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Comment by brianwawok | Hacker News Reader

Should it cost 200k in legal fees and 18 months of politics to open an ice cream shop? Is that the kind of world you want to live in?

I could open an ice cream shop in 90 days here... seems a bit more sane.

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I think the 200k was mostly rent.

You have to pay rent while you navigate the permitting and inspection process.

Edit: What I'm saying is that if you spend a year paying rent on an unopened shop while waiting on a permit, then that is properly understood as a cost of the permit.

Should it take a year to open an ice cream shop? I get it when you want to build a GW scale nuclear reactor or a vaccine manufacturing plant that it takes a year of permits or longer. But an ice cream shop.

No, obviously not. That's what I'm saying. If you spend a year paying rent on an unopened shop while waiting on a permit, then that is properly understood as a cost of the permit. What did you think I was saying? (I'll just edit the comment to make that clear.)

A year doesn't sound unreasonable. Especially for a person's first time. Even large franchises in midwestern strip malls can take 9+ months to get going.

Restaurants are harder than people are aware.

It was a year just for the permitting process. So its an extra year on top of the 9+ months of time that it takes to set up a restaurant since (if the article is to be believed) you can't do it in parallel.

The article says he started the lease in June 2019, 22 months ago. That means that $160,000 of his spend is rent. I would lay a lot of the blame for this at the feet of the landlord, who had someone who would renovate their building and increase its value but instead drained all their capital and ruined the venture.

Is 22 months too long? Totally. Unbelievably. Though I'm not sure I feel any of the steps listed in the article are inappropriate. The last 12 of those 22 months have been in a pandemic and I'm sure things have slowed. I guess what I'm trying to say is this seems like a poor example to use in judging the system. The landlord has so clearly done most of the damage in this instance.

$200k on legal fees? Outrageous! Let's see what the article says:

>$200,000 on rent, an architect, a lawyer, equipment and fees

Strange.

Yes you're right, it is actually ~ $140,400 on rent. Which you have to pay while you go through the permitting process. So while it's not the city that is collecting the money, it is the city policies that are creating the costs.

To me even 90 days is insane, at least in Indonesia, you could open an ice cream shop tomorrow in your own house if you would like

I think people in the US would generally hold that that's a bit too fast, because at a bare minimum you still want a set of basic inspections. For example:

- Health inspector to make sure that the place is acceptable for serving food (no bug infestations, freezers are operating at a food-safe temperature, proper equipment for hand-washing and cleaning everything)

- Fire inspector to make sure that the exits are accessible and working properly, smoke detectors and other emergency equipment is up to snuff, and that the operators know the allowable maximum capacity of the square footage

- Building inspector to make sure that nobody's knocked down a load-bearing wall or otherwise done any unsafe renovations, as well as to make sure that the shop is following local codes (for example, keeping people from putting up 24/7 flashing neon signs in residential areas)

In Sweden you have to notify authorities two weeks before opening. Not sure why they would need more time than that.

The latter two can be required if the landlord as a condition of renting a retail zoned space.

Regarding health inspection, the big one is sanitation. And that’s not something you just have a guy come in and check before the business opens. You have to inspect actual food, which means you do it after the restraunt opens.

two weeks, max... it is duable, but for a government that has contempt against small businesses, it will never make it happen.

Also, health inspections are recurring, and something that is done routinely

Fine, a week then.

Listeria can be a problem in ice cream shops without proper equipment and cleaning.

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