What permits do you need to open a restaurant in Midland?

There is no single figure, and any site quoting one is rounding away the part that matters. Of the 18 records listed for a restaurant in Midland, TX, 5 apply to every business of this type and 13 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 5 that always apply, 2 carry a flat fee, coming to $100.00. That is a floor, not a total. 6 of the 18 are charged as a range or a formula set by the issuing agency, and 1 has no fee published at all. The ones that vary:

Preliminary Plat Application: $350–$500 by site acreage

Commercial Plan Review: 25% of the building permit fee

Food Service Establishment Permit: $150–$250 per year, by employee count

Final Plat Application: $355–$505 by site acreage, plus $1 per page

Commercial Building Permit: $100 up to $20,000 of valuation, then $100 plus $3.50 for each additional $1,000 or part thereof

Mixed Beverage Permit (MB): $2,650–$5,300 per two-year period; $5,300 original, $2,650 renewal

Permits for a restaurant in Midland, TX come from 7 separate offices: City of Midland Planning Division, Midland Health Services, Environmental Health, City of Midland Development Services, Permitting and Inspections, Midland Fire Marshal's Office, Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, 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.

$350 up to 50 acres and $500 above it. The sketch plan that precedes it is $225 for a first review and $100 for a second — so a scheme that needs re-drawing costs $100 to look at again before the plat fee is even paid. Reinstating a lapsed preliminary plat is $50.

$650 for a planned district change against $500 for a standard one — a $150 premium where Arlington charges double and San Antonio prices the two on separate acreage scales. A multiple planned development proposal is $550 basic plus $100 per additional district, and additional PD regulations are $75. A site plan supplied in PDF format for City Council is $50.

$600 to go before the Board of Adjustment, with a special exception application at $500. That is more than the $500 standard zone change itself, so where a use could be reached either by rezoning or by variance, the rezoning is the cheaper route in Midland — the opposite of most cities, where the variance is the budget option.

$50 — half Fort Worth's $100 annual farmers market food vendor permit and half Waco's $100 vendor permit. Note that from 1 July 2026 a mobile unit trading at a farmers market needs a Texas DSHS licence regardless of this permit.

$500 flat, with no acreage banding at all — the simplest zoning fee in this dataset and, for anything above an acre, among the cheapest. San Antonio starts at $795 for half an acre and runs to $5,930; Arlington starts at $1,200. A general application fee of $500 also applies.

25% of the building permit fee, which the fee schedule now lets you compute: on a $250,000 fit-out the permit is $905 and the review $226. Do not confuse this with the payment split — the city also takes 25% of the APPLICATION fee at submission and 75% after approval, which is a schedule of instalments rather than a separate charge. The 25% review rate matches Waco and Abilene, and sits below Arlington's 35%, Mesquite's 28% and Grand Prairie's 45%.

$70 for 14 days or less, and the form names what it covers: fairs, carnivals, circuses and public exhibits. Above the $52 that Arlington, Waco, Pasadena, Frisco and Abilene all charge, and well below Mesquite's $300 temporary annual arts permit. A farmers market permit is $50.

$250 whether or not a public hearing is required — Midland charges the same either way, which is unusual. Arlington charges $625 with owner notification against $500 without, and most cities price the hearing in.

$150 for one to five employees, $200 for six to ten and $250 for eleven or more — the same scale covers a restaurant or on-premises consumption business, a retail food store or grocery, and a warehouse distributor. That makes Midland among the cheapest cities in this dataset for a small kitchen: a five-employee restaurant pays $150 where Frisco would charge $300 and Dallas $773. Two things to watch. The late penalty is unusually harsh — 25% of the permit fee PER DAY past the due date, on top of the fee itself — and there are no refunds on permit fees at all. A permit application must be submitted for each establishment, and an incomplete form will not be processed.

$105 for a fixed season running 1 April to 30 September — the dates are set by the form, not chosen by the applicant, so a business trading outside that window needs a different permit. Cheaper than an annual food service permit at any employee band, and the right instrument for a summer operation.

$355 up to 50 acres and $505 above, each plus $1 per page. An administrative plat is $250, a digital file conversion $50, and recording is $60 for plats up to 18" x 24" and $80 above that. Related documents are $26. A 30-day extension costs $50.

The Fire Marshal's Office runs separate permitting for fire sprinkler installation, fire alarm installation and fire suppression systems, and reviews plans against the City of Midland Fire Code, which adopts the 2015 International Fire Code. No fee is shown because Midland publishes none: eight fire pages and every document they link were searched, and the only dollar figure in the department's material is a $2,000 fireworks fine. Get the amount from the office on 432-685-7333. One requirement worth designing around rather than discovering at inspection: since 1 September 2017 the department has enforced the audible and visual notification provisions of IFC 907.5 on all buildings provided with fire alarm systems, and it issued that notice precisely because owners and contractors were unaware of them.

$100, valid for one calendar year — note the calendar year, not twelve months from issue, so a permit bought in October covers three months. The application covers food, fruit, seasonal and holiday item vendors and an open other category, and it requires every vending or selling location to be listed with a permission or authorisation letter from the property owner for each. Employees are named on the application too. Since 1 July 2026 a mobile food unit also needs a Texas DSHS licence, which this city permit does not replace.

$100 covers everything up to $20,000 of valuation, then $3.50 for each further $1,000 or part of one — so a $250,000 fit-out computes to $905 and a $1m project to $3,530. That is among the cheapest commercial building permits in this dataset: the same $1m project costs roughly $2,410 in San Antonio, $3,365 in Frisco and far more in Odessa, which charges a $1,000 base before its per-square-foot rate. Payment is split rather than taken up front — 25% with the application at submission, and the remaining 75% once the plan reviewer notifies you of approval, before the permit issues. A bonded contractor must be listed on the permit for it to issue.

Read directly from the TABC two-year licensing fee schedule: Mixed Beverage Permit (MB) $5,300 original, $2,650 renewal, charged on a two-year cycle. A Wine and Malt Beverage Retailer's Permit (BG) is $1,900 if you do not need spirits. Note a widely-cited competitor lists $6,006 for this permit, which does not appear in the TABC schedule.

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.