Mayor Duggan and leaders on the Detroit City Council recently announced a bold plan to make it easier to operate a small business in the City by streamlining unnecessary licensing requirements, improving the City’s permitting and licensing processes, and launching a new concierge team to help businesses navigate those processes.
The plan will reduce administrative burdens on every business licensed by the City and fully remove unnecessary licensing requirements for over one-in-five Detroit businesses, while carefully ensuring that all health, sanitation, and safety requirements are met. The proposed business licensing changes cover three key areas:
- Removing licensing requirements that do not protect health and safety.Notably, this would remove a duplicative licensing requirement that currently forces restaurants to receive licenses from both the Health Department AND from the Building Safety, Engineering & Environmental Department (BSEED). It also would require license renewal every two years, instead of annually.
- Improvements to the city’s business licensing and permitting process, including technology upgrades to speed up reviews and approvals.
- Creating a new business Concierge Team that will provide personal assistance to help business owners navigate the permitting and licensing processes.
These changes require ordinance amendments that will be submitted to City Council this week, sponsored by Council President Mary Sheffield, along with Councilmembers Fred Durhal III and Coleman Young II as co-sponsors.
“The amount of red tape and bureaucracy business owners deal with in this City drives me crazy,” said Mayor Duggan. “To help small businesses thrive, we have to be both aggressive and smart to cut back on unnecessary red tape while maintaining the highest health and safety standards.”
“Our small businesses have always been the heart of Detroit’s economy and the soul of our neighborhoods,” said Council President Mary Sheffield. “For those reasons, it was important for me to sponsor this legislation which creates a new business concierge service, cuts red tape, streamlines processes, and sends a clear message that Detroit is open for business — and we’re here to help you succeed.”
“Detroit’s future depends on our ability to remove outdated barriers and rethink how we support those building value, not just for profit, but for people,” said Councilmember Fred Durhal. “The Business Licensing Ordinance Amendment brings us closer to a city where entrepreneurs are met with clarity and respect, not confusion and delay. By cutting unnecessary red tape, we open the door to cutting more red ribbons — and that’s how we boldly invest in the people building our future.”
For too long, we have made it difficult to start businesses in the city of Detroit,” said Councilman Coleman Young II. “The cornerstone of the American Dream is small businesses and entrepreneurship. We need to make it easier, not harder, to start a small business. The heart of the city of Detroit is small business and we need a system that shows Detroit means business.”
The plan to make it easier to start a small business in the City was developed through a six-month effort to analyze how to make it easier to start and sustain a small business in the City. That effort included interviews with business owners, a customer survey, secret shopper testing of the City’s processes, developing a 12-page process map for every workflow action necessary to open a restaurant, and comparing Detroit’s processes, guides, and technology against best practice cities across the country.
The effort was led by Chief Operating Officer Marcus von Kapff, who came to the city last year after serving for 20 years with JPMorgan Chase, most recently as its Chief Financial Officer for Commercial Banking.
Pending City Council approval, Duggan said the City intends to execute the plan throughout the remainder of 2025, with most elements launched by late summer. The City will also continue assessing additional opportunities to streamline permitting and licensing to support small businesses and small developers.
For more details about the major reform elements, visit https://detroitmi.gov/news/mayor-council-members-announce-bold-plan-cut-red-tape-small-businesses.
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- Proposed changes would cut licensing requirements that do not protect health and safety, consolidating two duplicative restaurant licenses into one and extending the length of City business licenses to two years instead of one
- City will launch new concierge team to help businesses navigate City requirements
- Council President Sheffield to sponsor proposed ordinance changes, members Durhal and Young to co-sponsor
- Proposed changes come as a result of six-month analysis and engagement with local business owners.
Details of the three major reform elements:
- Removing licensing requirements that do not protect health and safety.Today, Detroit requires restaurants – the most common type of small business, accounting for over 20 percent of licensed businesses – to apply for two different licenses from two different City departments. First, a restaurant applies to the Health Department for a food service establishment license, a state requirement that includes all of the health and sanitation inspections. Then, the restaurant applies to the Buildings, Safety Engineering, and Environmental Department (BSEED) for a City business license, a process that requires additional paperwork and complexity but does not add health and safety requirements. This plan would remove the City business license, removing a burdensome requirement, while keeping in place all health, sanitation, and safety inspections of the facility which occur through the Health Department license and other required building inspections by the Fire Department and BSEED. This change is expected to reduce the time needed to start a business by roughly 60 days or two months. The plan would also extend the length of City business license from one year to two years, reducing the administrative
burden on every licensed business. Right now, most business owners report that it takes them over 4 weeks to renew a business license – only to turn around and restart the process 11-months later. Moving to two-year licenses align the business license with the cadence of required City inspections for commercial buildings, creating a more efficient inspection process and keeping a high standard for the frequency of safety inspections while reducing the burden on business owners.
- Improving the City’s permitting and licensing processes.The Administration is also executing extensive process improvements to accelerate City reviews and provide a more predictable, clearer, and smoother process for customers. This includes making the City’s technology systems easier to use, increasing integration between different technology systems, establishing expected turnaround times for each step of the application review process, and revamping customer service processes, websites, guides, and other customer instructions.
- Launching a new business concierge team.Last but not least, the City will launch a new business concierge team to help small businesses navigate through the City’s building permitting and business licensing processes, funded by $600,000 included in the FY26 City budget by Council President Sheffield and Councilmember Fred Durhal. The concierge team will offer a dedicated point of contact for business owners to offer guidance, advocate for the customer, and coordinate with other City departments to resolve questions or concerns during the application process. The concierge team will report to the Deputy Group Executive for Neighborhood Economic Development and will build on prior successful efforts to improve customer service processes, like the creation of the Development Resource Center in BSEED.
