What permits do you need to open a restaurant in Hawaii County?

There is no single figure, and any site quoting one is rounding away the part that matters. Of the 16 records listed for a restaurant in Hawaii County, HI, 6 apply to every business of this type and 10 are conditional. Adding every fee on the page together would overstate what most operators pay, because it would include permits they never need.

Of the 6 that always apply, 2 carry a flat fee, coming to $220.00. That is a floor, not a total. 5 of the 16 are charged as a range or a formula set by the issuing agency, and 4 have no fee published at all. The ones that vary:

Commercial Building Permit: Valuation-based schedule per HCC §5-7-3(b): $10 for work valued $0-$500; for $501-$2,000, $10 plus $1.50 per additional $100 (or fraction) up to $2,000; for $2,001-$25,000, $32.50 plus $7.50 per additional $1,000 (or fraction) up to $25,000; for $25,001-$50,000, $205 plus $6 per additional $1,000 (or fraction) up to $50,000; for $50,001 and up, $355 plus $3 per additional $1,000 (or fraction). Carports, garages, porches, patios, lanais, and detached U-occupancy accessory structures are billed separately at $10 per 100 sq. ft. (or fraction) regardless of valuation.

Building Plan Review Fee: 20% of the Building Permit fee, with a $50 minimum, due with the application per HCC §5-7-1(a). No additional fee applies to a second plan submittal; a third submittal is $250, a fourth is $500, and each further submittal is $1,000.

Sign Permit: The same general-construction valuation-based fee table used for the Building Permit (HCC §5-7-3(b)): $10 for work valued $0-$500, scaling up to $355 plus $3 per additional $1,000 above $50,000 — inferred from the Sign Permit Application's own 'Valuation $ / Fee $' fields, since no separate sign-specific fee schedule could be found anywhere.

Automatic Fire Extinguishing System Permit (Commercial Cooking Equipment): No fee for the initial acceptance-test inspection of a commercial-kitchen automatic fire-extinguishing (hood suppression) system; a $100 fee applies for each subsequent reinspection, per the Fire Department's own current Fire Prevention Branch fee table.

Food Establishment Permit: $300–$400 a year for a restaurant, banded by risk category and floor area

Permits for a restaurant in Hawaii County, HI come from 7 separate offices: County of Hawai'i, Department of Finance, Vehicle Registration & Licensing Division, County of Hawai'i, Department of Public Works, Building Division, County of Hawai'i Planning Department (and Planning Commission), Hawai'i Fire Department, Fire Prevention Branch, Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Business Registration Division, Hawaii Department of Taxation, Hawaii Department of Health, Food Safety Branch. No single office issues them all, which is why an opening means filing in several places rather than one.

• County of Hawai'i, Department of Finance, Vehicle Registration & Licensing DivisionIssues 1 permit on this page: General Business License (not required by Hawaii County)101 Pauahi Street, Suite 5, Hilo, HI 96720 · (808) 961-8351www.vrl.hawaiicounty.gov/other-services/business-occupation-licensing
• County of Hawai'i, Department of Public Works, Building DivisionIssues 4 permits on this page: Commercial Building Permit, Building Plan Review Fee, Certificate of Occupancy, Sign Permit101 Pauahi Street, Suite 7, Hilo, HI 96720 · (808) 961-8321www.hawaiicounty.gov/departments/public-works/building
• County of Hawai'i Planning Department (and Planning Commission)Issues 2 permits on this page: Plan Approval, Special Management Area (SMA) Use Permit (Major)101 Pauahi Street, Suite 3, Hilo, HI 96720 · (808) 961-8288www.planning.hawaiicounty.gov
• Hawai'i Fire Department, Fire Prevention BranchIssues 2 permits on this page: Fire Prevention Permit — Places of Assembly, Automatic Fire Extinguishing System Permit (Commercial Cooking Equipment)25 Aupuni Street, Suite 2501, Hilo, HI 96720 · (808) 932-2911www.hawaiicounty.gov/departments/fire/fire-prevention-branch
• Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Business Registration DivisionIssues 4 permits on this page: Articles of Incorporation, General Business Licence (not required by Hawaii), Articles of Organization (LLC), Annual Report335 Merchant Street, Room 201, Honolulu, HI 96813 · (808) 586-2727cca.hawaii.gov/breg
• Hawaii Department of TaxationIssues 1 permit on this page: General Excise Tax Licence830 Punchbowl Street, Honolulu, HI 96813 · (808) 587-4242tax.hawaii.gov/geninfo/licensing
• Hawaii Department of Health, Food Safety BranchIssues 2 permits on this page: Food Establishment Permit, Food Handler Certification591 Ala Moana Boulevard, Honolulu, HI 96813 · (808) 586-8000health.hawaii.gov/san

No fee applies. The Vehicle Registration & Licensing Division's own current Business & Occupation Licensing page names the complete, fixed set of individual licenses Hawaii County issues (Auctioneer, Bicycle Tours, Firearms to Sell, Electric Guns, Purchasing/Wrecking/Rebuilding Cars, Pawnbroker, Scrap Dealer, Second Hand Dealer) — none of them a general, catch-all business license, and none of them specific to any of this project's ten industries. Unlike the City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii County's list also has no peddler or itinerant-vendor category at all; the closest local analog to that kind of permit is the Special Activity Permit recorded elsewhere in this file. Hawaii's General Excise Tax Licence, recorded at the state layer, remains the real universal state-level registration every business needs; this county layer adds no general license on top of it.

This is a genuine, complete, currently-published valuation-based fee table — confirmed directly from Hawai'i County Code §5-7-3(b), read in full — unlike the equivalent unpublished table this project could not retrieve for Honolulu. Starting work before a permit is issued triggers a doubled fee or a flat $1,000 added on top, whichever is greater, per §5-7-3(d); the County and its own contractors, along with Habitat for Humanity (Hilo and Kona) and Hawai'i Community College's Model Home Project, are exempt from the permit fee itself under §5-7-3(g)-(h). A separate Building Plan Review Fee (20% of this permit fee) and a Certificate of Occupancy are recorded as their own lines below.

Charged on every building-permit application under Article 7 of the Construction Administrative Code, in addition to, not instead of, the Building Permit fee itself recorded above. Plan review fees are non-refundable per §5-7-8, even where the underlying permit fee later qualifies for a partial refund.

No building or structure may be used or occupied, and no change of occupancy classification may be made, until the Building Division issues a Certificate of Occupancy confirming the work complies with the construction code — mandatory for every commercial occupancy in this project's ten industries. A separate $200 fee, confirmed directly from §5-7-6, applies only if a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy is requested to occupy part of the building before all permitted work is finished.

The Sign Permit Application is a Building Division form requiring Engineering, Planning, and Electrical sign-off in addition to Building review, and it carries the identical 'Valuation $ / Fee $' fields used throughout the general construction fee structure. This project could not locate a sign-specific fee schedule anywhere on the County's site, so the same valuation table confirmed for the Building Permit is recorded here — an inference disclosed openly rather than presented as a directly-published separate figure. A separate electrical permit is required for any electrical work related to an illuminated sign, per the application form's own instructions.

No fee applies — none is published anywhere on the Planning Department's own current Application for Plan Approval form. This site-plan and zoning-compliance review requires a scaled site plan, building elevations, a Public-Works-approved drainage plan, and a real-property-tax clearance from the Director of Finance, and is the Planning Department's own product for confirming a proposed commercial use and site layout comply with the Zoning Code before construction proceeds.

Applies only to a proposed development on a property within the state-defined coastal Special Management Area, not islandwide. The Planning Commission's own current Major SMA Use Permit application states directly: 'A filing fee of five hundred dollars ($500) to be paid via EPIC.' This project could not confirm a separate, lower fee for a Minor SMA process from any primary government document it could retrieve, so no Minor SMA figure is asserted here; a business should confirm with the Planning Department whether its project qualifies for a Minor rather than Major review.

Required for any place of assembly with an occupant load of 300 or more persons, confirmed at $200/year directly from both the Fire Department's own current Fire Prevention Branch fee table and its separate Forms and Applications page. The same Fire Department fee pages also price a Farmers/Open/Flea Market permit ($100 for a six-month period), a Carnival or Fair permit ($200), tents/temporary structures over 700 sq. ft. ($50 one-time), and LPG/storage-tank installation ($200 one-time) — confirmed background this project did not track as separate records since they depend on project-specific activities not every business undertakes.

An acceptance test of the commercial-kitchen automatic fire-extinguishing (hood suppression) system must be performed and witnessed by the Fire Department before cooking operations begin. The Fire Department's own current fee table prices the initial inspection at no charge and only bills $100 if a subsequent reinspection is required — a genuinely confirmed fee structure, not an unpublished figure. The same fee page prices an equivalent Water-Based Fire Protection Systems acceptance test (automatic sprinklers, standpipes, private hydrants) identically: no charge initially, $100 for any subsequent inspection.

The same $51 as an LLC, once the archives fee is included, and the same $25 expedite option.

No fee, beyond the general excise tax licence every business needs anyway. Hawaii's own business action centre, the state's front door for opening a company, treats general excise tax registration as the universal state requirement rather than pointing to any separate general business licence, and no other state page describes one.

Fifty dollars for the filing itself plus a flat $1 state archives fee tacked onto every DCCA filing, for $51 in practice. Expedited processing adds a further $25. A corporation costs the same $51 to form.

There is no single shared filing date in Hawaii — the due date is set entirely by which calendar quarter an entity originally registered in. Register in February and the report falls due every 31 March afterward; register in August and it falls due every 30 September. This has held since 2003, so it is not a recent quirk. Two figures circulate for the fee itself, $15 on the published paper fee schedule and $12.50 in more recent online-filing guidance — filing online appears to be the cheaper channel, but confirm the exact current figure at checkout before relying on either number precisely. Two straight years of non-filing is grounds for involuntary dissolution.

Twenty dollars, paid once, and this licence functions as Hawaii's substitute for a sales tax permit — the tax itself is levied on the business for the privilege of doing business here, not collected from the customer as a separate purchase tax, even though it behaves similarly at the register. Once issued, the licence and its Hawaii Tax ID stay active indefinitely with no renewal fee or cycle to track.

The health department administers this through four island districts rather than one central office — Oahu, Maui covering Molokai and Lanai, Hawaii Island split between Hilo and Kona offices, and Kauai — each with its own application, though the fee schedule itself is set statewide by rule rather than varying district to district. A restaurant under a thousand square feet pays $300 a year in the top risk category; larger than that, $400. Catering is priced separately at $400, and a special event of up to five days is a flat $50. A food establishment serving the homeless is exempt from the fee outright. Plan review for a new establishment adds $200 or $300 depending on size, and renewing late costs a further twenty per cent of the annual fee on top.

No fee — the health department runs its own food handler classes at no charge at all, a genuine alternative to paying a private provider. At least one certified employee must be present at every permitted food establishment during operating hours, valid for three years once earned. A certified food protection manager credential satisfies this requirement as well and exempts its holder from needing the separate card.