Ogden, UT Business Licensing & Operations: Tobacco Retail License (2026)

Ogden City Code § 15-2-19 defines a retail tobacco specialty business as any commercial establishment where tobacco product sales exceed 35% of annual gross receipts and food and beverage sales fall under 45%, and it expressly folds in electronic cigarettes and liquid used to produce vapor, regardless of whether that liquid contains nicotine, alongside cigars, cigarettes and tobacco paraphernalia. Any such business beginning operation after May 8, 2012 must sit at least 1,000 feet from a public or private school, licensed childcare facility, trade school, church, public library, playground, park, youth center, recreation facility or arcade, and at least 600 feet from another retail tobacco specialty business, an agriculture zone or use, or a residential zone or use, under § 15-13-35.

Distances run in a straight line from the shop's nearest entrance to the nearest property line of the protected use, ignoring intervening buildings or zoning boundaries. Zoning further confines where these stores can locate at all: the use tables in Title 15 list retail tobacco specialty businesses as permitted only in specific commercial and manufacturing zones, and only if the § 15-13-35 separation standards are met. A store that opened before May 9, 2012 and cannot meet the buffers keeps legal nonconforming status, but that status ends, and the use is deemed abandoned, if operations are suspended or discontinued for more than 60 consecutive days or the store's business license lapses without renewal or is permanently revoked.