Design comes second; the licence comes first
A restaurant renovation (食肆裝修) in Hong Kong is a licensing project first and a design project second, and the operators who forget this build a beautiful room they cannot legally open. Before the mood board, before the seating count, the question is whether the site can actually be licensed at all. Get the licensing path right and the fit-out follows; get it wrong and you have signed a lease you cannot trade from.
This is general guidance; confirm the specifics for your premises with the FEHD and the relevant departments before you commit to a lease.
The FEHD holds the master key
The licensing authority is the FEHD (Food and Environmental Hygiene Department), and it does not decide alone. FEHD refers your layout plan to the Buildings Department (BD), Fire Services Department (FSD), Planning and EMSD, and will not issue a food licence unless the premises satisfy health, building safety, fire safety, Government lease conditions and the statutory Outline Zoning Plan (OZP). In practice the licensing timeline, not the construction programme, is the critical path, so the AP and the ventilation specialist should be engaged at design stage, not after.
Five checks to run before you sign the lease
The single most expensive mistake is signing a lease on premises that cannot be licensed. Run these five due-diligence checks before you commit:
- The lease and DMC permit F&B use.
- The OZP zones the site for it.
- The building holds a valid Occupation Permit (OP).
- A physical route exists to discharge cooking exhaust to open air.
- The premises are free of unauthorised building works (UBW).
The flue route is the single deal-killer on marginal sites, confirm a compliant discharge route before committing to the lease.
Pick the right licence class
There are three classes, and the choice shapes your kitchen area, your menu and your budget:
| Class | Cooking permitted | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| General restaurant | Any method, including wok work and deep-frying | Larger required food-room area |
| Light refreshment | Simple only, boiling, steaming, braising, excludes deep-frying and stir-frying | Smaller required food-room area; suits cafés and dessert shops |
| Food factory | Production for off-premises consumption | Separate class (central kitchen / takeaway) |
Application is on form FEHB 94, filed with a proposed layout plan drawn to scale not less than 1:100. The path runs from an optional provisional licence, valid 6 months, applied for together with the full application, to a full licence, granted after a Report of Compliance (with all certificates) and a final FEHD inspection.
The statutory chain: BD, FSD and EMSD
FEHD’s referrals each carry their own triggers and certificates:
- BD is triggered by changes to the kitchen’s fire-resisting enclosure, altered exits, fixed equipment over 100 kg, a walk-in cold room, or increased occupancy, any of which means appointing an Authorized Person (AP), plus a Registered Structural Engineer (RSE) where structure is affected. BD will not recommend a licence while UBW remains; it must be cleared and certified on forms UBW-1 → UBW-2.
- FSD covers means of escape, emergency lighting, exit signage and fire service installations, certified on completion by an FS251 from a registered fire contractor.
- EMSD covers gas and electrical works by EMSD-registered contractors, whose certificates form part of the compliance package.
Ventilation: the make-or-break constraint
FEHD requires an approved mechanical ventilating system exhausting cooking fumes to open air, discharged not less than 2.5 m above ground level, with adequate extraction, make-up air and grease filtration. It is designed and installed by a registered specialist contractor (ventilation works category) and approved by FEHD (health) and FSD (fire) under the Ventilation of Scheduled Premises Regulation (Cap. 132CE). The binding constraint is usually the flue route: the landlord must grant riser or façade rights, and a duct crossing a fire-compartment wall re-involves FSD and BD with fire-rated duct and damper detailing.
Layout and finishes rules that get plans rejected
A handful of layout rules cause the most rejections:
- A general restaurant needs at least one kitchen; the combined kitchen, food-prep and scullery area must meet the statutory minimum, sized via FEHD’s minimum-food-room calculator.
- A toilet must not open directly onto the food room, a common rejection cause; design in a lobby or separation.
- All food-room surfaces, floors, walls, worktops, must be impervious, smooth and easily washable, with proper hand-washing provision.
- Greasy wastewater must pass through an adequately sized, accessible grease trap to the foul sewer, never a surface channel.
- Wet-kitchen floor loading, drainage falls and slab waterproofing must be designed in from the start.
How Primeworks handles this
We treat the licence as the first line of the brief, not the last. Before a lease is signed we run the five pre-lease checks, F&B use, OZP zoning, a valid OP, a viable exhaust route to open air, and a clean UBW position, so you never commit to premises that cannot be licensed. From design stage we coordinate the AP, the registered ventilation specialist and the FSD contractor in parallel, keep the flue route and grease trap central to the plan rather than an afterthought, and itemise the commercial works and professional fees so the licensing path and the budget stay legible throughout.