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

Permits and the health authority

The San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, known as Metro Health, issues and inspects your Food Service Establishment Annual Permit — not the state and not the county separately. The fee is tiered by gross annual food sales: $310 at $0-$49,999, $618 at $50,000-$149,999, and $928 at $150,000 or more. Texas's statewide food safety baseline, the Texas Food Establishment Rules (Title 25 TAC Chapter 228), applies underneath the city's own ordinance; DSHS only issues permits directly where no local health authority has adopted one, and San Antonio has, so Metro Health — not DSHS — is your actual point of contact for inspection and renewal.

Sales tax on the ticket

A San Antonio restaurant charges 8.25% combined sales tax on prepared food — the state's 6.25% plus a 1.125% city rate, broken into a 0.375% Advanced Transportation District (ATD) component and a 0.5% VIA Metropolitan Transit component — per the Comptroller's official local rate listing. That total is already the statewide ceiling: city, county, transit and special-purpose district add-ons are capped at 2% combined on top of the state rate, so 8.25% is the most any Texas address can charge on food.

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" — 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 Bexar 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 verified events anchor San Antonio's food calendar: CULINARIA, the city's culinary festival, and A Night In Old San Antonio (NIOSA), the multi-night Fiesta event built almost entirely around food booths from dozens of local cultural groups. Both draw serious crowds worth planning inventory and staffing around if you're anywhere downtown or near La Villita. Beyond those two, we didn't find a verified, citable list of recurring farmers markets or food halls for this page — check with Metro Health or a local market association for the current schedule.

What kind of restaurant works here

San Antonio is Texas's second-largest city by population, at roughly 1.55 million as of the 2025 Census estimate, and it splits fairly cleanly between a heavy year-round tourism trade downtown around the River Walk and the Alamo, and steady neighborhood dining everywhere else. Fiesta season in the spring — anchored by NIOSA — is the city's clearest annual demand spike, worth staffing and buying ahead for if you're downtown; outside that window, demand runs closer to a typical big-city pattern than a beach or ski town's boom-and-bust calendar.

Running it on your own site

Set your exact 8.25% rate under Admin → Restaurant once you've confirmed the ATD and VIA components apply to your specific address, and every online ticket — 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. Fiesta week and NIOSA both mean a short, predictable staffing crunch if you're near downtown; scheduling and shifts live in the same admin as your menu and ordering, so there's no separate system to stand up for a seasonal push. 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.