What permits do you need to open a retail store in Irving?

There is no single figure, and any site quoting one is rounding away the part that matters. Of the 8 records listed for a retail store in Irving, TX, 4 apply to every business of this type and 4 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 4 that always apply, 3 carry a flat fee, coming to $155.00. That is a floor, not a total. 2 of the 8 are charged as a range or a formula set by the issuing agency, and 0 have no fee published at all. The ones that vary:

Food Establishment Permit: $350–$500 per permit, by employee count

Food Establishment Re-inspection: $60–$90 follow-up or re-inspection

Permits for a retail store in Irving, TX come from 3 separate offices: City of Irving Health Inspections, Texas Secretary of State, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. No single office issues them all, which is why an opening means filing in several places rather than one.

Two bands only: $350 for up to ten employees and $500 above ten. At $350 the entry point is the highest of any two-band scheme in this dataset — McKinney and Round Rock start at $258 and El Paso at $174 — but it stops rising early, so a hundred-employee operation pays the same $500 as an eleven-employee one. The provision to read carefully is subsection (C): an operation with multiple floors or departments, such as a deli or bakery inside a larger store, must obtain a separate permit for each floor or department as determined by the director, each priced on its own employee count. Permit fees are explicitly non-refundable once an application is filed. Renewing late costs $50 after fourteen days and a further $50 after thirty. The ordinance dates from 2016 and Irving filed it with the state as current in August 2023; confirm before budgeting.

$125 to review plans for each new or remodelled food establishment — among the cheapest plan reviews recorded here, against $475 in Plano, $882 in Williamson County and $475 in Fort Worth. Irving makes no distinction between a new build and a remodel, so a fit-out in existing premises pays the same $125 as new construction, which is the reverse of Plano's arrangement.

$100. Irving defines a pushcart precisely, and the definition is what keeps this permit alive where the mobile food unit permit is not: a non-self-propelled mobile food unit limited to serving pre-packaged non-TCS foods and readily movable by one or two people, excluding non-self-propelled units owned and operated inside a retail food store. Because it handles only pre-packaged non-hazardous food and is not a mobile food unit, it sits outside the state permit that HB 2844 introduced — but confirm that with the department, since the boundary is exactly the sort of thing the state transition tends to blur.

$30 to register a certified food protection manager with the city. This is a registration fee on top of whatever the certification itself costs — the city is charging to record a qualification you already hold, not to train you. Budget it per certified manager rather than per site.

A re-inspection is $90 and a follow-up inspection $60 — Irving prices them differently, which most cities do not. The ordinance is specific about when a follow-up becomes chargeable: the authority may inspect as often as needed to confirm compliance, and after more than one customary follow-up visit it may charge for each further visit. A second routine inspection that the establishment itself requests is $90. Where either fee is assessed, the owner named on the original application must pay within seven days to avoid further administrative action, and paying does not affect liability for any fines.

Required to form an LLC or corporation, not to trade as a sole proprietor. Texas has no statewide general business licence, so for many businesses this filing plus a sales and use tax permit is the entire state-level obligation.

Only needed if you trade under a name different from the one on your formation filing. The certificate is effective for a term not exceeding ten years from the date of filing and does not roll over by itself — it must be actively renewed, and a new certificate can be filed within six months of the original expiring. The $25 is the Secretary of State fee; sole proprietors and general partnerships file with the county clerk instead, at county rates.

There is no fee for this permit — the Comptroller says so directly, which is worth stating because a blank fee reads as though nobody knows. It does not expire on a date, but it is not permanent either: it is valid only while you are actively engaged in business as a seller, and the Comptroller's office may cancel it on finding that you are not. Filing obligations keep it alive, so a return must be filed for every period even when there were no taxable sales or purchases to report. Apply through Comptroller eSystems and allow two to three weeks.