This week, the converted garage at 898 W. Montrose Street started something new: doggy daycare, running 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays, drop-off whenever you need it before work. It's a small addition to a business that almost never made it to its Montrose Street opening at all. Pups Pub, the off-leash dog bar and sports bar that took over the old Bee's Auto garage, is the same concept that already opened and closed in both Tampa and downtown Orlando. Those two locations are gone. The Clermont one just added a second service line.
That gap between "closed" and "expanding" is worth sitting with, because it says more about what's actually working downtown right now than any list of new restaurant names.
Two Locations Already Closed
Pups Pub's Orlando outpost on North Orange Avenue shut down after safety concerns were raised. The Tampa location closed not long after a 2025 Florida appeals court ruling sided with the state health department on the long-running legal question of whether dogs can be inside places that serve food and drinks, a decision that forced dog-friendly bar concepts across the state to rethink how they operate. Two tries, two closures, in two of the biggest markets in Central Florida.
The Clermont location filed for the same kind of permits, converted the same kind of building, and sold the same kind of memberships. It is still open. The difference wasn't the concept. It was the format.
What's Different About the Montrose Street Version
The old Bee's Auto garage became a roughly 2,500-square-foot open-air space with bay doors left in place for an indoor-outdoor feel, plus about 0.3 acres of outdoor play yard, according to the permit reporting that first covered the project. Open-air was not an aesthetic choice. It was the workaround. After the Orlando and Tampa closures, the company said any future locations would lean heavily on outdoor or open-air designs specifically to limit the same legal exposure that ended the other two.
Before you show up with your dog, a few rules actually matter:
Rabies, DHPP/Parvo, and Bordetella vaccinations must be current, and any dog over a year old needs to be spayed or neutered before entering the play yard.
Humans get in free but have to be 21 or older. Dogs need either a founding VIP membership or a day pass. It reads like a lot of friction for a bar, but it's the same friction that kept the doors open in Clermont while it closed the doors in two other cities.
The Kiosk Detail That Explains the Bigger Pattern
Here's the part that matters beyond dog policy. Pups Pub doesn't have its own kitchen. Guests order through kiosks that connect directly to other restaurants in downtown Clermont, so a beer at the bar can arrive with a meal from somewhere else on Montrose Street.
That single detail tells you what kind of business this actually is. It isn't competing with Fumao Table, the Cuban street food spot that opened at 646 7th Street on June 28, or with Back 40 Wine Co., now open at 719 W. Ave. It's routing customers to them. A dog bar with no kitchen only works if there's already a walkable cluster of restaurants nearby willing to fill the order. Montrose Street had that cluster before Pups Pub ever filed a permit.
The Rhythm That Was Already Running
None of downtown Clermont's new openings created weekend foot traffic from scratch. They slotted into a schedule that residents have been keeping for years.
| When | What | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Sundays, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. | Clermont Farmers Market, roughly 40 vendors selling produce, meat, honey, eggs, seafood, and handmade goods | 685 W. Montrose St. |
| First Friday of the month, 5:30 to 9 p.m. | Food trucks and live music downtown | Montrose Street corridor |
| Saturdays, 7:30 a.m. | Clermont Waterfront parkrun, a free timed 5K, followed by coffee at Cheeser's Palace café | Lake Hiawatha Preserve, 450 N. Lake Minneola Shores |
Worth flagging for anyone checking a calendar: the city's own events page describes the monthly food truck night as happening on the first Saturday of each month, while Clermont Main Street's own event page calls the exact same recurring event "First Friday Food Trucks". Even the organizations running it don't agree on the day in their own copy. If you're planning around it, check Main Street's page directly rather than the city calendar.
That Saturday parkrun habit is older than most of the new storefronts on this list, and it's the kind of recurring, low-cost draw that gives a new coffee shop or wine bar a built-in Saturday morning customer base before it has any reputation of its own.
What's Actually Open vs. Still a Sign in the Window
Downtown coverage this year has blurred the line between "opening soon" and "open." Sorting it out:
Confirmed open right now:
- Pups Pub, 898 W. Montrose St., now running daily with doggy daycare added August 3
- Back 40 Wine Co., 719 W. Ave
- Fumao Table, 646 7th Street, opened June 28
- Huarike Peruvian Restaurant, at W. Montrose and West Ave, holding a 4.9 Google rating since opening
- The Station on W. Desoto Street, which took over the space left by the closed Clermont Brewing Company
- Gurch Coffee and Teamont Boba, sharing space at West End Plaza on W. Minneola Ave
- Main Squeeze, 763 W. Montrose, for fresh-squeezed lemonade
- Crafted Clermont, the steakhouse and speakeasy concept downtown
Confirmed open, but on a different timeline than expected:
- The Venue, chef Uday Kadam's new catering and events space at 2400 South U.S. Highway 27, in the building that used to be Grace O'Malley's Irish Pub. A spring report said no grand opening date had been set. By mid-June, coverage from the same outlet showed the celebration had already happened.
That last one is a useful reminder that "opening soon" in local coverage can mean anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, and the only way to know is to check back.
The Highway Story Is a Different Story
It's easy to read headlines about Clermont's growth and assume they're all describing the same few blocks. They aren't. White Castle opened its first Clermont location this spring on Highway 27, bringing 75 new jobs to that stretch of corridor. Portillo's has confirmed a Clermont address at 1251 East Highway 50, though no opening date has been announced yet.
Both of those sit on the highway, not on Montrose Street. They're real, they're worth knowing about if you drive that corridor daily, but they're a separate story from what's happening downtown. The highway is filling in with regional and national chains chasing traffic counts. Downtown is filling in with independent operators who are building around a farmers market, a monthly food truck night, and a Saturday parkrun that were already pulling people onto Montrose Street before any of them signed a lease.
That's the actual shape of what's changing in Clermont this year. Not a boom, but a rhythm getting thicker, one storefront at a time, mostly on foot.
If you're curious how any of this touches property values on or near Montrose Street, the Clermont neighborhood guide has more on the area, and Engel & Völkers Lakeland offers a free home valuation if you ever want a clearer picture of what your own address is worth in this market.
