Start-Up City Campaign Launched

by Paul Bass The New Haven independent

New Haven is starting 2026 with a civic resolution: to become a “city of yes” for small-business start-ups.

That’s the goal of a new campaign called “Best City to Start.”

Launched by Ward 9 Alder Caroline Tanbee Smith with a couple of dozen entrepreneurs and small-business advocacy groups, the campaign seeks to streamline a process that has entrepreneurs wasting time replicating steps for state and local approvals while needing to shell out more licensing fees than in other cities.

“Starting a business in New Haven shouldn’t take months, cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, or exhaust your hope. New Haven should be the Best City to Start  — a bakery, a flower shop, a skate shop, anything,” Smith wrote in a digital message announcing the campaign.

In a conversation Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven,” she and two fellow organizers of the campaign — New Haven food entrepreneurs Yeabsera Agonfer and Kwame Asare — described the experiences that led them to work to help others break through the red tape.

Asare learned about those barriers while spending a year launching his Oh Shito!  Ghanaian pepper sauce, which is now available online and in stores like Stop & Shop in Connecticut and New York. Agonfer learned about those barriers advancing her soon-to-launch line of flavored Ethiopian lactose-free Cha Cha Butter; and through helping other immigrant entrepreneurs wrestle with bureaucracy in her work with the CitySeed food incubator. 

Smith learned about those barriers first as a co-founder of Collab, which helps prospective entrepreneurs carry out their business ideas, and then as an alder helping individual State Street business owners navigate a year or more of frustrating delays.

All three praised the work of city government small-business staffers who issue permits and offer assistance.

The problem, they said, lies in part with city rules that duplicate prior federal and state processes.

Asare, for instance, first had to register his business with the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). That took about a month. Then he spent six months having his sauce tested for a series of shelf-life performance measures both with the FDA and the state Department of Consumer Protection (DCP). Then he had to obtain a DCP-issued food kitchen license. That took four months; it can take less tech-savvy people (Asare works on building a consumer finance platform for Robinhood) longer to navigate portals.

After that, in order to actually sell his sauce at farmers markets, he had to obtain a catering license from the  city which simply duplicates the process of obtaining the state license. That took another month. Then he had to pay $650 for a first-year catering license, then $550 each year after that.

Agonfer and the CitySeed-assisted entrepreneurs she works with have gone through similar processes.

The Best City to Start campaign has begun with three specific suggested local law changes:

• Change the catering license fee to $0 the first year, then $250-$275. Smith said comparable cities on average charge $275. She also noted that all the catering licensing fees add up to about $30,000 a year for the city. That’s about .001 percent of the approximately $25 million a year the city brings in for all permit and license fees. So significant city revenue is not at stake, she argues. (In fact, lower fees might bring in more applicants.)

• Create a “pickle jar permit” (aka “packaged goods permit”) for packaged foods that would enable applicants to download documentation of already received state approvals into a city registry that would take only a day to complete the process.

• Tightening the approval process for restaurants to set up sidewalk or in-street “patio” dining. New Haven’s number of outdoor permits for such dining has remained stuck at around 40 for three years, Smith said: She argued that lower fees and easier approvals would encourage more. She didn’t recommend completely following San Francisco in getting rid of the permits — because we have narrower sidewalks, we still need inspectors to ensure wheelchair accessbility, for instance. But she would begin with eliminating the $180 fee.

To get started, Smith and fellow Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller (who runs CitySeed) have moved to hold Board of Alders workshops on the first two issues to gain communitiy input, with the hope of following up legislation.

They’re also inviting people to join the campaign and develop more ideas; interested parties can contact Smith at carolineward9nhv@gmail.com

“We have this energy. We have so many individual residents and neighbors who are saying yes to business ideas. Can we as a city and as a coalition of organizations and individuals and city departments also have that spirit of yes, so that individuals can take that idea and make it actually real?” Smith asked during the “Dateline” conversation. She and the emerging coalition are answering that question with action.

Click on the below video to watch the full conversation about the “Best City to Start” campaign and personal start-up business experiences with Caroline Tanbee Smith, Yeabsera Agonfer, and Kwame Asare  on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.” Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of  “Dateline New Haven.”