The Florida 2026 Market Report: Liquor & Restaurant Licenses
Florida runs one of the largest regulated alcohol and food-service markets in the country. This report reads the state's own public records — every active retail liquor license and every new restaurant filing — to map where demand is concentrated, what the license mix says about who is buying, and where the next wave of openings is forming. The numbers below are live, sourced directly from the Florida DBPR.
Every figure in this report is derived from Florida public records under Chapter 119 — no estimates, no panels, no surveys. It reflects the regulated universe of businesses, not a sample of it.
Where the licenses actually are
Florida's alcohol market is not evenly spread. A handful of metros carry most of the activity, and that concentration shapes where a vendor, distributor, or service provider should spend their first dollar.
Across all 52,061 active retail liquor licensees, the top three counties — Miami-Dade (6,565), Broward (4,337), and Orange (3,454) — together account for roughly 14,400 licensees, or about 28% of the entire state. Add Palm Beach (3,322) and the four largest counties alone control more than one in three liquor licenses in Florida.
The pattern is the familiar Florida triangle: the Southeast gold coast (Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach), the Orlando–I-4 corridor (Orange), and the Tampa Bay cluster (Hillsborough 2,901 and Pinellas 2,803). Jacksonville's Duval (2,421) anchors the Northeast, while Lee (1,960), Brevard (1,521), and Volusia (1,497) round out the top ten on the back of coastal tourism and fast-growing Gulf-coast retirement markets.
The takeaway for go-to-market: ten counties hold the majority of statewide licensed activity. A team that wants statewide coverage can reach most of the addressable market by prioritizing these metros first — and treat the remaining 57 counties as a long, defensible tail rather than the opening move.
Concentration at a glance
- Top 3 counties~28% of all licensees
- Largest single market (Miami-Dade)6,565 licensees
- Top 10 counties combined~31,800 licensees
- Counties trackedAll 67
The bar chart below ranks the full top ten. Coverage extends to every county in the state, including the rural Panhandle and Big Bend markets that rarely show up in commercial datasets.
What the license mix says about the market
The split between on-premises consumption, package stores, and beer-and-wine licenses is a structural fingerprint of demand. It tells you who is opening, what they sell, and which products and services they need.
The three-way split
- COP — consumption on premises28,592 · 55%
- APS — package stores20,861 · 40%
- BEV — beer & wine2,608 · 5%
Percentages of the ~52,000 active liquor licensees. See the donut for the live breakdown.
Consumption-on-premises (COP) licenses dominate at roughly 55% of the market. That is the signature of a hospitality-led economy: bars, restaurants, hotels, clubs, and entertainment venues where alcohol is served and consumed on site. When more than half of a state's liquor licenses are tied to in-person service, demand is being driven by tourism, dining, and nightlife rather than off-premises retail.
Package stores (APS) follow at about 40% — a large, durable base of retail liquor outlets, convenience-and-gas operators, supermarkets, and standalone bottle shops. The near-2,600 beer-and-wine (BEV) licenses are the smallest slice, typically the lighter-footprint cafes, delis, and specialty retailers that don't carry full spirits.
Why it matters: a COP-heavy market favors anyone selling into operating hospitality businesses — POS systems, payroll, insurance, food and beverage distribution, staffing, and compliance services. The large APS base, by contrast, is a steadier retail channel. Knowing the mix in a given county lets a sales team tailor the pitch before the first call.
Top 10 counties by liquor licensees
Active retail alcohol licensees, ranked. Source: DBPR AB&T.
Liquor license-type mix
How statewide active licenses split across the three primary classes.
- Consumption On Premises (COP)28,59254.9%
- Package Stores (APS)20,86140.1%
- Beer & Wine (BEV)2,6085.0%
The new-restaurant pipeline is the real lead list
A stock of existing licenses tells you where the market is today. The flow of new filings tells you where it's heading — and a brand-new establishment is the single strongest moment to win a vendor relationship.
This fiscal year, Florida's Division of Hotels & Restaurants recorded 6,243 new food-service establishments. Each one represents an owner who just signed a lease, is buying equipment, hiring staff, choosing a payment processor, lining up insurance, and shopping for suppliers — usually all within a few weeks of the license appearing in the public record.
That timing is the entire point. A restaurant that has been open for three years has already chosen its vendors and is expensive to switch. A restaurant whose license was filed last week has chosen almost nothing. The new-filing feed converts a static directory into a continuously refreshing list of high-intent prospects at the exact moment their spending decisions are still open.
Layered against the geographic concentration above, the pipeline gets sharper still: new filings cluster in the same high-density metros, so a team can monitor a single county — or a single ZIP radius around an existing book of business — and be alerted the day a new operator enters the market. That is the difference between buying a list and watching a market.
How these numbers were built
Figures are drawn from Florida DBPR bulk extracts (Division of Alcoholic Beverages & Tobacco and Division of Hotels & Restaurants), geocoded with the U.S. Census Bureau batch geocoder and enriched with entity data from the Florida Division of Corporations (Sunbiz). Data as of 2026-06-15, refreshed on a daily/weekly cycle.
Released under Florida's Chapter 119 public-records law. This is business-entity data and is not a consumer report — it is not intended for, and must not be used for, credit, employment, tenant, or insurance screening of individuals (FCRA-safe). New Venue Data is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Florida DBPR or the State of Florida. Data provided "as is."
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