phishphood

Licensing is usually state, county and sometime city specific. You will need to check with your local city hall.

Usually the distribution of licenses is per capita, i.e. for so many people you can have xx licenses. In Boston you can't get a license unless you legally purchase it on a secondary market or have relatives in the town hall or are prepared to bribe your way through (see Diane Wilkerson case)

In Florida, where I operated a restaurant for a bunch of years, it is much easier to get a license if you have a kitchen and do certain percentage of revenues in food sales; the total time to get one from scratch I think was 3 month or so and the total cost was few hundred dollars.

Your biggest problems are employee theft and liability issues. Theft usually comes in 3 forms, theft of product, theft of time and outright theft of money. Liability is usually silly lawsuits, I had a cook who fried his elbow in a deep fryer while high, I had slip and falls, I had broken teeth, fights, orgies in a bathroom, etc.

If you could - get an experience person and partner with him for first few years, you will be thankful that you did.

In terms of business I did well, I turned the place around and it started posting positive cashflows (excluding my take)

In terms of personal toll it was very high, had it gone for few month longer it would have ended in a divorce and hospital most likely, due to physical and mental exhaustion.

I sold the restaurant and moved on back to the start-up world

I bought and ran a restaurant as part of my mid-life crisis/being bored with the computers.

I can vouch that pretty much everything he says is true