Friend of mine runs a tiny and successful to-go cafe. His most unexpected problem was competitor restaurants around him constantly phoning city hall to "complain" about his business in hopes they regulate him off the street. The most common complaint at first was cooking smell, so the tiny cafe is forced to install expensive filtration exhaust.Then the complaints turned to signage. A city inspector showed up numerous times to measure his sign, how far his little sandwich board was placed in the sidewalk out front, the brightness of the lights on his sign, that the artwork on the sandwich board was offensive or violated one of the thousands of regulations regarding public advertising. Then the complaints turned to patio, there was too much noise, chairs were too far into the street, garbage was left too long on tables, ect.
Anybody with a restaurant/cafe startup idea should have some kind of contingency plan to deal with the inevitable use of city hall to try and close you down.
Anybody with a restaurant/cafe startup idea should have some kind of contingency plan to deal with the inevitable use of city hall to try and close you down.