\u201cWhat do you mean we\u2019re not allowed to have dogs on the patio? Everybody has them,\u201d Munsey told Jacksonville Today of his conversation with the inspector.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Florida statute<\/a> includes a local exemption to its prohibition on dogs entering public food establishments to allow cities and counties to create a permitting process to allow those in designated outdoor areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a provision that the city of Jacksonville, as Munsey discovered, had not put into place until now. So Munsey and his Bearded Pig co-owner Michael Schmidt called Jacksonville City Council members Joe Carlucci and Rual Arias to try to change that.<\/p>\n Last week, the Jacksonville City Council voted 18-0 to approve Ordinance 2025-0866-E<\/a>, which established that permitting process and creates concrete rules for restaurant owners who want to have patios open to dogs.<\/p>\n Other cities in Duval County, including Jacksonville Beach, where Bearded Pig<\/a> had a second location for four years, have their own permitting process<\/a> for dogs in outdoor dining areas.<\/p>\n Munsey says the legislation fixes the issue after Jacksonville \u201ckind of fell through the cracks.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Arias \u2014 the bill\u2019s introducer and whose family owns Mambos Cuban Cafe \u2014 says it\u2019s common for Jacksonville restaurants to let their customers dine outdoors with their pets.\u00a0<\/p>\n The council member thinks it\u2019s also likely Bearded Pig\u2019s owners are not the only restaurateurs unaware that non-service animals in Jacksonville were legally not supposed to be there.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, any restaurant that\u2019s out of compliance will be able to get in compliance right away,\u201d Arias told Jacksonville Today.<\/p>\n Requirements for pets on patios<\/p>\n The city Planning and Development Department, which is responsible for implementing the permitting process, has drafted an application that requires restaurants to submit a site plan of the outdoor area.\u00a0<\/p>\n Restaurants that allow dogs will have to display a sign at every patio entrance notifying their customers that dogs are permitted on the patio.<\/p>\n Council member Ron Salem, who advocated to include signage, told council members Jan. 13 that this is not only for pet owners but also so customers who may not feel comfortable eating around an animal to not be caught off guard and have clear expectations of the patio experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n The legislation does not give clearance for restaurants to allow customers to have dogs in indoor dining rooms, other than service animals. It also mandates that food service employees wash their hands \u201cpromptly\u201d after touching, petting or handling dogs, and do not touch dogs while serving food and beverages or handling tableware.<\/p>\n Dogs also have to remain on leashes.<\/p>\n For business owners, the bill states there is no cost to apply for the permit.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a permit that should not really be in existence. It\u2019s weird that nobody has ever been cited in Jacksonville for this, but all of the sudden one specific restaurant is getting cited for the same issue,\u201d Arias said. \u201cSo clearly this is a non-issue-issue that\u2019s happening now. Because of that, I don\u2019t want to incur more costs on the hospitality industry.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Economic impact\u00a0<\/p>\n The Bearded Pig has allowed dogs in its outdoor dining area since it first opened nearly 10 years ago. Munsey says the restaurant continued the practice after moving in 2021 four blocks to its new location at 1808 Kings Ave.<\/p>\n According to Munsey, it\u2019s become an expectation for many pet owners to be able to bring the family dog along when eating outdoors. If the Bearded Pig and other restaurants would have had to change their pet policies, Munsey says, it could have been costly for the business.<\/p>\n \u201cI probably have three dogs an hour on the weekends with guests. So if you figure our per person average is $22 per person, do the calculations. It\u2019s thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in lost revenue,\u201d Munsey said. \u201cAnd moreover, we look like the bad guy because everyone else was allowing dogs on their patio but we were being singled out as not being allowed to. It could have had a big economic impact, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n Bearded Pig requires customers to leash their dogs on the patio, and Munsey says staff try to be cognizant of any aggression the dogs show to children or other dogs.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sure there are people that either don\u2019t like dogs or didn\u2019t want to be near the dog. But we have a big enough space that we could have always moved,\u201d he said. \u201cWe do all those types of things to make sure everybody is safe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On sunny Saturdays and Sundays, Chad Munsey can welcome as many as three dogs an hour who come…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-125030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Dogs-on-patios-signage.png\")
A copy of the sign that will be required to be posted on restaurant patios where dogs are allowed. | City of Jacksonville<\/p>\n