I want to open a restaurant/ club in milwaukee,wi what permits do I need and where do I start?

Question

I want to open a restaurant/ club in milwaukee,wi what permits do I need and where do I start?

Answer 1

Call City Hall and tell the person who answers the phone what you want to know.  She'll connect you to the right department.

Answer 2

Do you have any management experience in the restaurant/club field?  The restaurant business has the highest failure rate of any new businesses, and poor management is one of the reasons.  Unless you have lots of money and can hire a top notch manager, you better know what YOU are doing.  

Before you go any further, I STRONGLY recommend you contact the Small Business Development Center (at your local community college) and talk to them; the counseling is free.  

Then sign up for the NxLevel Entrepreneurial program...  it's a 12 session course that walks you through the ins and outs of starting or growing your business, and as part of that you will write a business plan.  At the end of the class your plan will be reviewed by a lending professional, and will be critiqued, telling you the strong points of your plan AND the weak points.  

Then you can work on the weak points and hopefully get it into shape to actually present to a lender and get the loan you need.  There is a cost for the NxLevel program but it’s a lot cheaper than losing your investment.

Even if you hire a professional to write your plan, you should still take the NxLevel course.  It saved me from going into a business that would have failed within a year or so, taking my investment with it.  I realized by the third week of the class that I could not afford the business I was looking at and changed directions in the middle of the class. .

Business plans may be a pain in the butt to prepare, but without one, your business is doomed to failure.  To start with, you won't know what your startup costs are going to be, what kind of income to expect, what your ongoing expenses are, who your competition is, and even whether or not you can make a profit.  Without a GOOD business plan, you will not be able to get a business loan to get your business off the ground.