Opening and running a restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas: permits, taxes and what sells

Permits and the health authority

Fort Worth is regulated at the county level: Tarrant County Public Health issues and inspects your Food Establishment Permit, rather than a city health department. The county's own page is candid that fees aren't standardized yet — it states permit fees "vary depending on the city and we are working to get uniform fees across the county" — so there's no single published dollar figure to quote here; call Tarrant County Public Health directly for your current fee before you budget for it. Texas's statewide food safety baseline, the Texas Food Establishment Rules (Title 25 TAC Chapter 228), applies underneath the county's own ordinance; DSHS only issues permits directly where no local health authority has adopted one, and Tarrant County has, so the county — not DSHS — is your actual point of contact.

Sales tax on the ticket

A Fort Worth restaurant charges 8.25% combined sales tax on prepared food — the state's 6.25% plus 1% local, split evenly between a 0.5% Fort Worth MTA transit component and a 0.5% Fort Worth Crime Control & Prevention District component, per the Comptroller's official local rate listing. That's already the statewide ceiling: city, county, transit and special-purpose district add-ons are capped at 2% combined on top of the state rate.

Alcohol

Serving alcohol runs on TABC permits, not a city or county license. A restaurant pouring beer and wine typically holds a Wine and Malt Beverage Retailer's Permit (BG) or a Retail Dealer's On-Premise License (BE); one serving spirits needs a Mixed Beverage Permit (MB). Any of those requires a Food and Beverage Certificate (FB) add-on, and the current TABC rule caps an FB holder's alcohol sales at 60% of total sales unless the business otherwise qualifies as a "restaurant" — not the older "51% food" framing still repeated in casual advice. Pouring past midnight needs a Late Hours Certificate. On tax, the state charges the permit holder a 6.7% mixed beverage gross receipts tax (not billed to the guest) plus an 8.25% mixed beverage sales tax charged on the drink itself. Whether alcohol is allowed at a given address depends on a local-option election; we didn't verify Tarrant County's wet/dry status precinct by precinct, so confirm with TABC or the county clerk before building a bar program around a specific location.

The local food calendar

The MAIN St. Fort Worth Arts Festival, held downtown, is the verified food-and-crowd event to plan staffing and inventory around if you're anywhere near the festival footprint. Beyond that, we didn't find a verified, citable list of recurring Fort Worth food festivals, restaurant weeks or farmers markets for this page — check with Tarrant County Public Health or a local market association for the current calendar before you build a seasonal menu around one.

What kind of restaurant works here

Fort Worth had roughly 1.03 million residents as of the 2025 Census estimate, and the county's own note that permit fees still "vary by city" is a fair hint that the metro is a patchwork of distinct districts rather than one center: the Stockyards and Sundance Square pull tourist and evening-event traffic, while neighborhoods further out run on steady local trade. Fort Worth isn't a seasonal beach or ski town, so demand is comparatively even across the year outside a festival weekend's spike, which makes staffing and buying easier to plan than in a resort market.

Running it on your own site

Because your county permit fee isn't standardized yet, get the actual dollar figure in writing from Tarrant County Public Health before you set a budget — the same discipline applies to your sales-tax setup: confirm your exact 8.25% breakdown for your address, then set it once under Admin → Restaurant so every online ticket, whether pickup, delivery, a dine-in order from the table, or a pay-it-forward treat for another table, applies it automatically and shows it to the guest before they pay. If a festival weekend near the Stockyards or Sundance Square means a short staffing spike, scheduling and shifts live in the same admin as your menu and ordering. Reservations run on real time slots built from your own party-size and lead-time rules, and none of it touches a delivery dispatcher or a POS terminal — whatever you already use for those stays exactly where it is.