How to open a restaurant in Ireland: the legal and practical steps, in order

Opening a restaurant in Ireland is mostly a money and premises problem. The legal side is a list of steps with a sensible order, and most of the delays come from doing them in the wrong order: a lease signed before anyone asked about a fire safety certificate, or a licence application lodged without the month's notice to the HSE.

This guide runs through the steps as they fall, with the Irish rules as of October 2026.

Step 1: Choose your structure and register with Revenue

You can trade as a sole trader, a partnership or a limited company. The choice is a conversation with your accountant, but it changes how you register:

• Sole trader: you register for tax and use your own PPS number for everything to do with the business. If you trade under a name that isn't your own, register the business name with the Companies Registration Office (Form RBN1).
• Partnership: Revenue issues a tax reference number for the partnership, used for employer and VAT returns.
• Company: Revenue issues a tax reference number the company trades under and puts on its invoices. Revenue also needs a Statement of Particulars (Form 11F CRO) within 30 days of trading.

VAT registration

You must register for VAT once your turnover passes the relevant threshold, applying within 30 days of the transaction that takes you over it. Revenue also notes that a new business that hasn't started trading can register in order to reclaim VAT on its start-up costs. On a full restaurant fit-out, that's worth a conversation with your accountant early.

Step 2: Sort the premises before you sign

Two things to check before the lease:

• Planning and building control. The local authority decides whether your use needs planning permission. Dublin City Council's guidance says a fire safety certificate is required for a new building, an extension, material alterations to an existing building, or a change of use. Turning a shop into a restaurant is the classic change of use.
• The EHO's view of the layout. The FSAI and the HSE both advise contacting the Environmental Health Office at the earliest stage, because they'll tell you whether your premises and operations meet food hygiene law. Moving a wash-hand basin on a drawing costs nothing; moving it after the tiler has been is expensive.

Step 3: Notify the HSE before you trade

Every food business must register before it operates. For a restaurant that means notifying the HSE online through the National Environmental Health Service, with your operator type, business details, premises type and start date. An EHO assesses it, your business goes on the register with a reference number, and you get an acknowledgement letter.

Opening without notifying is an offence, and the FSAI has published Closure Orders for exactly that. Our guide to registering a food business in Ireland covers the form and what happens next.

Step 4: Build your food safety system

HACCP-based food safety management is a legal requirement for every food business. Most independent restaurants use the FSAI's Safe Catering pack: a plan you complete for your kitchen, hygiene requirements, a Declaration of Completion and Review you sign, and recording forms for checks, training and allergens.

Before opening day you should have:

• your Safe Catering plan (or another HACCP-based system) completed and signed
• fridge, freezer and hot-holding checks set up, against the FSAI temperatures (chilled food at 5°C or below, hot holding above 63°C, cooking to a core of 75°C)
• a cleaning schedule and opening and closing checks
• supplier details for traceability
• a training record. The FSAI's Guide to Food Safety Skills expects Level 1 skills within a staff member's first month, and whoever runs the HACCP system must be trained in HACCP principles

See HACCP for restaurants and fridge temperature rules for the detail.

Step 5: Write down your allergens

For non-prepacked food, Irish law (S.I. No. 489 of 2014) requires allergen information in writing at the point of sale, for each dish, before the customer orders. The FSAI says a QR code alone doesn't meet the requirement, and "may contain" statements don't replace it. Build your allergen matrix while you test the menu, not the night before opening. Allergen rules in Ireland has the full picture.

Step 6: Decide whether you'll serve alcohol

A restaurant doesn't need a pub licence to serve drink, but it does need the right licence. The two Revenue describes for restaurants:

A few details that matter:

• Beer with a wine licence. Revenue says a wine licence holder who also wants to sell beer can apply to the District Court for a Restaurant Certificate. If granted, it allows beer to be sold for consumption with a meal.
• Special Restaurant Licence rules. Alcohol can be served in the waiting area once a customer has ordered a substantial meal, in the dining area during the meal, and within 30 minutes after the meal ends. Payment for the alcohol must be taken with the meal.
• Court certificate. The HSE lists special restaurant licences among those that need a court certificate before Revenue issues the licence.
• Notify the HSE first. Under section 4 of the Public Health (Alcohol) Act 2018, you must notify the HSE one month before you apply for or renew a liquor licence, every year.
• Licensing year. Both licences run from 1 October to 30 September and expire on 30 September whatever the issue date.

Revenue checks tax clearance before issuing any licence, so keep your tax affairs up to date from day one.

Step 7: Register as an employer and hire properly

Revenue

If you hire anyone, you must register as an employer, telling Revenue your name, address and intention to pay staff. Revenue says to do this through MyEnquiries in the Revenue Online Service before you pay your first employee. After that you report each employee's pay and deductions to Revenue on or before each payday, and you request a Revenue Payroll Notification for each new starter before their first payday. That's where their PPS number comes in.

A company must register as an employer even if its only employees are its directors.

Contracts and pay

• Within 5 days of starting: a Day 5 Statement of core terms in writing (names, employer address, place of work, job title, start date, probation, expected duration if temporary, pay and pay reference period, expected daily and weekly hours, overtime terms) and your tips and service charge policy. See our guide to the 5-day statement.
• Within one month: the full written statement of terms.
• Minimum wage: €14.15 an hour from 1 January 2026 for workers aged 20 and over, with lower rates for younger workers.
• Tips: under the Payment of Wages (Amendment) (Tips and Gratuities) Act 2022, your tips policy must be displayed in the restaurant and online, electronic tips and service charges must be shared fairly with staff, and tips can't make up contractual pay. More in the Tips Act guide.
• Employer PRSI: from 1 October 2026 the Class A rates are 9.15% where an employee's weekly pay is €552 or less and 11.40% above that, with no employer PRSI below €38 a week.

Working time records

The WRC can inspect hours of work for each employee with start and finish times, breaks and rest periods. A roster you publish and a record of hours actually worked make those records easy. Start keeping them from the first training shift.

Step 8: Price the menu with the right VAT

From 1 July 2026, restaurant and catering services are charged at the 9% second reduced rate, down from 13.5%, with no end date. The exceptions catch new owners out:

• Alcohol, bottled water, soft drinks, sports drinks and vegetable juices are at 23% even when served with a meal.
• Takeaway isn't a restaurant service: hot takeaway food is 9%, cold takeaway food is generally 0%, and drinks are 23%.
• A meal deal mixing food and a soft drink has to be split between the rates.

So a €24.00 main course carries €1.98 of VAT (€24.00 ÷ 1.09 = €22.02 net), while a €6.50 glass of wine carries €1.22 (€6.50 ÷ 1.23 = €5.28 net). These are illustrative prices. Our VAT rates for hospitality guide has more worked examples.

Opening checklist

The last line is its own job: every employer needs a safety statement based on written risk assessments. See safety statements and risk assessments.

How ShiftComplete helps when you open

ShiftComplete is where the day-to-day records live once the doors open. Staff set their availability on their phones, you add events such as an opening weekend that needs more on the floor, and it builds a draft roster in seconds that you adjust and publish to every phone. Clocking in and out (a setting you switch on) records hours worked against the roster, and you can download them as a spreadsheet. Temperature logs, opening and closing checklists, the 14 allergens for every dish, incidents and risk assessments sit in the same app.

It helps you keep the records an EHO or a WRC inspector asks to see; you stay responsible for compliance. It's €1.99 per active staff member per month, free for 60 days with no card and no contract.