What permits do you need to open a childcare centre in Hennepin County?

Family Child Care / Group Family Child Care Home License

This is the one Hennepin County license that genuinely reaches inside Minneapolis with no city carve-out, because it is a human services licensing function, not the environmental-health function that drives the food/pool/body-art exclusion maps. Hennepin County Health and Human Services handles intake, the required orientation, inspection and the licensing recommendation for a family child care home or group family child care home — in-home care for children from more than one family, in the provider's own residence, up to about 14 children for group family child care — anywhere in the county, city or not. The state issues the license itself based on the county's recommendation. The fee cap is $50 a year under Minn. Stat. §142B.12, subd. 2, which still literally carries a legacy '$100 for a two-year license' clause, but two-year licenses are no longer issued now that every license runs on the continuous annual calendar-year cycle Minnesota adopted effective January 1, 2025, so $50/year is the operative figure. Fees were waived statewide for all of 2025, with counties resuming fee collection for new licenses on July 1, 2025. A licensed child care center that also serves food needs a separate food establishment license (see Part B) in a county-jurisdiction city; the Food Protection Ordinance's Low Limited fee tier explicitly names 'half-day childcare with snacks and milk only' as an example.

Child Care Center License — Minnesota DCYF (Hennepin County)

No fee applies at the county level. A child care CENTER — a facility in a location other than the provider's own residence — is licensed directly by the state, not by Hennepin County. Hennepin County's own family child care page draws this line itself, directing complaints about a licensed child care center to the state Department of Human Services rather than to the county. This is the opposite scope from the family child care HOME license listed separately for this jurisdiction: Hennepin County licenses homes (including group family child care homes) countywide, while DCYF's own child care center application page shows centers licensed by the state under Minn. Rules Ch. 9503. A commercial daycare center should look to the state license, not to Hennepin County, for its core operating license.

Child Care Centre License

Get the agency right: child care licensing moved out of the human services department into the new Department of Children, Youth, and Families, and the governing chapter changed with it, so guidance naming DHS or the old chapter is out of date. A centre pays $500 up front, non-refundable and not prorated, which stands in place of the first year's license fee, and then an annual fee running from $200 up to twenty-four children in ten steps to $1,100 above two hundred and twenty-five. A family or group family child care home pays the state nothing at all — counties license those, and a county may charge at most $50 for a year or $100 for two, and may even deduct it from assistance payments. Non-payment is not an enforcement matter but an expiry one: the license simply lapses on 31 December and the provider must reapply and pay the $500 again. A centre that serves food is also a low-risk food establishment and will hold a food license too.

Shared with other businesses in Hennepin County

• Food Establishment License (annual) — Hennepin County Public Health, Epidemiology and Environmental Health, $100–$1,040 a year, 2026 schedule, by risk/complexity tier, plus a flat fee for each additional facility at the same site: Low Limited (packaged snacks only, portable bar, half-day childcare with snacks/milk only) $100 + $50; Low (convenience store, coffee fountain-only, sales-only bakery) $215 + $108; Medium Limited (small grocery, cafeteria/catering with no on-site prep) $405 + $202; Medium Small (large grocery, bar, catering food vehicle, small kitchen ≤10 meals, pizza) $612 + $305; High Small (full menu, under 175 seats and/or under 500 meals — family restaurant, fast food, deli, caterer) $807 + $404; High Large (full menu, over 175 seats or over 500 meals) $1,040 + $518, annual; license period February 1, 2026 to January 31, 2027 for most categories (mobile units and seasonal stands instead run April 1 to March 31). Also required for restaurants, coffee shops and retail stores; what it involves is set out on the coffee shops page.