Florida Restaurant Industry Index Monthly Brief

What Changed This Month

0 new-facility approvals in June 2026, flat against a zero prior base from 0 in the prior month. Named approvals include no named examples cleared the current data window.

864 DBPR delinquent/inactive (status 45/46) license records in June 2026, up 487.8% from 147 in the prior month. A delinquent license is a public-record regulatory state, not confirmed proof the business has closed. Named records include BAIOCCO in Miami, and OPENSEAS CAFE SOUTH in Key Biscayne.

371 ownership-change approvals in June 2026, up 4.5% from 355 in the prior month. Named filings include GG'S OF NEW YORK in North Lauderdale, and TROPICAL SMOOTHIE CAFE in Neptune Beach.

Orange County added 190 closure-status records versus 11 in the prior month, a move of +179.

Italian & Pizza led named cuisine closure-status counts with 23 records; examples include COUNTRY ANGELS in Polk City, and CAFFE PARADISO in Tampa.

Source dataset: DBPR license, application, inspection, and ownership-change files.

Five monthly shifts

Source dataset: output/licenses_hr.parquet, output/new_facilities.parquet, output/ownership_changes.parquet.

Per-Metro Mini-Tables

Miami: 9,257 active licenses, 0 new approvals, 24 closure-status records, and 52 ownership-change filings in June 2026. The monthly closure-status rate is 0.3% of the active base.

Fort Lauderdale: 5,527 active licenses, 0 new approvals, 15 closure-status records, and 36 ownership-change filings in June 2026. The monthly closure-status rate is 0.3% of the active base.

West Palm Beach: 4,212 active licenses, 0 new approvals, 15 closure-status records, and 28 ownership-change filings in June 2026. The monthly closure-status rate is 0.4% of the active base.

Port St. Lucie: 1,864 active licenses, 0 new approvals, 22 closure-status records, and 9 ownership-change filings in June 2026. The monthly closure-status rate is 1.2% of the active base.

Key West: 803 active licenses, 0 new approvals, 0 closure-status records, and 8 ownership-change filings in June 2026. The monthly closure-status rate is 0.0% of the active base.

Tampa: 9,821 active licenses, 0 new approvals, 114 closure-status records, and 54 ownership-change filings in June 2026. The monthly closure-status rate is 1.2% of the active base.

Source dataset: output/licenses_hr.parquet joined to metro county definitions.

Per-metro FRII metrics

Raw counts mislead -- Putnam County losing 4 places is different from Miami losing 4. Use the rate or per-capita column for defensible comparisons. Methodology details linked above.

Source dataset: output/licenses_hr.parquet joined to metro county definitions.

The Industry-Wide Number

The industry-wide read is 5.8%: 3,486 current closure-status licenses against 60,295 active licenses. That number is not a monthly failure rate; it is the standing inactive-license load the active market is carrying in the current file.

The useful monthly proxy is the flow difference. In June 2026, DBPR new-facility approvals outnumbered closure-status records by -864. That is expansion on paper, but it is expansion with churn underneath it: 371 ownership-change filings mean many restaurants changed hands without changing the sign on the building.

Source dataset: output/licenses_hr.parquet and output/inspections.parquet.

How To Read The Month

The clean headline is that new approvals exceeded closure-status records by -864 in June 2026. The more useful read is that the month had three different speeds at once: new approvals were only flat against a zero prior base, closure-status records fell much faster at up 487.8%, and ownership changes barely loosened at up 4.5%. A market can look healthier in the opening column while still feeling unstable to operators because ownership churn keeps moving underneath the visible consumer-facing brand.

Metro geography explains why a statewide number can feel wrong at street level. Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Orlando, Tampa Bay, and Jacksonville all sit inside the same Florida ledger, but each carries a different mix of active-license density, tourist traffic, landlord exposure, and chain concentration. That is why the metro table is not decoration: it keeps 60,295 active statewide licenses from flattening local reads that should stay local.

The named rows are the check against abstraction. TOOTSIE'S ORCHID LOUNGE in Panama City and EL SABOR VENEZOLANO in Kissimmee anchor the opening side; TIJUANA FLATS BURRITO CO in Jacksonville and EL PATIO DEL CHEF in Hollywood anchor the closure-status side; TIJUANA FLATS in Coral Springs and COUNTRY INN in Lake Worth anchor the ownership-change side. FRII is strongest when those names and the statewide arithmetic are read together.

The final caution is timing. This brief uses June 2026 because it is the last complete month available at render time, while the page itself was generated on 2026-07-07. That prevents five early-May days from being compared against full March and April months. The result is less dramatic, but more useful: one complete monthly ledger, one prior-month comparison, and one year-over-year inspection-volume anchor.

Source dataset: output/licenses_hr.parquet, output/new_facilities.parquet, output/ownership_changes.parquet.

Methodology

Methodology: FRII uses current DBPR license records for the active base and closure-status inventory, DBPR new-facility approvals for openings, DBPR change-of-owner approvals for ownership churn, and DBPR inspections for year-over-year inspection-volume context. Monthly rows use the last complete calendar month available at render time.

Forward context: the Phase 2 ORSM baseline currently scores 4,437 licenses in the elevated or high risk bands. The semiannual Outlook Brief (<a href="/fri/briefs/orsm-semiannual.html">/fri/briefs/orsm-semiannual.html</a>) provides the full per-license risk analysis and six-month scenario rollup.