Tonawanda, NY Home Business: Customer Traffic Restrictions (2026)

Section 215-24.13.D(6) sets the Town of Tonawanda's hard limit on customer traffic at a home-based business: only one patron may be on-site receiving service at any given moment. Subsection B, the list of permitted home occupations, echoes the same cap when it describes counselors, tutors, music and art instructors as those "seeing no more than one client in-person at a time," making clear the one-patron rule is baked into which occupations even qualify as home occupations in the first place. The only carve-out in the chapter is for a licensed home day-care center operating under § 215-24.10, which by its nature serves several children at once.

Subsection D(5) pairs with the patron cap by limiting outside staff to a single nonresident employee, so a home occupation cannot scale into a small storefront operation by adding both employees and simultaneous customers. Subsection D(11) further limits deliveries to two-axle vehicles only, another traffic-control measure aimed at keeping a home business from generating commercial-scale truck traffic on a residential street. Together these rules mean a Tonawanda resident running a tax-preparation or tutoring practice from home can see clients one at a time, by appointment, but cannot run a walk-in office with multiple simultaneous appointments without exceeding the zoning limit.