Hospitality property requirements explained

Every requirement for a restaurant, bar or venue traces back to one number: how many people will be inside at once. That figure, the occupant load, is set by the building official from the floor plan, and it drives the exits, the restrooms, the ventilation, the sprinklers and the license conditions. Design the room before you know the number and you will design it twice.

The second thing to understand is how many separate bodies have a say. A hospitality opening is approved by five or six authorities plus the landlord, each with its own documents, and none of them coordinate with the others on your behalf.

What to take away

• Get the occupant load determined early. Most of the physical requirements follow from it.
• List every authority with a say over your address, what each decides, and what each needs from you. Then sequence them.
• The use table for the address and the licensing rules for your operation are local. Ask the offices, in writing, before the lease binds you.

Everything starts from the occupant load

Ask an architect or the building department, early, what the occupant load of the space would be with your intended layout. Then work outward.

• Exits. The number, width and separation of exits depend on the load. Where a jurisdiction has adopted it, the Life Safety Code is one of the documents those requirements come from. A room that seats what you hoped may need a second exit the unit does not have.
• Restrooms. The count of fixtures, and whether customers and staff can share them, is set by the load and by the local code.
• Ventilation. Fresh air for the dining room is calculated per occupant. Extract for the kitchen is calculated from the cooking line. Both must be balanced by supply air.
• Sprinklers and alarms. Above certain loads, or for certain uses, the fire code requires systems the shell may not have.
• Accessibility. Entrance, circulation, counters, seating and restrooms must all work for customers with disabilities, and the obligations are shared between landlord and tenant in ways that should be written into the lease.
• License conditions. Alcohol and entertainment licenses are often issued for a stated capacity, which may be lower than the building's load.

If the load the building can support is below what your business plan needs, the site is wrong, however good the street. That is a first-visit question, not a design-stage one.

The bodies that have a say

Authority	What it decides	What it needs from you	When to ask
Planning or zoning office	Whether the use is permitted at the address, hours, outdoor seating, signage	Description of the operation, hours, seating, any entertainment	Before the offer
Building department	Occupant load, exits, structure, permits for the works	Plans, engineer's drawings, contractor details	Before design is fixed
Health or food safety authority	Kitchen layout, surfaces, sinks, storage, waste, food handling	Kitchen plan, menu, equipment schedule, process description	Before the kitchen is designed
Fire authority	Exits, extinguishing systems, hood suppression, occupancy limits	Plans, hood and suppression details, seating layout	Alongside building review
Licensing authority for alcohol	Whether a license will issue for the premises and operator, and with what conditions	Floor plan, ownership details, hours, security plan, sometimes a hearing	As soon as the site is identified
Entertainment or noise licensing	Music, late hours, outdoor sound	Description of events and hours, sometimes an acoustic report	With the alcohol application
The landlord	Design, hours, exhaust route, roof rights, deliveries	Design package, services plan, insurance	Throughout

Health authorities in the United States generally regulate against a version of the FDA Food Code, adopted with local amendments, so the edition your inspector uses and any local additions are things to ask about directly rather than assume.

How to conduct the planning enquiry and what a conditional answer means is set out in zoning and permits. The license contingency, and why it should sit in the lease, is the central argument of hospitality property.

How to find out what the address permits

The steps are the same everywhere; the answers are not.

1. Locate the address on the zoning map and read the use table. Restaurants, bars, takeaways and venues are usually separate lines, and each may be permitted, conditional or absent in the district.
2. Ask about distance rules. Many licensing regimes restrict alcohol sales near schools, places of worship or residential zones, or cap the number of licenses in an area.
3. Ask about hours, outdoor seating and entertainment as separate items. Each may need its own approval.
4. Check the overlays: historic districts, entertainment districts, residential adjacency rules.
5. Ask whether the previous occupant's approvals were personal or attached to the premises, and whether any have lapsed.
6. Put each question in writing, describe your operation honestly, and keep the replies with the lease file.

If any answer is uncertain when the lease is ready, the lease should be conditional on it with an outside date. A verbal assurance from anyone in the deal is not a substitute.

What the building must be able to give you

The physical checks are listed in the pillar article and are not repeated here. The requirement stage is about writing them as numbers you can test: exhaust capacity for your cooking line, make-up air to match, electrical service for the equipment schedule, gas if the menu needs it, grease interception sized to the operation, refrigerated waste storage if the volume requires it, and a delivery route that works at the hours deliveries arrive.

Bring the equipment schedule and the menu to the first visit. An engineer can tell from those whether the shell is capable, and that answer rules sites out before any design fee is spent.

The documents you will be asked for

Prepare these before you make an offer, because several authorities and the landlord will each want a version.

• A description of the concept: menu, service style, hours, seating, any entertainment or outdoor use.
• A floor plan showing seating, bar, kitchen and exits, even in draft. Licensing authorities usually require one with the application.
• An equipment schedule with electrical and gas loads.
• Ownership and management details, for the license application and the landlord.
• Financial information, and a guarantor if the operating history is short.
• Insurance confirmation, including liquor liability if you serve alcohol.
• A security and noise management plan if the operation is late or loud.

Where the customer-facing site is a shop with limited food preparation rather than a restaurant, most of this scales down and the checks in retail space apply instead. The lease terms that follow, once the approvals are in view, are ordinary commercial ones described in commercial leasing.

Common questions

What is the first thing to ask about a site?

The occupant load it can support with your layout, and whether the exits, restrooms and services follow. If the number is below your plan, stop there.

Do I need the license before I sign the lease?

Ideally, or a lease conditional on it. Licenses attach to premises and operators on a timetable set by the licensing authority, and a lease signed on the assumption that one will follow is the most common way a hospitality business pays for space it never opens.

The last tenant was a restaurant. Which approvals carry over?

Possibly none. Building infrastructure transfers; approvals may be personal, may have lapsed, or may carry conditions from the last application. Ask each authority about your operation at that address.

How many separate applications is a typical opening?

Commonly five or more: planning, building permit, health, fire and licensing, plus landlord consents. Sequence them, because several cannot start until another has finished.