Case study: How absurd city permit requirements kill new businesses
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SF Mayor Lurie says he has a new plan to fix onerous city regs. Here's a case study of why it can't come soon enough. SF Chron reports.
Over the past eight years, Rich Lee and his wife, Liza Otanes, have built Spro Coffee Lab into a San Francisco institution.
The couple began selling artisanal coffee drinks out of a food truck in Mission Bay in 2017 and quickly gained a loyal clientele for their high-end ingredients and unique flavors reminiscent of craft cocktails. As Spro gained popularity, Lee and Otanes expanded to three brick-and-mortar locations across San Francisco.
But behind the scenes, Lee was considering calling it quits.
He was struggling to keep up with the high costs and subpar street conditions that often define doing business in the city. Not only were there mounting utility and garbage fees, but Lee says he also twice had to replace cafe windows shattered by homeless people, setting him back thousands of dollars.
The ultimate insult, however, came in early 2024, when city inspectors notified Lee that the tiny tables and chairs he’d been placing for years outside Spro’s Church Street location were unauthorized. He needed permits, which required a detailed computer-generated site plan, application fees that could be in the hundreds of dollars and a certain level of insurance coverage. Until the permits were approved — which could take two to six months — Lee was prohibited from putting the tables and chairs outside.
The reason for the crackdown? A random 311 complaint alleging that the tables and chairs were blocking the sidewalk.
They weren’t, as the complainant’s photo evidence showed.
It didn’t matter.
The complaint triggered the city’s cumbersome regulatory process, which became “a nightmare” to deal with, Lee told me. He said it took between eight and 10 weeks for his permits to be approved — partly because the city kept asking for revisions to his site plan, which he’d hired a professional to develop. Each day without the outdoor tables cost him about 15% in sales, Lee estimated, because only a few tables could fit inside the small cafe.
Read the whole thing here.
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