Memphis, TN Home Business: Customer Traffic Restrictions (2026)

Section 2.7.4.B lists the standards a home occupation must meet to keep its no-permit accessory-use status in the joint Memphis and Shelby County Unified Development Code. Item 9 sets the customer cap directly: 'Only one customer shall be permitted at the residence at a time, except for group instruction (see Sub-Section 2.7.4C). There shall be no group instruction in connection with the home occupation.' Group instruction of seven or fewer students per hour is handled under the separate Section 2.7.4.C track, while ordinary home businesses, tutors, consultants, or a hairdresser working solo, are held to a strict one-visitor-at-a-time limit rather than a waiting room of clients.

The same subsection ties customer traffic to time of day: item 10 limits 'all public contact related to the home occupation' to the window between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m., so no client visits before or after those hours. Item 12 addresses the vehicles that traffic brings: adequate off-street parking must already serve the use, none of it in a required front yard except within an existing driveway, and 'driveways shall not be reduced or widened to accommodate the business.' Together the three standards keep a home occupation from generating the visible car and foot traffic of a genuine storefront. Miss any one of them and the operation falls outside Section 2.7.4.B's no-permit exemption and is instead treated as an unauthorized commercial use.