Escambia County, FL Animal Ordinances: Pet Groomer Rules (2026)

Escambia County groups pet groomers with beauty shops, health clubs, dry cleaners and tattoo parlors under the personal-services category of retail services, a use that appears in the county's mixed-use zoning districts rather than in purely residential or agricultural ones. In the Low Density Mixed-Use (LDMU) district, Sec. 3-2.6(b)(3)b permits personal services, including those of beauty shops, health clubs, pet groomers, dry cleaners, and tattoo parlors, but only as part of small-scale retail services capped at 6,000 square feet per lot, or within a neighborhood retail center no larger than 35,000 square feet, and with no outdoor work or permanent outdoor storage. The same personal-services listing, including pet groomers, is permitted in the Rural Mixed-Use district under Sec. 3-2.4(b)(3)b and in the High Density Mixed-Use district under Sec. 3-2.9(b)(3)d, each under that district's own size and outdoor-work restrictions.

Purely residential districts such as Low Density Residential and Medium Density Residential permit no retail services at all, so a grooming business cannot open there regardless of size, and the Agricultural and Rural Residential districts likewise exclude retail services except for the agricultural uses those districts separately allow. A groomer that wants to keep animals outdoors, board them overnight, or run any outdoor work area exceeds the no-outdoor-work-or-permanent-outdoor-storage condition attached to the personal-services listing and would need a different use classification, such as a kennel or veterinary clinic use, which carries its own acreage minimums.