When one permit gets stuck in review in Denver, your entire project timeline is at risk. When you’re managing a national expansion, this isn’t a one-off problem; it’s a recurring nightmare that snowballs across your portfolio, pushing back opening dates and stalling revenue. A delay in one city creates a ripple effect, pulling resources and attention away from other critical projects. Effective franchise rollout permit management isn’t about fixing a single delay after it happens; it’s about building a system that prevents the snowball effect from starting in the first place. This guide will show you how to create that system, turning unpredictability into a clear, repeatable process that keeps your openings on track.
Key Takeaways
- Treat Permitting as a Project Phase, Not Paperwork: Prevent costly delays by performing thorough due diligence for each location and implementing a strict quality control check before any application is submitted. A clean package is the fastest path to approval.
- Create a Single Source of Truth for Your Portfolio: Managing dozens of projects requires a centralized system. Use a dashboard or portal to track all documents, deadlines, and communications, giving your entire team real-time visibility and eliminating errors caused by outdated information.
- Partner with an Expediter for Predictable Rollouts: Don’t let your team get bogged down by the complexities of multiple jurisdictions. A permit expediter provides the specialized local knowledge to ensure clean submittals, reduce review cycles, and keep your opening dates on track.
What Permits Do Franchises Actually Need?
When you’re managing a multi-site rollout, permits feel less like a checklist and more like a web of interconnected dependencies. At its core, a franchise permit is any official approval your business needs to build, open, and operate legally. These aren’t just suggestions; they’re requirements from local, state, and even federal authorities. For a national brand, this means you’re not just getting one type of permit—you’re securing a portfolio of them for every single location, each with its own set of rules and timelines.
The real challenge isn’t just getting a permit. It’s getting the right permits, in the right order, across dozens or hundreds of different jurisdictions simultaneously. A missed approval for a sign in one city can be just as damaging as a failed health inspection in another. Understanding the full scope of what’s required—from initial site surveys to the final certificate of occupancy—is the first step in preventing the delays that stall openings and push back revenue. It’s about shifting from a reactive, location-by-location scramble to a proactive, portfolio-wide strategy.
The Essential Permit Checklist
Think of your permit strategy as a master list that covers everything from the ground up. Every franchise location will need a unique combination of approvals, but they generally fall into a few key categories. You’ll need building permits for any new construction or tenant improvements, zoning approvals to ensure the site is cleared for commercial use, and a general business license to operate. For restaurants and food service brands, health and safety permits are non-negotiable.
Beyond the basics, you’ll also need permits for signage, fire alarm systems, and ADA compliance. For specialized rollouts, you might need liquor licenses or specific environmental permits. The key is to create a centralized dashboard to track every permit’s status, deadlines, and requirements for each location, giving your team a single source of truth.
How Delays Hit Your Revenue and Opening Dates
A permit delay is never just a paperwork problem—it’s a direct hit to your bottom line. When a permit gets stuck in review, your entire project timeline grinds to a halt. Construction crews are idle, grand opening dates are pushed, and marketing campaigns are put on hold. Each day of delay means another day your new location isn’t generating revenue, turning a predictable investment into a costly liability.
These delays often stem from incomplete applications or unexpected feedback from the jurisdiction, leading to resubmittals that add weeks or even months to the process. The financial impact goes beyond lost sales; it includes carrying costs for the property, fees for rescheduling contractors, and the risk of project cancellation in a worst-case scenario. Managing permits effectively is a direct path to protecting your project budget and pulling revenue forward.
The Challenge of Multi-Jurisdiction Compliance
Scaling a franchise across different states, counties, and cities introduces a staggering level of complexity. The permit process that worked for your location in Austin will look completely different from the one in Boston. Each jurisdiction has its own unique building codes, submission portals, review timelines, and interpretations of regulations. This lack of standardization is a major hurdle for national brands striving for predictable rollouts.
This complexity isn’t just external; it involves coordinating multiple internal teams like legal, operations, and facilities. Without a single, accountable partner managing the process, teams can easily work in silos, leading to miscommunication and errors. Successfully handling this landscape requires deep local knowledge and a system built to manage dozens of different processes at once, ensuring every application is right the first time.
Meeting Health and Safety Codes
Health and safety permits are the bedrock of your franchise’s right to operate. Failing to meet these stringent requirements can lead to immediate shutdowns, costly fines, and significant damage to your brand’s reputation. These codes cover everything from fire suppression and emergency exits to food handling standards and ADA accessibility requirements.
For example, a simple mistake in your kitchen layout could violate a local health code, forcing a redesign and delaying your opening by weeks. Similarly, failing to research zoning regulations before signing a lease could prevent you from operating your business at that location at all. These aren’t just boxes to check; they are critical compliance steps that protect your customers, your employees, and your investment. Diligent research and adherence to these codes are non-negotiable.
Build Your Permit Management Strategy
A successful multi-site rollout doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of a proactive, repeatable strategy that treats permitting as a critical project phase, not an administrative afterthought. When you’re managing dozens of projects at once, you can’t afford to put out fires in every jurisdiction. Instead, you need a system that anticipates challenges, organizes information, and creates a clear path to approval. Building this framework upfront is the single best way to ensure your projects stay on schedule and your opening dates remain predictable. A solid strategy gives your team the tools and processes to handle anything a local jurisdiction throws their way, turning potential roadblocks into manageable tasks.
Start with Pre-Application Due Diligence
Before you even think about filling out an application, your first step is thorough due diligence. This means digging into the specific requirements of each municipality. What are the local zoning laws? Are there specific building codes, signage ordinances, or accessibility standards you need to meet? Answering these questions early prevents costly surprises down the road. Poor management of licenses and permits can lead to serious business disruptions and damage your brand’s reputation. By investing time in upfront research, you can identify potential red flags, adjust your plans accordingly, and prepare a submittal package that addresses the jurisdiction’s unique needs from the start.
Organize Your Documents for Success
Consistency is your best friend during a national rollout. With multiple projects running at the same time, you need a single source of truth for all your documentation. Create a centralized system—whether it’s a shared drive with a clear folder structure or a dedicated project management portal—where your team can access plans, applications, and correspondence for every location. We recommend building a master permit checklist that can be adapted for each jurisdiction. This ensures no document is missed and every team member knows exactly what’s required. A centralized compliance dashboard that tracks status, deadlines, and ownership is essential for keeping your entire portfolio on track.
Plan Your Project Timeline
One of the biggest mistakes brands make is underestimating how long the permitting process will take. Getting a permit isn’t a single event; it’s a series of steps including submittal, plan review, corrections, and final approval. Each of these stages has its own timeline, which can vary wildly between jurisdictions. Map out the entire permitting journey for each project and build realistic timelines that account for potential review cycles and resubmittals. The complexity of the permitting process can lead to significant delays and increased costs if not properly managed from the outset. By planning for these variables, you can set achievable opening dates and keep stakeholders informed.
Implement Quality Control Checks
A simple typo or a missing signature can send your application to the back of the line, costing you weeks of valuable time. That’s why a rigorous quality control (QC) process is non-negotiable. Before any package is submitted, have a dedicated person or team review it against a detailed checklist. Does it meet all local requirements? Are all forms filled out completely and correctly? Are the plans accurate and clearly legible? This internal check is your last line of defense against common errors that cause immediate rejections. Catching these mistakes internally saves you from the frustrating and time-consuming back-and-forth with the city reviewer.
Foster Relationships with Local Authorities
The people reviewing your plans are just that—people. Building a professional, respectful relationship with plan reviewers and city officials can make a world of difference. When possible, schedule a pre-application meeting to introduce your project and ask clarifying questions. Be responsive, polite, and organized in all your communications. When a reviewer understands your goals and sees you as a competent partner, they are often more willing to work with you to resolve issues. Remember, failing to research zoning regulations and understand local priorities can lead to permit denials, so showing you’ve done your homework goes a long way in building trust.
Avoid These Common Permit Pitfalls
Even the most buttoned-up rollout plan can get derailed by a few common, yet costly, permitting mistakes. When you’re managing dozens of projects across different cities and states, small oversights can quickly snowball, leading to blown deadlines and stalled openings. The key is knowing what these pitfalls are so you can build a strategy to sidestep them entirely. From missed regulations to simple paperwork errors, being proactive is your best defense against delays that bleed revenue and damage your brand’s momentum. Let’s walk through the most frequent hurdles and how you can clear them.
Closing Regulatory Compliance Gaps
When you’re launching in multiple jurisdictions, you’re not just dealing with different building codes; you’re facing a patchwork of local ordinances, zoning laws, and specific health and safety requirements. It’s incredibly easy to miss a niche rule in one city while you’re focused on ten others. Inadequate management of licenses and permits can lead to more than just a slap on the wrist—it can result in stop-work orders, hefty fines, and serious damage to your brand’s reputation. The only way to close these gaps is with meticulous, location-specific due diligence before you ever submit an application.
Preventing Documentation and Submission Errors
A successful permit application is a team sport, often involving input from legal, operations, architecture, and facilities. With so many hands in the pot, ensuring that all your documentation is accurate and complete is a major challenge. A single missing signature, an outdated form, or an incorrect fee calculation can get your entire package rejected, sending you to the back of the line. To prevent these unforced errors, you need a rock-solid quality control process. Every application should be reviewed against a comprehensive checklist by someone who knows exactly what the jurisdiction expects to see, ensuring it’s perfect before it ever leaves your desk.
Solving Timeline Management Issues
The permitting process is notorious for its unpredictability, and a single delay can set off a chain reaction that impacts your entire project. Contractors get rescheduled, equipment deliveries are pushed back, and your grand opening date becomes a moving target. This is why effective timeline management is so critical. You need a clear view of every permit status across your portfolio, with realistic timelines that account for potential review cycles and inspections. Without a centralized way to track progress and anticipate bottlenecks, you’re essentially flying blind and putting your revenue goals at risk.
Fixing Communication Breakdowns
Clear communication between your internal team, architects, contractors, and the local authorities is non-negotiable. When information gets lost in translation or isn’t shared with the right people at the right time, mistakes happen. Forgetting to research zoning regulations upfront or failing to follow up with a plan reviewer can lead to costly redesigns and denied permits. Establishing a single source of truth—where everyone can see the latest updates, documents, and correspondence—eliminates confusion. This ensures your entire team is working from the same playbook and can proactively address issues before they cause delays.
Understanding the Legal Risks of Non-Compliance
Moving forward on a project without the proper permits isn’t just risky; it’s a serious legal liability. Local authorities have the power to issue stop-work orders, levy significant fines, and in some cases, even force you to tear down unpermitted work. For a franchise, the stakes are even higher. Operating without the right permits can jeopardize your franchise agreement and cause irreparable harm to your brand’s image. Understanding these consequences is the first step in building a compliance-focused culture that protects your investment and ensures every location opens smoothly and successfully.
How to Streamline Your Permit Process
When you’re managing dozens of projects across different states, a reactive approach to permitting is a recipe for delays. Instead of putting out fires, you need a proactive system that brings predictability to your rollouts. Developing a proactive permitting strategy is the key to reducing friction and keeping your opening schedule on track. It’s about creating a repeatable, scalable process that ensures every application is complete, every deadline is met, and every team member knows exactly what they need to do. By standardizing your approach, you can move from hoping for approvals to planning for them. The following steps will help you build a framework to manage your permit portfolio with more control and less chaos.
Use the Right Technology and Tools
If your team is still tracking permits in spreadsheets, it’s time for an upgrade. Juggling multiple jurisdictions, deadlines, and document versions manually is nearly impossible at scale and invites costly human error. The right technology provides a single source of truth for your entire team. Look for licensing and permitting management software that can act as a central hub for all your projects. The best platforms integrate with your existing systems, giving everyone from your architects to your construction managers real-time visibility. This move alone can dramatically reduce administrative overhead, prevent documents from getting lost in email chains, and ensure your team is always working with the most current information.
Monitor Your Progress Effectively
Once you have the right tools, you need to use them to actively monitor your progress. A static checklist won’t cut it. You need a dynamic dashboard that gives you an at-a-glance view of your entire permit portfolio. This dashboard should clearly track the status of every permit, who owns the next step, and what the upcoming deadlines are. This level of visibility allows you to spot potential bottlenecks before they become full-blown delays. For example, if a plan review is taking longer than expected in one city, you can proactively follow up with the jurisdiction or reallocate resources. This shifts your role from reacting to problems to anticipating and solving them, keeping your project timelines intact.
Follow Application Best Practices
The single biggest cause of permit delays is an incomplete or incorrect application. Each jurisdiction has its own unique set of rules, forms, and required supporting documents. Submitting a generic package is a guaranteed way to get rejected, forcing you back to the starting line. To avoid this, establish a rigorous quality control process for every application. This includes double-checking that all forms are filled out completely, all required signatures are in place, and all plans and specs meet local codes. Inadequate management of licenses and permits doesn’t just cause delays—it can create serious business disruptions. Taking the time to get it right the first time saves weeks or even months of back-and-forth with plan reviewers.
Establish Clear Review and Response Procedures
Even with a perfect application, you’ll likely receive comments or correction requests from the plan reviewer. The key is to handle this feedback quickly and efficiently. The complexity of the permitting process means that delays can easily stack up if there isn’t a clear plan for responding to reviewers. Establish a clear internal workflow for managing these responses. Designate a point person to receive all communication from the jurisdiction, log the comments, and assign them to the appropriate team member (e.g., the architect or engineer). Set firm internal deadlines for completing revisions and resubmitting the package. This structured process ensures that comments are addressed promptly and accurately, preventing your project from languishing in review cycles.
Create a Centralized Tracking System
Your permitting strategy needs a central nervous system—a single, accessible repository for every document, communication, and deadline related to your projects. This goes beyond a simple dashboard. It’s a comprehensive archive that houses everything from initial due diligence reports and submitted plan sets to final inspection records and certificates of occupancy. This centralized system is invaluable. It ensures that if a team member leaves, their project knowledge doesn’t leave with them. It also creates a historical database that you can reference for future projects in the same jurisdiction, helping you anticipate requirements and timelines. A robust tracking system is the foundation of a scalable and repeatable permitting process.
When to Partner with a Permit Expediter
If you’re managing a multi-site rollout, you know that juggling permits across different cities and states feels like a full-time job on its own. Your internal team is stretched thin, trying to become overnight experts on obscure zoning codes in dozens of jurisdictions, all while keeping multiple projects on track. At a certain point, the DIY approach stops being efficient and starts becoming a liability—missed deadlines, surprise correction notices, and delayed openings become the norm. This is the moment to consider partnering with a permit expediter.
Bringing in an expert isn’t about admitting defeat; it’s a strategic move to protect your timelines and revenue. A permit expediter is a specialist who lives and breathes the world of municipal approvals. They handle everything from initial due diligence and application quality control to submittals and follow-ups with the city. Instead of putting out fires, you get a partner who prevents them from starting in the first place, ensuring your projects move forward smoothly and predictably. This allows your team to focus on what they do best: getting stores built and open for business.
The Benefits of Expert Support
An experienced permit expediter brings deep jurisdictional knowledge that’s nearly impossible for an in-house team to replicate across a national portfolio. They understand the specific nuances of the plan reviewers in Phoenix versus the zoning board in Philadelphia. This expertise is critical because, as industry analysts note, the inadequate management of licenses and permits can lead to serious business disruptions and legal issues. An expediter translates complex municipal codes into a clear, actionable checklist. They act as your single point of contact, ensuring every application is complete and correct before it’s submitted, which is the key to cutting down on endless review cycles and getting that approved stamp faster.
Manage Risk Without Breaking the Bank
The cost of a permit expediter can feel like just another line item on a crowded budget, but it’s better to think of it as an investment in predictability. The real costs aren’t in the expediter’s fees; they’re in the weeks of lost revenue when a store opening is delayed because of a permitting snag. A proactive permitting strategy is essential to mitigate risk and reduce operational friction. An expediter front-loads the work, catching potential red flags during due diligence and ensuring your submission package is flawless. This proactive approach minimizes the chances of costly resubmittals and keeps your construction schedule on track, pulling revenue forward and protecting your project’s bottom line.
Improve Cross-Department Coordination
Permitting is never a one-person show. It requires input and documents from your legal, operations, design, and construction teams. Without a central coordinator, wires get crossed, deadlines are missed, and critical details fall through the cracks. A permit expediter acts as the hub for all this activity. They create a single source of truth, often through a centralized portal, that gives every stakeholder real-time visibility into the status of every permit. This eliminates the constant “just checking in” emails and ensures your internal departments and external partners, like architects and general contractors, are perfectly aligned and working with the same information.
Maintain Ongoing Compliance
Getting the initial building permit is just the first step. Your locations need to maintain compliance through various inspections, renewals, and operational licenses for years to come. Managing these ongoing requirements across a large portfolio is a massive administrative challenge. A dedicated permit partner helps you build a sustainable system to track renewal dates and inspection requirements, ensuring a minor administrative oversight doesn’t suddenly force a location to close. By integrating this process into your workflow, you can move from a reactive, fire-drill mentality to a proactive stance that keeps all your sites compliant and operational without any last-minute scrambles.
Stay Ahead of Regulatory Changes
Zoning ordinances, health codes, and building regulations are constantly evolving. A new accessibility requirement or a change in signage laws can appear overnight and derail a project that was planned months in advance. The complexity of the permitting process is a major source of delays and unexpected costs. A permit expediter’s job is to stay on top of these regulatory shifts. They act as your early warning system, monitoring changes in your key jurisdictions and advising you on how to adapt your plans. This foresight allows you to adjust your designs and applications proactively, keeping your projects on schedule and avoiding costly surprises during the review process.
Create a Long-Term Permitting Strategy
A successful multi-unit rollout isn’t just about getting permits for your current projects; it’s about building a system that works for every future opening. Treating permitting as a series of one-off tasks is a recipe for delays and budget overruns. Instead, you need a proactive, long-term approach. As the experts at Moss Adams note, “Developing a proactive permitting strategy is essential to mitigate risk, reduce operational friction, and keep your business running smoothly.”
This means shifting from a reactive mindset to a strategic one. A solid strategy anticipates challenges before they happen, standardizes your processes across different jurisdictions, and creates a predictable path to getting your doors open. It involves defining internal roles, setting clear performance goals, and establishing protocols for renewals and regulatory changes. By building this foundation, you turn permitting from a constant headache into a competitive advantage, ensuring your expansion plans stay on track and on budget, project after project.
Plan Your Internal Resources
Getting a permit isn’t a one-person job. It touches multiple departments, and if they aren’t talking to each other, things fall through the cracks. Your legal team needs to review applications, operations has to align timelines, and facilities must ensure code compliance. As one report points out, “Permit and licensing processes often involve multiple departments—legal, operations, HR, facilities, and compliance.” To avoid bottlenecks, map out your internal workflow and assign clear responsibilities. Make sure every team understands its role and how it impacts the overall timeline. A simple RACI chart (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) can work wonders here, ensuring everyone is aligned and informed from start to finish.
Set and Track Performance Metrics
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. For multi-site rollouts, tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) is critical for identifying inefficiencies and keeping your program on schedule. Start by establishing benchmarks for metrics like average days-to-permit, number of resubmittals per project, and costs per jurisdiction. The next step is to “create a centralized compliance dashboard that tracks permit and license status, ownership, and deadlines.” This gives your entire team real-time visibility into your portfolio, making it easy to spot which projects are on track and which are falling behind. This data-driven approach helps you pinpoint recurring issues and hold everyone accountable for hitting your opening dates.
Develop a Permit Renewal Protocol
Getting the initial permit is only half the battle; many permits and licenses require periodic renewals. Letting one slip can halt operations, lead to fines, or damage your brand’s reputation. As Property Works explains, “Inadequate management of licenses and permits can lead to legal repercussions, business disruptions, and damage to reputation.” Don’t leave renewals to chance. Create a master calendar that tracks every expiration date for every location. Assign a specific owner for each renewal and set automated reminders well in advance. This simple protocol ensures you never miss a deadline and your locations remain compliant without any last-minute scrambles.
Future-Proof Your Permitting Process
Regulations are constantly changing. What worked for your last 10 locations might not work for the next 10. From new energy codes to updated accessibility standards, staying ahead of these shifts is key. The complexity of the permitting process can lead to “delays, increased costs, and even project cancellations.” Future-proofing your strategy means you must anticipate these changes and adapt. Dedicate resources to monitoring regulatory updates from bodies like the International Code Council (ICC) and build flexibility into your project templates. By planning for what’s next, you can avoid being caught off guard and keep your rollouts moving smoothly.
Mitigate Risk and Plan for Success
A successful franchise rollout hinges on more than just site selection and construction schedules. Without a solid plan for your permits, you’re exposed to risks that can stop a project in its tracks. Inadequate permit management can lead to serious legal issues, disruptive operational delays, and lasting damage to your brand’s reputation. Getting ahead of these challenges isn’t just good practice; it’s essential for protecting your timeline and your bottom line.
Proactive planning is your best defense against the delays and budget overruns that plague multi-site rollouts. It means shifting from a reactive mindset—where you’re constantly putting out fires—to a strategic one where you anticipate hurdles and build a process to clear them efficiently. By treating permitting as a critical, early-stage function, you can create a predictable path to getting your doors open on time and on budget, every time.
Set Up Early Warning Systems
You can’t fix a problem you can’t see. An early warning system gives your team the visibility needed to catch potential issues before they become full-blown crises. This starts with a centralized compliance dashboard that tracks every permit’s status, key deadlines, and ownership across all your projects. When your team can see upcoming renewal dates or identify a stalled application at a glance, they can act decisively. This system becomes your single source of truth, eliminating the confusion of scattered spreadsheets and email chains and ensuring everyone from project managers to leadership is on the same page.
Assess the Financial Impact of Delays
Permit delays aren’t just an inconvenience; they have a direct and significant impact on your bottom line. Every day a project is stalled is a day you’re paying for carrying costs, staff time, and—most importantly—lost revenue. The complexity of the permitting process can lead to many challenges, such as delays, increased costs, and even project cancellations. To truly grasp the stakes, calculate the daily revenue of a new location and multiply it by the average delay. When you quantify the risk in real dollars, it becomes much easier to justify investing in a streamlined, well-managed permitting process from the start.
Put Preventive Measures in Place
The most effective way to solve a problem is to prevent it from happening in the first place. For franchise rollouts, this means conducting thorough permit due diligence long before you submit an application. Failing to properly research local zoning regulations and building codes is a common misstep that can lead to “costly delays, permit denials, and even the inability to operate your business.” Taking the time to understand the specific requirements of each jurisdiction allows you to prepare clean, complete application packages that sail through review, minimizing the back-and-forth with plan checkers that kills momentum.
Build Sustainable Compliance Habits
Managing permits for a single location is one thing; staying compliant across dozens or hundreds is another challenge entirely. Success at scale requires building repeatable, sustainable habits into your workflow. This often means you need to “partner with legal or compliance advisors who specialize in…licensing and permitting across your operating regions.” By establishing a clear, documented process and leaning on expert partners, you create a system that ensures consistency and accuracy for every project. This approach not only reduces risk on your current rollout but also builds a strong foundation for all future growth.
Related Articles
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- The Guide to Multi-Site Permit Management
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- 5 Strategies for Faster Building Permit Approvals
Frequently Asked Questions
My team is about to start a 30-site rollout. What’s the most critical first step we should take? Before you do anything else, start with location-specific due diligence. This means digging into the local zoning laws, building codes, and submission requirements for each individual municipality before your architects even finalize the plans. This upfront research prevents you from designing a project that will never get approved, saving you from costly redesigns and weeks of delays right from the start.
What’s the single biggest reason our permit applications get rejected or delayed? The most common culprits are simple, preventable errors. Things like incomplete forms, missing signatures, incorrect fee payments, or plans that don’t meet a specific local code are the top reasons for rejection. This is why a rigorous internal quality control check is so crucial. Having a second set of expert eyes review every page before it goes to the city can eliminate the frustrating back-and-forth that grinds projects to a halt.
Is hiring a permit expediter really worth the investment? It’s helpful to think about the cost of not hiring one. A single permit delay on one location can cost you weeks of lost revenue, which often far exceeds an expediter’s fee. You aren’t just paying for someone to submit paperwork; you’re investing in predictability. An expert ensures your applications are correct the first time and knows how to work with city reviewers, which protects your opening dates and keeps your revenue stream on schedule.
We don’t have a dedicated permit manager. How can we handle this process across multiple states without it derailing our team? This is a common challenge for growing brands. The key is to create a single source of truth for your entire portfolio. A centralized system or portal where all documents, deadlines, and communications are tracked is non-negotiable. It stops critical information from getting lost in emails and ensures everyone is on the same page. When your team is stretched thin, this is also the perfect time to consider an external partner who can act as your dedicated permit manager across all jurisdictions.
Once we get our initial permits and open a location, are we done? Getting the initial building permit and certificate of occupancy is a huge milestone, but it’s not the end of the road. Many business licenses, health permits, and fire safety permits require annual or biennial renewals. Missing a renewal deadline can lead to fines or even a temporary shutdown. The best practice is to create a master calendar that tracks all renewal dates and assigns a clear owner for each, ensuring your locations stay compliant long after the grand opening.