What permits do you need to open a restaurant in Green Bay?

There is no single figure, and any site quoting one is rounding away the part that matters. Of the 13 records listed for a restaurant in Green Bay, WI, 7 apply to every business of this type and 6 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 7 that always apply, 2 carry a flat fee, coming to $95.00. That is a floor, not a total. 5 of the 13 are charged as a range or a formula set by the issuing agency, and 3 have no fee published at all. The ones that vary:

Commercial Building Permit: General construction: $0.07/sq ft (building group 1) or $0.14/sq ft (building group 2). Plan approval fees: principal-use building plan $125, accessory-use building plan $125, HVAC plan $125, plumbing system plan $125, sign structural plan $75. Roofing replacement $100 flat plus $0.01/sq ft; siding $100 flat plus $0.01/sq ft. Moving a building is $100 base plus $0.14/sq ft of foundation area; razing/demolition is $100. Commercial electrical is $0.05–$0.09/sq ft plus a project-cost tier ($100 for $0–$10,000, up to $600 for over $300,000, plus $100 per additional $100,000); commercial plumbing is $8 per fixture plus $50 per water/sewer connection; commercial HVAC follows the same $0.05–$0.09/sq ft structure as electrical.

Fire Inspection: $50–$250 by building size — $50 (up to 3,000 sq ft), $100 (3,001–10,000), $150 (10,001–50,000), $250 (over 50,000)

Retail Food Establishment Licence: Retail food serving meals: Prepackaged $217, Simple $455, Moderate $590, Complex $745 (an additional food-prep area is $125). Retail food not serving meals: Micro Market $40 ($60 if 2+ in the same building), Prepackaged $145, Simple TCS $414, Simple Non-TCS $516, Moderate $650, Complex $1,242. Operating without a Certified Food Manager draws a $150 penalty (rising to $255 if still non-compliant after 12 months); operating without a licence at all draws a $500 penalty; a late renewal (after July 1) is $150.

Sign Permit: Permanent sign: $40 base plus $0.50 per sq ft. Temporary sign: $40 flat. A sign structural plan review (part of the building-permit plan-approval process) is $75; an electrical permit for an illuminated sign is $100.

Retail Food Establishment Licence: $105–$1,457.35 a year — $105 to $540 from the state, more where a local health department is the licensing agent

Permits for a restaurant in Green Bay, WI come from 7 separate offices: City of Green Bay Community & Economic Development, Building/Zoning Permits, Green Bay Metro Fire Department, Fire Marshal's Office, City of Green Bay Clerk's Office, Brown County Health and Human Services, Public Health Division, Environmental Health Unit, Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, Division of Corporate and Consumer Services, Wisconsin Department of Revenue, Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, Division of Food and Recreational Safety. No single office issues them all, which is why an opening means filing in several places rather than one.

• City of Green Bay Community & Economic Development, Building/Zoning PermitsIssues 3 permits on this page: Commercial Building Permit, Certificate of Occupancy, Sign Permit100 N. Jefferson Street, Green Bay, WI 54301 · (920) 448-3000www.greenbaywi.gov/321/Commercial-Permits
• Green Bay Metro Fire Department, Fire Marshal's OfficeIssues 1 permit on this page: Fire Inspection100 N. Jefferson Street, Room 403, Green Bay, WI 54301 · (920) 448-3280www.greenbaywi.gov/910/Fire-Marshals-Office
• City of Green Bay Clerk's OfficeIssues 1 permit on this page: No General Business Licence100 N. Jefferson Street, Room 106, Green Bay, WI 54301 · (920) 448-3010www.greenbaywi.gov/196/Clerk
• Brown County Health and Human Services, Public Health Division, Environmental Health UnitIssues 1 permit on this page: Retail Food Establishment Licence2198 Glendale Avenue, Green Bay, WI 54303 · (920) 448-6400www.browncountywi.gov
• Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, Division of Corporate and Consumer ServicesIssues 4 permits on this page: Articles of Organization (LLC), Articles of Incorporation, Annual Report, General Business Licence (does not exist in Wisconsin)4822 Madison Yards Way, North Tower, Madison, WI 53705 · (608) 261-7577onestop.wi.gov
• Wisconsin Department of RevenueIssues 1 permit on this page: Seller's Permit and Business Tax RegistrationPO Box 8902, Madison, WI 53708-8902 · (608) 266-2776www.revenue.wi.gov/Pages/FAQS/pcs-btr.aspx
• Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, Division of Food and Recreational SafetyIssues 2 permits on this page: Retail Food Establishment Licence, Certified Food Protection ManagerPO Box 93598, Milwaukee, WI 53293-0598 · (608) 224-4720datcp.wi.gov/Pages/Programs_Services/RestaurantsCatering.aspx

Typical processing time is stated as approximately one week.

A reinspection for compliance is $75. A regional food-truck fire-inspection collaborative involving Green Bay Metro Fire Department was found (alongside Appleton FD), but no distinct, published Green Bay fee specific to mobile food units was located.

No licence fee applies. Confirmed by the absence of any general licence line in the city's own comprehensive, itemized fee schedule (which covers dozens of narrow categories down to beekeeping and hen-keeping) and by the Clerk's own licence listing. Several aggregator sites claim a general licence is required and renewed annually — this is not corroborated by any primary source and is treated as inaccurate.

A separate Business License Compliance Letter for commercial uses is $50.

The City of Green Bay has no health department of its own — confirmed directly in the city's own words: 'The City of Green Bay does not have its own health department, so we rely on the County for these services.' Reinspection for non-compliance is $150/$300/$450 for the 1st/2nd/3rd violation.

Unlike almost every other line item in the fee schedule, the $40 base sign fee is not tied to an explicit municipal code section number in the published document.

Forty dollars cheaper online than on paper, and the saving applies only to LLCs — a corporation costs $100 either way. Expediting is available and steep: $100 for next business day, $250 for four hours over the counter and $500 for one. All fees are non-refundable. Note that the department's fee table shows foreign entities at a hundred dollars with a plus sign, and what the plus covers is not explained anywhere published, so no foreign registration figure is recorded here.

A flat $100 with no authorised-shares component at all, which is worth stating because several states — Texas, Delaware and Nevada among them — scale this fee by how many shares you authorise. Wisconsin makes you declare a share count on the application and then charges the same regardless. Filing online adds only the one-dollar portal fee, so unlike an LLC there is no meaningful paper-versus-online difference. A nonstock corporation is much cheaper at $35.

An LLC and a corporation pay the same, and the paper price is simply the online price plus the fifteen-dollar surcharge the department introduced in March 2024 — the two documents reconcile exactly. The due date is not a fixed calendar day: it is the end of whichever calendar quarter contains the anniversary of your registration, so a business formed in February files by 31 March every year. Foreign entities always file by 31 March. There is no monetary late penalty at all — the consequence is delinquent status and, after an extended period, administrative dissolution, with reinstatement requiring the accumulated per-year fees.

No fee, because Wisconsin issues no general business licence — its own single-point-of-entry portal defines the basic requirements most new businesses need as exactly three registrations, entity with the financial institutions department, tax with revenue and unemployment insurance with workforce development, and there is no licensing step among them. What replaces it is activity-specific licensing plus whatever the municipality requires. One honest caveat on how this was established: no state page says in words that Wisconsin has no general business licence, so the finding rests on the state's own exhaustive enumeration of what a new business must do.

Wisconsin is one of the minority of states that charges for a seller's permit at all, and it is one umbrella fee: the twenty dollars covers every permit the registrant holds — seller's permit, withholding account, use tax certificate, excise permit — for two years, then ten dollars for each two years after. The department no longer reissues the seller's permit on renewal; the registration certificate is what carries the expiry date. Watch the security deposit: the department may require up to $15,000 before or after issuing the permit, returned after twenty-four consecutive months of compliance. Several categories are exempt from the registration fee, including agricultural and household employers, but every one of them loses the exemption the moment it holds a seller's permit.

Who licenses you depends on your address. The agriculture department licenses retail food across most of the state at $105 for prepackaged, $230 simple, $330 moderate and $540 complex, plus a one-off pre-inspection of $130 to $770 — but a local health department that has signed an agent contract licenses and prices in the state's place within its own jurisdiction. The spread is real: Oneida County charges $120 to $615 with identical pre-inspection fees, while Public Health Madison and Dane County charges an agency fee from $266.76 to $1,457.35 banded by food and drink sales, collects the state portion on top and remits it, and adds plan review of $562.50 to $1,200. So a single Wisconsin restaurant fee does not exist. Every licence expires on 30 June whenever it was issued, though one granted after 1 April runs to the following June. Operating unlicensed adds a $749 surcharge. A non-profit serving food on no more than three days in a year needs no licence.

No state fee and no state certificate — an accredited exam provider issues it and sets the price, which is a real contrast with states that run a registry and charge for it. Most licensed food establishments need at least one certified manager, but the exemptions are broader than usual: prepackaged retail establishments whether or not they serve meals, operations handling only fresh fruit or produce, transient events and micro markets are all outside it. A new establishment or one changing operator has ninety days to have a certified manager in place, and the certificate must be posted in public view. A small operator with five or fewer food handlers may recertify through an approved short course rather than sitting the full exam, provided they do it within ninety days of expiry; past that, everyone retakes the exam.