Every licence you need to open a restaurant in India

Nobody opens a restaurant because they were excited about paperwork. But the licences are the part of the setup with the longest lead times and the least room to improvise, and they are the reason more soft launches slip than any kitchen delay.

The list below is the full set for a typical restaurant in an Indian city. Not all of it applies to you — a 20-seat vegetarian café in a standalone shop has a shorter list than a rooftop bar in a mall — but it is worth reading all of it once, because the ones people miss are never the famous ones.

This is general information, not legal or tax advice. Fees, turnover thresholds, documents and even which authority issues what vary by state and municipal corporation, and they change — the FSSAI rules below changed in March 2026. Treat every figure here as an order of magnitude for budgeting, confirm the current position on your own state and city portals, and take advice from a qualified professional before you commit money, sign a lease or file anything. DinePilot accepts no liability for decisions taken on the basis of this page. Last reviewed: 31 July 2026.

Why the order matters more than the list

Licences are one stage of a longer sequence, and starting them late is the most expensive scheduling mistake a new restaurant makes. The full sequence — concept, budget, lease, approvals, fit-out, hiring, soft open — is in how to open a restaurant in India.

Most of these licences are not independent. The municipal trade licence and the police eating house licence generally want to see your FSSAI certificate and fire clearance already in hand. Fire clearance wants your building layout finalised. GST registration wants a proof of business premises.

Apply in the wrong order and nothing is refused — you simply get told to come back, and each round trip is two to three weeks. That is the entire difference between a six-week licensing run and a fourteen-week one.

The working sequence for most restaurants:

1. Company or firm registration, PAN, and a current account
2. Property documents and lease with the correct commercial usage clause
3. FSSAI, GST, shop & establishment
4. Fire safety NOC
5. Trade licence, eating house licence, health/sanitary licence
6. Liquor licence, in parallel and started early
7. The small ones: signage, lift, weights and measures, music

The licences

1. FSSAI registration or licence

Issued by: Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, through the FoSCoS portal Applies to: everyone handling food, without exception

Three tiers based on annual turnover. The thresholds were raised with effect from 1 April 2026, and the change is large enough that advice written before then — including most of what is currently on the internet — will send you to the wrong tier:

In practice that means a single restaurant billing under roughly ₹12.5 lakh a month now sits in Basic Registration, where a year ago it would have needed a State Licence.

The same 2026 amendment ended the renewal cycle: licences and registrations issued on or after 1 April 2026 have perpetual validity rather than a one-to-five-year term. The trigger is the date the certificate is granted, not the date you applied — an application filed in March 2026 and still in scrutiny, query or inspection comes out perpetual. This is not a reason to stop watching the date — the annual fee is still due, and non-payment triggers automatic suspension. Existing licences that expired before 31 March 2026 followed the old renewal route.

Displaying the certificate with its number is compulsory, and printing the number on your menu and bill is good practice. This is the licence an inspector asks for first, and the one whose absence closes a restaurant fastest.

2. GST registration

Issued by: GST portal, centrally

Mandatory once you cross the turnover threshold for services in your state, and in practice worth doing from the start — most suppliers and any corporate or aggregator relationship will expect a GSTIN.

Standalone restaurant service is taxed at 5% without input tax credit; restaurants in "specified premises" are at 18% with credit available. Since 1 April 2025 that classification no longer runs on a hotel's declared tariff: premises qualify if any room actually sold above ₹7,500 a night in the previous financial year, or if the hotel opts in by declaration. For a standalone restaurant none of this applies — you are at 5% without ITC. That "without ITC" matters when you budget: the GST on your rent, equipment and supplies is a cost, not something you set off. Rates and the treatment of your particular format are a conversation with a CA rather than a form to fill in blind.

3. Shop and establishment registration

Issued by: state labour department

Registers you as an employer and governs working hours, weekly offs, leave and closing times. It is straightforward and cheap, and it is the document that underpins everything else about employing people — worth having before you start hiring, not after.

One thing has changed underneath this. India's four labour codes came into force on 21 November 2025, consolidating twenty-nine central labour laws; the central rules were notified on 8 May 2026, and states have been notifying their own rules at very different speeds through 2026. The practical effect for a restaurant is that a written appointment letter for every employee is now a legal obligation rather than good practice, and the definition of "wages" for PF and gratuity has changed in a way that affects your payroll cost. Which provisions bite in your state depends on what your state has notified — this is worth twenty minutes with a consultant rather than an assumption.

4. Trade licence

Issued by: your municipal corporation

Permission from the city to run a food business at that address. Fees are commonly calculated on floor area or seating capacity, which is why quoted costs vary so much between cities. Annual renewal.

5. Eating house licence

Issued by: the police commissionerate in most metros — but this is actively changing

Specific permission to serve food for consumption on the premises. It usually asks for your FSSAI, fire and trade papers, which is why it sits late in the sequence.

The requirement is being unwound in places. Delhi exempted restaurants from the police NOC in June 2025, moving licensing to the municipal bodies — MCD, NDMC or the Cantonment Board — so a Delhi restaurant no longer applies to Delhi Police for this. NITI Aayog recommended removing the eating house licence nationally in June 2026, which is a proposal rather than law.

Mumbai, Bengaluru and most other large cities still require it; smaller municipalities may fold it into the trade licence. Check your own city's current position rather than a checklist written a year ago — including this one.

6. Fire safety NOC

Issued by: the state fire department

Required for most restaurant premises, and effectively universal above a certain area or occupancy or in a mall or high-rise. Expect an inspection covering extinguishers, exits, signage, kitchen suppression and gas installation.

Get the fire officer's requirements before the kitchen is built. Retrofitting an exit route or a suppression hood into a finished kitchen is the single most expensive licensing mistake a new restaurant makes.

7. Liquor licence

Issued by: state excise department

Its own project, on its own timeline, with its own economics. Categories, fees and conditions differ enormously by state — distance rules from schools and places of worship, quotas, dry days, permitted hours — and the annual fee alone can run to several lakh in some states.

If alcohol is central to your model, resolve licence feasibility for a specific address before signing the lease. Restaurants have signed ten-year leases on premises that could never have been licensed.

8. Health or sanitary licence

Issued by: the municipal health department

Covers hygiene of the premises and, in many cities, medical fitness certificates for food handlers. Sometimes issued as part of the trade licence, sometimes separately — check locally.

9. Signage licence

Issued by: the municipal corporation

Permission for your board, priced by size and sometimes by whether it is illuminated. Small, forgotten by almost everyone, and enforced by the same inspector who is already outside looking at your board.

10. Lift and DG set clearances

Issued by: the state electrical inspectorate or equivalent

Applies if your premises has a lift or you run a diesel generator. Pollution control consent may also apply to a generator above a certain capacity.

11. Music and entertainment licences

Issued by: copyright societies, plus the police for live entertainment

Playing recorded music in a commercial space needs public performance licences. Live music, DJs or any performance usually needs a separate police permission. Both are inexpensive relative to everything else and both are actively inspected in bars and cafés.

What it costs and how long it takes

For a mid-size restaurant without alcohol, in a city where fees are moderate:

Liquor sits outside this table on purpose. Add several lakh and several months, and treat it as a separate decision.

These are budgeting figures, not quotes. Two restaurants of the same size in two cities can differ by a factor of three on the municipal lines alone.

Where new restaurants actually get stuck

The lease has the wrong usage. A residential or non-commercial designation stops the trade licence dead, whatever the landlord promised. Verify usage in the property documents before signing anything.

The kitchen is built before the fire officer sees the layout. Covered above, and worth repeating because it is the expensive one.

Liquor feasibility checked after the lease. Distance rules are absolute. Check the address, not the city.

Documents in the wrong name. Lease, electricity bill, bank account and PAN should all name the same legal entity. Mismatches cause rejections that read as ordinary delay and cost a fortnight each.

Nobody owns renewals. Trade, eating house, health, signage and music licences are annual, and fire clearance runs on its own cycle. FSSAI no longer expires for licences issued from April 2026, but its annual fee still does, and missing it suspends you automatically — so it belongs on the same calendar. One person, one calendar, one reminder 60 days ahead of each date. A lapsed licence is discovered by an inspection, not by you.

Steps to take this week

1. Confirm your entity and premises documents. Registration, PAN, current account, lease with a commercial usage clause, and an electricity bill in the right name.
2. Open your FSSAI application first, on the current thresholds. It is quick, cheap, and half the other applications will ask to see it. Check which tier your projected turnover puts you in under the April 2026 limits, not the ones an older article quotes.
3. Call the fire department before the kitchen drawings are final. Ask what they will require at inspection and build to that.
4. If you want a liquor licence, check feasibility for the exact address today. Before the lease, not after.
5. Build a renewal calendar as you go. Every certificate you receive gets its expiry date entered the same day it arrives.

Then verify each fee and threshold on your own state portal. The list of licences is stable; the numbers attached to them are not.

Summary

• Most Indian restaurants need seven to eleven licences across five different authorities.
• FSSAI, GST, shop & establishment, trade licence and fire NOC are near-universal; eating house, liquor, music, signage and lift clearances depend on city and format.
• Sequence beats speed — FSSAI and fire clearance first, because the municipal and police licences ask to see them.
• Budget ₹40,000–₹1,50,000 and six to ten weeks without alcohol; treat liquor as a separate project started before the lease.
• The costly mistakes are a lease with the wrong usage, a kitchen built before the fire officer sees it, and nobody owning renewals.
• FSSAI changed in 2026: Registration now covers turnover up to ₹1.5 crore, and licences no longer expire — though the annual fee still has to be paid.
• Every figure here needs verifying against your own state and municipal rules before you budget on it. This page is information, not legal advice.