I wish that I hadn't done a build out on an older building. The best way is to buy an existing business gets you around a ton of permitting headaches. A newer building will avoid many of the problems that an older building will have during permitting. An old building that wasn't zoned specifically for food is a fucking nightmare. Permitting was hellish. I spent two months while the permit office repeatedly changed it's mind over the dangers of a property line to my ADA door, a property line that connected two lots owned by the same guy, . The owner of the lot could hypothetically at some time in the future choose to build on the adjacent lot that was a parking lot right now. Such a building would be within 4-5 feet of my ADA door and that would be a cosmic level horror. The landlord agreed to sign a document that he would never build such a structure without resolving the ADA door problem (which at some point in the process he would have had to do) but instead the whole thing had to go through a big review process that cost money. Took them about two months to decide on the review thing and I was about to file it and than poof! The whole thing stopped construction dead for two months, I had to pursue some legal help and run all around town trying to clear the fucking thing up. Then all of a sudden the whole thing disappeared from my file, no one ever mentioned it again. Just letting it ride was never one of the half dozen or so ways to solve the problem. Thats just one of many problems that stopped me dead in my tracks a few times. The time I was installing a 2nd bathroom (anywhere with food that is over 700 sq ft now needs two bathrooms) and we found out an entire wall of the building was about fall down. The wall was just stucco over wire mesh, it was all about to go. Spent a month rebuilding that shit. It goes on and on. Buy and existing business that is open. Don't build in an old building no matter how good the location is. Get a great architect who is good a bullshitting the permit people.
Here is another good one. I was told that I only needed a modest garbage area.
Chain link walls with a gate and privacy slats. Coming up to final approval it was determined that I needed a weather resistant, fire resistant garbage area with drainage to the sanitary sewer, in which falling rain on the roof would enter inside the structure and go down a slope to the sanitary sewer.... Ok a week for the architect to get the design, two weeks for permiting to reject the design over a little detail, back to the architect for a two day turn around, two weeks for approval. Add the time to build out the now almost $7k garbage area in the building plan, add the inspection time to have them come and look at the damn thing.