Pinellas County reverses course and allows some brew pubs to reopen

PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) – The House of Beer in Dunedin has a large outdoor patio, tables that are spread out, and an intense cleaning regimen but were forced to close in mid-March as a result of the pandemic.

March is a busy season for small local breweries and the forced closure was devastating for their business.

When restaurants were allowed to reopen and sell alcohol, the owners of the House of Beer thought they would be able to reopen too. The House of Beer has partnered with a food truck to provide food to their guests, but the food truck has a separate business license.

Pinellas County officials ruled that because The House of Beer didn’t earn more than 50 percent of their income from the sale of food, they are considered a bar and could not reopen under state orders.

Dunedin’s mayor, Julie Bujalski, didn’t understand the difference between a restaurant and a brewery that offers food, so she contacted Pinellas County to ask for clarification.

On Tuesday, Pinellas officials announced they had consulted with the Florida Department of Business and Professional regulation and breweries with food trucks are now allowed to open.

“Julie, our mayor of Dunedin has been working tirelessly on this. She’s been working on weekends, nights, she called me at 9:00 last night, she never stops working,” said Rick Clemo with the House of Beer.

The owners of the House of Beer also credit 8 On Your Side for bringing the issue to light and say the impact will be felt by many.

“Not just us, the immediate impact here is, there are a dozen or so breweries in Pinellas County that can reopen, but throughout the state this is laying the groundwork for them to reopen a lot earlier and that’s hundreds of breweries, thousands of jobs, dare I say millions of dollars of economic impact all because we called Eight On Your Side,” said Andy Polce with the House of Beer.

However, not all breweries will be allowed to reopen. Caledonia Brewing on Main Street in Dunedin is still not permitted to have inside sales the only way they can currently sell beer is in a sealed container that a customer can take with them.

“Right now it doesn’t look that great for us, we only have a small patio and the city will not allow the food trucks on the street. It’s disheartening because we can do the to go sales, but once the restaurants opened up and now that more breweries can open up, who’s going to come here to get to go beer,” said Hollie Parker with Caledonia Brewing.

Hours after the new ruling by Pinellas County, the House of Beer reopened their patio to customers.
Music played, beer was poured and an employee came out to announce to the crowd, “Thank you for coming, but please remember social distancing.”

“This is a text book, a text book example. We call Eight On Your Side, they come out here and within 24 hours a horrible wrong was righted. Thank you guys man. I can’t thank you enough. It’s made a huge, huge difference for us,” Polce said.