platforms an obvious first conversation.
Lead generation for commercial & B2B services →How to read SIC 56102
SIC 56102 is a five-digit code, and the digits are not arbitrary. The first two, 56, are the division, food and beverage service activities. Add the third and you have group 561; the fourth narrows it to a class, and the fifth to the subclass, which is the level Companies House actually asks a company to pick. The whole division sits under section I, accommodation and food service, the broadest tier there is. Reading a code left to right therefore goes from a whole sector down to one activity.
More on how SIC 56102 is built
A company chooses its own codes when it incorporates and can change them on any confirmation statement. It may list up to four, and Companies House does not check whether they are right. That is why 56102 is worth reading as a claim the company made about itself rather than as a verified fact, and why the first-position and any-position counts above differ.
Measured on the August 2026 register, the busiest registered-office post towns for 56102 are London (8,626), Birmingham (1,270), Manchester (919), Glasgow (917) and Leicester (536). Those are registered-office locations, which is where the paperwork sits rather than necessarily where the work happens, so treat them as where to start looking rather than as a service area.
Using SIC 56102 as a filter
43,551 companies is 0.84 per cent of the 5,190,464 active companies on the UK register, and ranks 56102 third most used of the 7 codes we track in division 56. That is the pool before any filter. Whether it is a big market for you depends on what you sell, but it is the number every other filter on this page cuts down from.
More on filtering by SIC 56102
Almost everybody who uses 56102 means it: 37,348 of 43,551 companies put it first, leaving only 6,203 carrying it as a secondary code. That makes it an unusually clean filter. You can match on the code alone and trust that the companies you get really are in this line of work.
These companies are spread out. London is the largest single cluster at 20 per cent and the top five post towns together hold only 28 per cent, so the remaining 72 per cent sits across the rest of the country. A regional filter narrows this list without gutting it, which makes it a reasonable code to work territory by territory.
In practice the code on its own is rarely the whole filter. Pair 56102 with an incorporation date to catch companies in their first months, when they are still choosing suppliers, or with a filing deadline to reach them while the year end is on their mind. A worked example for this code: 56102, registered office in London, incorporated in the last ninety days, which turns a 43,551 company pool into a list you can write to in an afternoon. Add the poor-website filter if what you sell is a website, or a recent change of officer if you sell to whoever just took the job. Every company you pull carries the Companies House record, the director's name, a verified website and a verified email, and the ones we cannot complete are not charged.
Where SIC 56102 clusters in the UK
ACTIVE COMPANIES BY REGISTERED-OFFICE POST TOWN · COMPANIES HOUSE REGISTER, AUGUST 2026
SIC 56102 companies, as leads
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About SIC 56102
How many UK companies use SIC code 56102?
43,551 active UK companies list 56102 (Unlicenced restaurants and cafes) among their registered SIC codes. Each company may register up to four. Of those, 37,348 put it first. The figures come from the August 2026 Companies House register snapshot, and count active companies only.
Is my cafe 56101 or 56102?
The split is purely about alcohol. If the venue holds a premises licence and serves alcohol with meals, use 56101, licenced restaurants. Cafes, coffee shops and restaurants with no alcohol licence use 56102. If you get a licence later, change the code on a confirmation statement. Companies House applies no check.
Which code should a food truck or mobile caterer use?
Code 56103 covers mobile food stands as well as takeaway shops. Street food trucks selling to the public usually register there. If you mainly cater pre-booked private and corporate events, 56210, event catering activities, fits better. Many operators do both and hold the two codes together. The four-code limit leaves plenty of room.
Find UK SIC 56102 companies
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