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

Permits and the health authority

The Houston Health Department issues and inspects your food establishment permit inside city limits — not the state. It's called a Food Dealer Permit and is tiered by employee count: $295.41 for 1-9 employees, scaling to $1,074.24 for 101 or more, with a $201.41 non-profit rate, per the city's fee schedule effective January 1, 2026. Texas's statewide food safety standards — the Texas Food Establishment Rules, Title 25 of the Texas Administrative Code, Chapter 228 — set the baseline, but DSHS only issues permits directly where there's no local health ordinance. Houston regulates locally, so the Health Department, not DSHS, is your point of contact for inspection and renewal.

Sales tax on the ticket

A Houston restaurant charges 8.25% combined sales tax on prepared food — the state's 6.25% plus 1% city sales tax and 1% for Houston's METRO transit authority — per the Comptroller's official local rate listing. That's already the ceiling: state law caps city, county, transit and special-purpose district add-ons at 2% on top of the state rate, so 8.25% is the most any Texas address can charge. One wrinkle worth knowing: the Comptroller's own rate list shows one narrow slice of Harris County addresses outside the METRO service area at a lower 7.25% total — a good reason to confirm your specific address's rate rather than assume every Houston ZIP code is identical.

Alcohol

Serving alcohol runs on TABC permits, not a city 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" — the reverse of 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 Harris 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

Two recurring events anchor Houston's food calendar in a way worth planning around: the World's Championship Bar-B-Que Contest, part of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, and Houston Restaurant Weeks, the city's prix-fixe dining promotion that a large number of local restaurants opt into every year. We didn't find a verified, citable list of recurring farmers markets or food halls for Houston in this research pass — check with a local market association or the Health Department's vendor listings for the current schedule before you plan a booth around one.

What kind of restaurant works here

Houston is one of the country's largest cities by population — roughly 2.4 million as of the 2025 Census estimate — spread across a metro with no single dominant restaurant district. There's genuine year-round local trade in nearly every part of town, from the Energy Corridor's weekday lunch crowd to Montrose and the Heights' evening and weekend spots to the Museum District and Rice Village pulling university and visitor traffic. Houston isn't a seasonal beach or ski destination, so demand runs comparatively steady across the year, with the Rodeo (late winter) and Restaurant Weeks (late summer) standing out as the two real spikes worth staffing and buying ahead for.

Running it on your own site

Whichever part of Houston you're in, the sales-tax rate you configure has to match your actual address — set it once under Admin → Restaurant and every online ticket, whether pickup, delivery, a dine-in order sent from the table, or a pay-it-forward treat for another table, applies it automatically and shows it to the guest before they pay. Run a second location elsewhere in the metro — the Woodlands, Sugar Land, or an area outside the METRO boundary — and each site's admin carries its own configured rate, so you're not stuck reusing one number across addresses that legally charge different totals. Reservations run on real time slots built from your own party-size and lead-time rules, and the table board shows the floor what's seated and waiting; none of it runs through a delivery dispatcher or a POS terminal, so whatever you already use for those stays exactly where it is.