What permits do you need to open a coffee shop in Jacksonville?

Local Business Tax Receipt — Cafes, Restaurants and Other Eating Establishments

Confirmed directly against the ordinance text. This section governs any restaurant, cafe, snack bar, take-out service, dining room or other public eating place, priced by how many people it can seat or accommodate at once — not the flat $30 that applies to a retail store or profession. A drive-in restaurant, where customers are served while seated in their cars, pays this schedule's tax plus an additional flat $60, not instead of it. Chapter 770 Part 3's complete list of business-tax classification sections (770.301 through 770.333, covering everything from advertising-space renters to water companies) was checked in full and names no separate mobile-vendor, food-truck, itinerant-vendor or peddler classification anywhere in it — this section's own language is built entirely around fixed seating, which does not describe a mobile unit, so no figure is asserted for the food-truck industry.

Restaurant Food Licensing — State DBPR License Applies (Jacksonville)

DOH-Duval's Food Hygiene page states: "In Florida, restaurants and grocery stores are not regulated by the Florida Department of Health," and that restaurants in Florida are licensed by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. As a consequence of that statement, there is no DOH-Duval food permit fee for an ordinary restaurant or coffee shop in Jacksonville; it holds the state DBPR Division of Hotels and Restaurants license recorded at the Florida state layer. The same page lists the facility types the DOH-Duval Food Hygiene Program inspects: schools, bars, movie theatres, fraternal/civic organizations, adult day cares, limited food service operations and assisted living facilities.

Public Food Service Establishment License

Banded by seats, and each band is four separate charges added together — a basic fee, a capacity fee, an epidemiological fee and a HEP fee. 1 to 49 seats is $262; 50 to 149 is $273; 150 to 249 is $294; 250 to 349 is $315; 350 to 499 is $336; 500 or more is $357. On top of any of those, a first application or a change of ownership adds a $50 application fee, and a late renewal adds $50. A non-seating permanent establishment pays $242 and a mobile food dispensing vehicle $347 — a food truck costs more to license than all but the largest restaurant. Two things catch people: statute caps the aggregate license fee at $400 per establishment, but the $50 application and $50 delinquency fees sit outside that cap; and applying within six months of the annual renewal period halves the first year's fee, while applying earlier than that does not. A restaurant operating inside a hotel needs its own license.

Shared with other businesses in Jacksonville

• Food Service Employee Training and Manager Certification — Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, Division of Hotels and Restaurants, No fee, employee training 3 years; manager certification 5 years. Also required for restaurants and food trucks; what it involves is set out on the restaurants page.